blinzeln |cs155

Trumpet and soundtable (not sure what that is, but it makes raucous noise). Solid, harsh, drive-your-spouse-from-the-room racket, often tough and compelling, sometimes a bit scattered. By and large enjoyable, another good recording to add to Uhler's portfolio. Brian Olewnick (Just Outside)

Blinzeln (cs 155) lässt einen blinzeln über das Fauchen, Ploppen und Schnarren von BIRGIT ULHER an der Trompete und die Klänge, die der H7-Club- und Blinzelbar-Aktivist und Klingding-Moderator HEINER METZGER seinem Soundtable entlockt - nein, nicht Turntables, sondern einem Sammelsurium von Spiel-Zeug. Mal sind das schön schwingende Klangschalensounds, dann aber zunehmend diskant geschabte, geknarrte, drahtig plinkende oder kruschpelige Geräusche. Tja, das Kind im Manne und der Wurm in der Tröte. Ich fühl mich so überflüssig, als sollte ich Leuten beim Sex zuglotzen. Rigobert Dittmann (Bad Alchemy)

Birgit Ulher's trumpet is appearing in more and more places it seems, in contexts ranging from solo to rather large groups. A quick perusal of her website shows an impressive list of concerts and recordings. Heiner Metzger too has been around, though seemingly not as visibly. His "soundtable" here contributes a great many interesting and sometimes unrecognizable vibrations, and together these two are an intelligent and careful unit.
The disc begins with high-pitched feedback sounds joined by breaths, eventually evolving into prickly tiny-string plucks and weird rumbling, with some scratchy metal along the way. Electric drill and bowed dust pan seem to be the order of "gleicht", and "noch" is all spit-laden wind and overtones. The photos on Metzgers website show a table with all manner of bits of wood and metal clamped to it, as well as two wine glasses which he is playing by rubbing his wet fingers around the rims. Maybe I'm cheating, but now I know how at least some of these sounds are made. Or so I think...
The title track features more wind, along with some wooden, rachety sounds which eventually coalesce into door-squeaks and second-grade violin, which is not a bad thing. The shortest piece "jedem", is growling and buzzing against crackles and rubbings, yielding into metallic tumbling and soft sputtering. Intelligent and careful sound improv. Jeph Jerman (The Squid's Ear)

One is, as always, attempting to deconstruct the normal sounds of a trumpet; the other works on something called “soundtable”, which says everything and nothing, given that the noises that he conjures up range from bowed wood and metal to zing ’n’ sting sharpness and close-microphone scrubbing and scratching of (maybe) sandpaper, or plain paper, or (insert your object here). The combination is functional, despite the fact that we’ve already wandered through these lands time and again: Ulher’s flapping, hissing, sucking, gentle tooting in her stimulation of zillions of irregular upper partials do have repercussions on the listener’s part of the brain that’s more oriented to irony, whereas the extreme concreteness of Metzger’s manipulations add a touch of thickness to the overall sonic tissue. While the record is nicely conceived and completely pleasurable, it also shows that the well of expressive means for this kind of improvisation is not bottomless. A good release sounding like another hundred of similar efforts, the whole masterfully executed but - at this junction in history - hardly groundbreaking. Massimo Ricci (Temporry Fault)

Heiner Metzger joue de la “soundtable” et on imagine volontiers en l’écoutant une table couverte d’objects amplifiés comme l’ont fait Hugh Davies, Adam Bohman et d’autes. La trompettiste hambourgeoise Birgit Ulher nous a entraîné dans la passionnante évolution de sa musique à travers ses enregistrements pour le lable Creative Sources en compagnie d’Ute Wassermann, Lou Mallozzi, Michael Zerang, Gino Robair, Mazen Kerbaj, Ernesto Rodrigues, etc... Blips and If (Rastascan) en duo avec le percussioniste californien Gino Robair marquait l’aboutissement de sa démarche, une des plus pointues parmi celles des nombreux musiciens qui tendent à renouveler complètement le langage et les paramètres de l’improvisation libre. Blinzeln nous fait découvrir les micro-sons de la trompette et toutes les nuances du soufle de Birgit Ulher organiquement imbriquées dans les émanations de la table sonore de Heiner Metzger. Une musique à la fois épurée et suggérant un grouillement de détails dans une ambiance minimaliste. Remarquable. Jean Michel van Schouwburg (Improjazz)