The Close Listening Community of Aspen Edities

When the Belgian guitarist Ruben Machtelinckx formed his label Aspen Edities in 2017 he’d been trafficking in a pastoral strain of modern jazz, a measured practice that incorporated the interior contemplation of Norwegian improvisers like Arve Henriksen and Nils Økland, both of whom he’s collaborated with. But over the years his music and interests have shifted toward a more experimental approach, enhancing the restraint and thoughtfulness of his playing with a growing interest in texture, harmonic exploration, and a genre-agnostic sensibilities. Increasingly, the primary remnant from his jazz roots is improvisation, although it’s usually wielded within a state of meticulous quietude. Machtelinckx and two of his most trusted collaborators present a number of projects at a label night at KM28 on Friday, June 7.

Machtelinckx will play on two sets, joining with fellow Belgian guitarist Frederick Leroux as Poor Isa and then supporting guitarist Fredrik Rasten, the versatile Berlin-based Norwegian, as he plays music from his superb new album on the label. Leroux will also play solo guitar music from his terrific 2024 10” record This Here Empty Room. In Poor Isa both Machtelinckx and Leroux put their guitars aside in favor of banjos and woodblocks, digging deep into unexpected timbres and resonances. The duo has made two albums, the first of which evokes a weirdly denatured kind of post-gagaku minimalism produced through a series of short pieces, but the more recent outing from 2023, Dissolution of the Other, opts for two longer works that explore the limited instrumentation with an impressive array of unexpected textures and attacks. On “Figures,” which you can check out below, they blend plucked and strummed patterns, somehow suggesting a raga-like quality through the brittle tones of the stringed instruments but with a more direct melodic thrust that’s not wedded to formal parameters of Indian music. The movement of the music is driven by the interplay of the two musicians, letting their spontaneous communication dictate the pace. Tucked into the open forms is a weirdly simpatico stateliness that evokes the rigor of early music. The duo mix and match tones and textures, and sometimes both of them toggle to gently articulated woodblock patterns that are less about rhythm than an additional texture. On the album’s second piece, “Drifter,” the duo embrace an ABAB form to toggle between two extended approaches, beginning with loosely percussive machinations including sounds produced on the banjo by unconventional means that either mimic the woodblocks or use them in conjunction with the banjo’s resonator. The other section relies on sustained, vibratory tones, which suggest a harmonium more than a banjo. I suppose these sounds are made from bowing, although there are other techniques at work, such as a muted, pulsing strum unfolding beneath the beating drone. A new collaborative Poor Isa album with the legendary British saxophonist Evan Parker and Norwegian percussionist Ingar Zach—who has appeared on a number of Aspen Edities albums, including the most recent release from the excellent Dans Les Arbres—is due in September.

Despite this more sound-oriented venture, Leroux continues to embrace his jazz training in different contexts, including his role in a nice quartet led by bassist Yannick Peeters that I caught in Ghent last fall. But the music he presented on This Here Empty Room carves out a different space, a fully composed set of harmonically thorny, meditative solo music that touches on a molasses-slow fingerstyle practice with jazzy chords and melancholic tunefulness. The second half of the recording features compositions in the same vein, but they take on a much different complexion as played by pianist Heleen Van Haegenborgh, exhibiting the same pacing and tone, with a Satie-esque fragility. All 13 pieces are brief, with only a couple clocking in over two minutes. Interestingly, the piano pieces were recorded back in 2018, while the guitar pieces were cut four years later. Below you can hear the guitar piece, “II.” Leroux will perform the entire guitar sequence.

