“This one has to be the most daring set I heard from that tour”
1 Parker House 1 14:43 2 Parker House 2 24:11 3 Parker House 3 17:00 4 Parker House 4 15:59 Iapetus Records
(DDL 71:54) (V.F.) (Ambient and abstract music)
The North American tour marking the 25th anniversary of Centrozoon will have made small piping hot downloads where the experimental music of the duet without barriers follows the improvised curves, concert after concert, of Bernhard Wöstheinrich and Markus Reuter. This time the adventure takes place in Parker House in the municipality of Potomac in Maryland on November 12th 2016. And the music offered on this recording is the least accessible (sic!) during this tour. Although the openings and the finales are made in a relative sound peace, the dialogue between the instruments reaches Babel-like barriers which had to leave the spectators rather stunned at times. But as usual, the duet knows how to avoid the traps of tiredness always by finding a way of solving the dead ends which nest in this 217 IX.
Parker House 1 puts us at once in the Centrozoon ambiences with a pile of lines and vapors of synth, it's necessary to warm equipment, where the squeaking disintegrate little by little in some completely unexpected orchestrations. Strange noises dawn on these movements of astral waltzes, awakening a latent cacophony which manages little to reduce the reach of a good down-tempo the lasciviousness of which floats in the experiments and the treatments of Markus Reuter's guitars. Groans, rumblings and sufferings of machines gobble up this slow rhythm and lead Parker House 1 towards a finale without suite. Parker House 2 adopts the same Centrozoon pattern with an opening of seraphic atmospheres which little by little is swallowed up by an excessive exploration of the tones and of the distortions of sounds. Can a tone suffers? Yes! And the more slowly it is, and the more the pleasure finds ears eager for this kind. Let's say that it's the roughest part in 217 IX. If we dare to describe the ambiences of Parker House 3, we could assert that it is the acoustic side of this intimist concert performed in the main lounge of this hotel. Even in a more peaceful envelope, Bernhard Wöstheinrich and Markus Reuter does not still manage to harmonize their sound scripts, so restoring one of these soft cacophonies of Centrozoon. The line of bass here reminds me that of Tony Levin while the guitar treatments are very Frippertronic. A sibylline introduction with mismatching sweetness and some spasmodic oscillations, Parker House 4 goes away towards a structure of rhythm set up on muted knockings, a little like a cha-cha danced on rubber feet, while the guitar makes roar out the intriguing charms of a big mechanical bumblebee. The finale is a hullabaloo with diverse sound rebellions where the tonal anarchy goes to a more musical awareness while the sequences pound for a rhythm without cohesion and the guitar abandons its spirit in a tumult which had to resound for a long time in the ears of the spectators. Audacious and difficult to digest, this 217 IX is resolutely for the inflexible of the genre. To listen to the ears free of headphone…
Sylvain Lupari (March 19th, 2018) ***** SynthSequences.com
Available at Iapetus Bandcamp