Rüdiger Carl
Book – Virtual COWWS
Free Music Productions
I've always loved the freedom that the art world grants to people working between disciplines. The place is filled with actors who took a wrong turn and became performance artists and writers who are too far out to cut it in mainstream publishing. Somehow, they all end up in the art world, which tolerates and occasionally even supports their practice. Over the years, art schools have produced scads of musicians from David Byrne to Christian Marclay. Recently, artists Mike Kelley and Tony Oursler released a 3 CD set of their art school band, The Poetics, which sounds wonderfully eclectic some 25 years later. Mayo Thompson's Red Krayola has been delving in and out of the art world for just as long, employing such well known artists as Werner Büttner and Stephen Prina to sit in with the band. There's a certain type of freedom to be had working outside your chosen field; if you don't know the rules, they're easy to break. There's a new 3CD retrospective set of Rüdiger Carl out, and although he lives squarely in the music world, he's got a real art school attitude toward his practice. At his best, he sounds positively untrained and in doing so, breaks a ton of new ground.
Carl's been making improvised music since 1968 and while his primary instrument is the accordion, what really shines is his attitude--he's incredibly experimental and open-minded. Of the three discs, he's thrown in one disc of straight-up improv with a bunch of crack musicians for good measure. It's OK, but the real action is on the other two discs which are packed with 50 tracks of wide-ranging wacky experiments with a host of wonderful musicians including Lol Coxhill, Hans Reichel and Mayo Thompson. In addition, he's got a long-running group called COWWS Quintet who put out an amazing disc on FMP in 1989 called Seite A Seite, much of which is included here. COWWS play a mixture of sentimental waltzes and free improvisation. The cool thing is that they don't distinguish between the two-- instead they play both styles with equal conviction.
This disc is choked full of great moments like a fucked-up lounge version of "My Favorite Things" played on a cheesy organ and snare drum kit. Throughout the cut, Carl lobs a variety of random synthesizer squawks and washes, bells, explosions and other disturbances into the tune--it sounds like the end of the world. Then there's a cut where Mayo Thompson is singing an appropriated AP news story about a chess match over a recording of Thelonious Monk's "Misterioso." It's got all the balls of the Hampton Grease Band's "Halifax," where Bruce Hampton screamed the text from a travel brochure over dissonant guitars.
Miniature improvisations abound which take their cue from Darius Milhaud's mini-symphonies and operettas—call the pocket improvisations—done with jangly fuzzed out electric guitar, violin and accordions. Then there's fake pygmy music and odd sound poetry that sounds like Kurt Schwitters in a monkey house; a version of the Blue Danube Waltz that's eventually gets drowned out by the sounds of running water; and cartoonish version of Pharaoh Sanders "Upper and Lower Egypt" that sounds more like a spaghetti western soundtrack than Sanders' cosmic jazz masterpiece. There's also a cool version of Mancini's W.C. Fields and I, which sounds like the Beau Hunks playing Little Rascals. It's all wobbly and out of tune. Finally, there's a ton of schmaltzy waltzes here. Carl, the accordionist, has got a romantic streak a mile wide and he's not afraid to kick out Duke Ellington standards—there's even a version of Lol Coxhill singing "Moonlight Becomes You," which stiffens its sappiness with irony.
In 1994, Carl put out a disc with daxophonist Hans Reichel, much of which appears here. The daxophone is a homemade wooden instrument that's stroked to make the most odd sounds you've ever heard. Electrify a cow's moo and you'll get an idea of what it sounds like. Reichel's warped daxophone melds gorgeously with Carl's drunken accordion. Together, they deconstruct 12 bar blues, fake Eastern European ethnic music and Brazilian tropicalia. There's also a wonderful collaboration between Carl, Reichel and the Kipper Kids which incorporates chugging train sounds mixed with wheezing accordions and a screaming daxophone.
This disc is great fun. And it's packed with great playing. It's a winning example of the idea that you don't have to sacrifice anything; on the contrary, the more the merrier—as long as its done with humor and sensitivity. It's a win-win situation that many purists can learn from.
New York Press, 1999