Finally, I’m super excited to experience the music Rasten made with Machtelinckx for the excellent new album Strands of Lunar Light, a heady work for multiple guitars in just intonation. They’ve been working together frequently over the last couple of years, with the Norwegian playing on Porous Structures II, a superb quartet album with Leroux and percussionist Toma Gouband that I had the privilege of writing liner notes for. Rasten has been increasingly busy exploring this tuning for sustained guitars and I’ve seen him play solo surrounded by three or four different instruments, both acoustic and electric, laid out on tables, with another on his lap, but hearing those sounds interact with a second guitarist really heightens the psychoacoustic elements. In his liner notes Rasten writes,” I envision this music as emanating from a moon inhabited by otherworldly life forms and ecosystems; these sounds as evoking the moon’s topographies, beings, lunar rivers, and strands of light — as if this moon’s essence were itself sonic, vibrational matter.” He then goes on to break down the harmonic parameters of the music in painstaking mathematical detail, but more satisfying is just letting the relationships play out in our ears. Some of the guitars produce fixed drones with e-bows providing sustained tones over which Rasten and Machtelinckx play all kinds of peripatetic patterns, a kind of sonic topography that instills a deep sense of wonder. Notes dance around one another in carefully modulated sequences, forming a deliciously unstable constellation of intersecting notes, all of it swathed in thick haloes of overtones,as well as the sustained drones ringing out in the background here and there. The composition is a single, uninterrupted work in 12 parts, split in two for the recording, and below you can check out the second half, “VI-XII.” The album has been a regular mind-bender at home over the last few weeks, but I can’t wait to experience it in the same room with the guitars to gain a better understanding of how it works and how it feels surrounded by the harmonies.

Irène Schweizer Lives On!

Last July the remarkable Swiss pianist Irène Schweizer died at the age of 83. She was a titan, a musician of serious depth and interests who ended up an invaluable feminist voice in the creative music world. I wrote a post looking at her work last year, but I’m delighted to share some additional words about her again, as last month Intakt released the first in a series of archival recordings featuring her playing. Irène’s Hot Four is a searing live album taped at the 1981 edition of Jazzfestival Zürich featuring a manifestation of her long-time partnership with reedist/accordionist Rüdiger Carl. The band is rounded out by drummer Han Bennink and double bassist Johnny Dyani, a founding member of South Africa’s Blue Notes. The group existed for about a year-and-a-half, playing only a handful of shows, including one the following night of this performance at Berlin Jazztage. In 2019 she met with the folks who founded the association the Friends of Irène Schweizer, which is devoted to her legacy and has partnered with Intakt to make some previously unreleased recordings available. If this stunning new release is any indication of what we can expect then we should all buckle in and welcome the ride. When the pianist heard this recording at that first 2019 meeting she said, “Nobody plays like this today,” but I think that’s more of a reflection on the individualism and vast experience of the four participants than a comment on the approach here, which is fully improvised.

Her comment certainly doesn’t mean this music sounds like it’s from the past. The four spontaneous tracks here are as electrifying, deep, and inspired as anything I’ve heard this year. It reflects the notion of a total music celebrated in Europe during the 1970s, where any style, approach, or ethos seemed fair game. The music is staunchly modern, but there’s an audible love and respect for tradition ripping underneath everything. The four musicians here engage in a thrilling exchange, routinely going against the prevalent grain one moment only to form a dazzling union the next. There are indelible Schwèizer trademarks, such as the rollicking left-handed figures that featuring heavily in the opening salvo “Reise,” a breathless 23-minute romp of give-and-take and ebb-and-flow endlessly powered by Bennink’s manic energy and the driving percussive for Dyani could unleash with his bass. Check it out below. Still, even though the sonic landscape here is constantly evolving, the band is incredibly locked-in and focused, not simply responding to the unceasing flow of ideas in real-time, but also straddling multiple themes or motifs at once. And although the performances are marked by serious heat and intensity, there’s also a palpable sense of ease and familiarity among the musicians, who all display a willingness to try different things, whether it’s Bennink delivering an exegesis on drumsticks-as-instrument in the opening minutes of “Freizeit” or the spontaneously soulful singing Dyani imparts on “All Inclusive.” Each improvisation is stuffed with contrasting ideas, radically changing timbres—as Carl switches between instruments and the pianist uses preparations—and internal challenges to one another. I don’t know if I’d agree with Schwèizer’s assessment that nobody plays like this today, but I sure wish more people would try! On the horizon in the series is a late 1980s solo performance and recordings from the Feminist Improvising Group—the radical ensemble formed by Maggie Nicols and Lindsay Cooper, which included the pianist for most of its history—the first officially released document of the ensemble’s work.

