Ozella Music
Axel Schultheiss : On Wings (D,2009)****
This new album by Axel Schultheiss surprised me, because I thought that with the first track I could already imagine where the concept might be heading to, which immediately seemed to have underestimated the range and variation ahead.
The first track showed a rather loud resonance, with a contrasting power effect to the stillness of the calm improvised playing. With the next track by adding rhythmic picking notes and a more rather jazzy swing with freely swimming pulsations of melody over it and a nice full body guitar sound, this evolves to ever more rich additions of pickings and notes. By the time of “Magic Hour” the result of the effect of the overdubbed guitars gives a very matured impression. The “Koan” tracks takes it then one step further, making very meditative use of different combinations of strings or prepared strings which for the first track reminded me of Steffen Basho-Junghans approach to strange tunings and a still meditative playing with it, while the second track for its choice of more clearly ‘prepared strings’ with an approach to an improvisation with an ear for what they have to offer, also easily brings John Cage to mind, even when the last contemporary composer used piano for such ideas. The effect of a full matured range of a mood continues on “Summer’s End” where some guitar pickings take care of rhythm, others of melody, and a few texturing sounds are added too here and there (some of them sound like amplified effects of strings). This last piece is really very moody and shows also natural rhythmic pulsating effects by the additional picking textures, waving up and down to its own eternity until the piece is faded down. Then the album returns to a certain rhythmic melodic swing on “Emotions”, rich in emotions, sure. Calmed down again, the next piece uses picking rhythms, mood improvisations with a backdrop of sound-textures-like ambient guitar slides, evolving nicely and interesting within the compositional evolution. This is alternated with one more prepared guitar piece, making the guitar sound more like a gamelan meditation this time. “Caravan of Thoughts” is more electrified and has a small part of electric guitar on top of the only at small rather minimalist picking rhythms, before turning into more direct mood improvisation : beautiful and effective. After another strangely-majestic “Koan”, the last two pieces rhythmically and moodily evolve to a much more sonic ambient guitar approach, first with more rhythmic patterns, then completely into the most stretched-in-space sounds, coming closer in the sense of let’s say Brian Eno & Daniel Lanois’s Apollo album. A nice ending from a really fully rewarding, entertaining and colourful mood building album.
