Two Felt-Tip Pens documents the first, free improvised meeting of the German sopranino and alto sax player Stefan Keune (of the new incarnations of King Übü Örchestrü and XPact) with the American close collaborators – guitarist Sandy Ewen and double bass player Damon Smith at the Moers Festival in May 2023.
The album’s title, as well as the pieces’ titles, refers to the cover painting by the late German double bass player Hans Schneider, a close collaborator of Keune, including in XPact. The album’s cover also features a poem by French musician Jean-Hervé Péron (of Faust), «Thoughts of the Dead», which is read as if this trio corresponds with the spirit of Schneider: «… we gaze and ask: / if your soul is full of joy / or heavy with sorrow, / let me carry half».
This is an uncompromising, powerful, and intense set that relies on extended breathing, bowing, and percussive techniques, with Ewen playing with the electric guitar on her lap and attaching objects to its strings, and as the trio keeps sculpting its volatile compounds of urgent and sharp sounds. This trio is not shy of abstract, distorted, and noisy collisions, as Keune, Ewen, and Smith push their sonic palettes to the most merciless extreme. They never stop experimenting with their fast-shifting, fragmented dynamics, restructuring and destructuring their dynamics, and reaching their poetic climax in the last piece, «Salt».
Munich Sound Studies continues Smith’s free improvised live meetings with German reeds and brass player (and architect) Udo Schindler and flutist Karina Erhard (The Munich Sound Studies Vol. 1, FMR, 2021), and with Schindler and Dutch vocal artist-sound poet Jaap Blonk, a frequent collaborator of Smith (The Munich Sound Studies Vol. 2 & 3, FMR, 2021). The 3-disc Vols. 4, 5 & 6 feature Schindler, Ewen, and Smith, recorded a few days before the performance with Keune at the Moers Festival. The trio hosts Erhard, Blonk, and Italian master trombonist Sebastiano Tramontana, who also did the cover artwork. Tramontana also played in Smith’s first overseas performance at the Curva Minore Festival in Italy in 1998, and Blonk guested the next day in Smith’s trio with Gianni Gebbia and Garth Powell.
Erhard joins the trio on Vol. 4, recorded at Seidlvilla in Munich, and explores chamber, introspective, and sparse dynamics, with Schindler playing clarinets most of the time. This ad-hoc quartet opts for a less-is-more approach, but still employs their resourceful array of extended techniques. The six pieces are titled as rituals, but only the last one, with Erhard’s vocalizations and Schindler on the trumpet, evokes ceremonial ideas. Smith references its intriguing aesthetics to the avant-garde group of visual artists founded in Munich, Die SPUR (The TRACE), who claimed: «The painting is not an object, but means a world with objects. The picture is not only the space in which an individual realizes himself, it is not the place where scientific experiments are conducted. The picture is also not a football pitch where acts of force and gestural explosions are used».
Blonk joins the trio on Vol. 5, recorded at Dasvinzenz–Individual Commonality, with Schindler switching to soprano and tenor saxes, tuba, and trumpet. It features the 46-minute «Vinzenz», and a shorter encore, or «conclusion». Blonk intensifies the surrealist-dadaist atmosphere of the unhurried and spacious dynamics of «Vinzenz», with his colorful, commanding vocal delivery and futurist electronics. The encore spirals the dynamics into more urgent, bold, but also lyrical territories. Smith quotes German painter-sound poet Kurt Schwitters, famous for his collage – Merz – paintings and the iconic sound poetry Ursonate (performed by Blonk): «MERZ means creating relationships, best between all things in the world», and adds that this ad-hoc quartet tries it «acoustically—a little bit!».
The last volume is with Tramontana, recorded at Streitfeld–Sophisticated Rapports, with Schindler playing soprano and tenor saxes, tubax, and trumpet. Schindler finds in Tramontana a true soul mate (they have collaborated before, most recently in a trio with German drummer Zwang Eriksoon), and they suggest a highly inventive, playful,l and poetic, and often deep-toned duo that softens the edgy collisions of Ewen and Smith. Smith quotes Russian abstract painter Wassily Kandinsky, from the time he lived in Munich: «Every art has its own language, that is, its own means. Every art is a life of its own. It is a realm of its own. That is why these means are completely the. In the final inner reason, the means of different arts are outwardly different. Sound, colour, word! Goal (knowledge) is achieved in the ultimate same: the final goal erases the outer differences and exposes the inner identity. The human soul through subtle vibrations of the same…».
Eyal Hareuveni
Stefan Keune (sopranino saxophone, alto saxophone), Sandy Ewen (guitar), Damon Smith (double bass), Udo Schindler (Bb clarinet, bass clarinet, trumpet, tuba, tubax, soprano saxophone, tenor saxophone), Karina Erhard (flutes, effects), Jaap Blonk (voice, computer), Sebastiano Tramontana (trombone)
