AXEL DÖRNER & DIEGO CHAMY – Super Axel Dörner

Absinth

Two improvisations – the first at Dörner’s home, the second at Berlin’s Electronic Church – for trumpet, percussion and spoken word. The latter set – according to Chamy’s detailed recount – also included himself moving across the stage, striking poses and patterning gestures as to imply “a way of escaping from the old abstract/concrete dichotomy”. It’s a shame that the performance was not released on a DVD, then, because I’m sure that the music – quite appealing with its calmly delivered pitches and percussive signals, silences eliciting sincere curiosity and infinitesimal events owning a specific weight in the acoustic wealth – would have greatly benefited from the association between visual and resonant aspects. The oral intermissions, delivered by Chamy with deadpan tone, contribute to raise the level of idiosyncrasy. There are times in which the trumpet’s short pops and aborted blasts attempt a conversion into propulsive energy themselves. On the other hand, the “classic” whispered blowing and pressurized hisses are not perceived as stratagems to circumvent authentic invention, still making sense in the depiction of a place where what remains unspoken is as momentous as explicitness. An interesting CD in need of conscientious listening; it works on many levels, pushing its unpretentiousness forward to make it become a fundamental trait.