Ritual Groove Music (1): Flocks – Lagoon
Wenn ich mich recht erinnere, hat Michael diesen Begriff vor Jahren aufgebracht, um Werke von The Necks, Nik Bärtsch‘s Ronin oder Joshua Abrams‘ Natural Information Society zu beschreiben.
Liquid Music, rhythmisch, fliessend, repetitiv.
Lange Stücke mit sich aufbauender hypnotischer Wirkung.
Das im Mai erschienene Album Lagoon des Berliner Klangexperimente Duos Flocks, Werner Durand und Uli Hohmann, würde ich dazu zählen.
Seit Monaten zieht mich das Titelstück in seinen Bann.
Eine schöne Besprechung liefert Vito Camarretta (chaindlk.com) aus der ich einige Passagen zitieren möchte:
„The Berlin duo’s second album follows their self-titled 2023 debut, extending an approach based on Durand’s drones and winds, Hohmann’s percussion and strings, and an assortment of electronics. The palette is remarkably tactile: tenor saxophone, extended shakuhachi, pan-ney, circular water ney, frog horn, PVC clarinets and horns meet daf, kanjira, riq, ghatam, Tibetan bells, Venetian shells, bamboo-tube zither and other homemade devices. It is quite a list. One suspects that if you invited these two men round to assemble an IKEA shelf, they would return three hours later with a new species of flute. What makes „Lagoon“ compelling, however, is that the instruments never become curiosities for their own sake. Their unfamiliar timbres are absorbed into a remarkably coherent musical ecosystem. The stated reference points, Krautrock and Jon Hassell’s Fourth World, are certainly audible, but Flocks do not sound like a tribute act rummaging through somebody else’s record collection. The relationship between drone, breath and percussion is too organic for that. Contemporary descriptions of the album have similarly emphasised its long-form, immersive character and the way Durand and Hohmann create a kind of minimal orchestral density from their small arsenal of sounds. (…) FORTSETZUNG IN COMMENT 1
(TP)
Ein Kommentar
flowworker
Fortsetzung:
Then comes the twenty-minute “Lagoon”, and suddenly the album’s title stops sounding like a convenient metaphor. The piece is not a climax in the conventional sense. It is more like an environment becoming visible after you’ve already been standing inside it for some time. The percussion establishes a slowly mutating rhythmic field while winds and drones pass through it in overlapping currents. Nothing demands attention, yet nothing is entirely passive. The track has the unusual ability to make duration itself feel like an instrument. This is perhaps where Flocks distinguish themselves most clearly from ordinary drone practice. A drone can easily become an excuse for removing decisions. Just hold the note, add some reverb, stare philosophically at a window. Humanity has produced an impressive quantity of such music. „Lagoon“ instead treats sustained sound as a condition in which decisions can become smaller, subtler and therefore more consequential. A percussion stroke shifts the balance. A breath alters the harmonic centre. A new overtone changes the apparent size of the room. The effect is strangely physical. You don’t merely hear layers accumulating. You develop the impression of being somewhere where those layers are already present.“ (…)