Recommended Shows in Berlin This Week

June 3: Trames (Céline Voccia, piano, Michel Doneda, soprano and sopranino saxophone, and Alexander Frangenheim, double bass) 8 PM, studioboerne45, Börnestraße 43/45, 13086 Berlin

June 4: Jon Collin, Bis Aufs Messer Records, 7:30 PM, Marchlewski Straße 107, 10243 Berlin

June 4: Natural Realms (Xavier Lopez, supercollider, and Bryan Eubanks, soprano saxophone, feedback, clave, supercollider); Axel Dörner, trumpet, electronics, and Peter Cusack, guitar, electronics; Andrea Ermke, minidisc recordings, 8 PM, Richten25, Gerichtstraße 25, 13347 Berlin

June 4: Warble (Brad Henkel, trumpet, effects, Miako Klein, tenor, basset and paetzold recorder, effects); Daniel Craig, laptop, and Anaïs Tuerlinckx, virtual string box, 8 PM, Zwitscher Maschine, Potsdamer Str. 161, 10783 Berlin

June 4: Matthias Müller’s Trilogue – A Tribute to Albert Mangelsdorff (Matthias Müller, trombone, Andreas Willers, guitar, and Christian Marien, drums), 8 PM, Panda Theater, Knaackstraße 97, (i.d. Kulturbrauerei, Gebäude 8) 10435, Berlin

June 5: Trio MUT (Thomas Rohrer – rabeca, objects, electronics, Michael Vorfeld, percussion, string instruments, and Ute Wassermann, voice, bird calls, objects), 7:30 PM, World in a Room, Brunhildstraße 7, 10829 Berlin

June 5: Achim Kaufmann, piano, and Robyn Schulkowsky, percussion, 8 PM, Exploratorium, Zossener Strasse 24, 10961, Berlin

June 5: Tilman Kanitz, cello, and Jared Redmond, piano, perform solo and duo works by Morton Feldman, 8:30 PM, KM28, Karl Marx Straße 28, 12043 Berlin

June 5: Dream Big Fish (Julius Gawlik, tenor sax, clarinet, Thorbjørn Stefansson, double bass, and Marius Wanke, drums), 8:30 PM, Sowieso, Weisestraße 24, 12049 Berlin

June 5: Shivers (Lisa Ullén, piano, Louise Dam Eckhart Jensen, saxophone, flute, clarinet, Johanna Sulkunen, voice, electronics, Henrik Olsson, guitar, and Burkhard Beins, percussion), 8:30 PM, Morphine Raum, Köpenicker Straße 147, 10997 Berlin (Hinterhof 1. Etage)

June 6: Lifeguard, 8 PM, Neue Zukunft, Alt-Stralau 68, 10245 Berlin

June 6: Eggs, Stairs & Shells (Bo Van Der Wer, saxophone, Felix Henkelhausen, double bass, Elias Stemeseder, piano, and Samuel Ber, drums); Puzzle (Hélène Labarrière, double bass, Catherine Delaunay, clarinet, Robin Fincker, saxophone, Stéphane Bartelt, guitar, and Simon Goubert, drums); The Ocean Within Us (Pascal Niggenkemper, double bass, Gerald Cleaver, drums, Sakina Abdou, saxophone, Liz Kosack, keyboards), 8 PM, Kesselhaus Maschinenhaus, Knaackstraße 97 (i.d. Kulturbrauerei, Gebäude 8) 10435 Berlin

June 7: Poor Isa (Frederik Leroux, banjo, woodblocks, flute, and Ruben Machtelinckx, banjo, woodblocks); Fredrik Rasten & Ruben Machtelinckx, Frederik Leroux, guitars, 8:30 PM, KM28, Karl Marx Straße 28, 12043 Berlin

June 7: Jakob Astrup, guitar, Uli Kempendorff, tenor saxophone, clarinet, Jonas Westergaard, double bass, and Samuel Ber, drums, 8:30 PM, Sowieso, Weisestraße 24, 12049 Berlin

June 8: andPlay (Maya Bennardo, violin, and Hannah Levinson, viola) play Magnus Granberg and Angharad Davies, 8:30 PM, KM28, Karl Marx Straße 28, 12043 Berlin

June 9: Colin Webster, saxophone, Kit Downes, piano, Vinicius Cajado, double bass, and Tony Buck, drums, 8:30 PM, Kühlspot Social Club, Lehderstrasse 74-79, 13086 Berlin