By Nick Ostrum
Impakt Records is a label dedicated to documenting Cologne’s free
improvisation scene, much of which revolves around the club Loft Köln. The
imprint has been in operation since 2016, and, since those early days, has
accumulated nearly 40 releases. In a two-part series, I will review the five
released in 2024 and so far in 2025.
Simon Rummel On Water Orchestra – Der Zauberlehrling (Impakt, 2025)
Der Zauberlehrling (English: the sorcerer’s apprentice) is German
composer Simon Rummel’s first release as leader on Impakt. The On Water
Orchestra he has gathered is a 34-musician strong ensemble of musicians who
deploy instruments ranging from the conventional (clarinet, trumpet,
various strings) to, in the orchestral world, the unconventional
(accordion, recorders, glass harmonica.)
The first composition, the titular ‘Der Zauberlehrling’, starts slowly but
soon gives way to a jumble of long high-pitched tones that wafts and waxes,
in the process revealing various textures and timbral variants. At certain
peaking moments, it sounds as if one of the glass harmonicas (I think) is
going to break into the upper reaches of Morten Laurdisen’s ‘O Magnum
Mysterium’ but the drone quickly pulls any valancing strands back. A close
listen reveals subtle pitch changes, but nothing that distracts from the
forward-moving hum. Then, after several minutes, the various elements begin
to distinguish themselves, not necessarily into easily identifiable
instruments but discrete units, which take over the charge propelling the
drone forward. This very much sounds like an exercise in building and
harnessing energy, with stray musical electrons shedding here and there but
the continued gradual surge forming the unifying element. Shimmering,
engrossing, and hauntingly gorgeous.
Much of the same could be said for the next piece, ‘Musik für den Lehrling
des Zauberlehrlings’ (music for the apprentice of the sorcerer’s
apprentice), though the drone here quickly gives way to flights of clustered
melodies, pulses of sound, and an interesting reinterpretation of more
traditional compositional structures. Whereas the first piece enchants with
its patience, this one moves, periodically opening into truly radiant
passages and often bobbing just beneath that. Maybe this composition is the
more sprightly study for the less experienced apprentice’s apprentice
before they get to the disciplined practice that the sorcerer’s apprentice
(rather than the sorcerer’s apprentice’s apprentice) must go through. One
is left to wonder whether the sorcerer’s own piece would be even more
focused and sparing than the first composition, or if by then the lesson is
learned, and he would be free to explore new structures of rival splendor.
Stefan Schönegg – Enso: On the withered tree a flower blooms
(Impakt, 2024)
Impakt’s final release of 2024 was Stefan Schönegg’s
Enso: On the withered tree a flower blooms. (The title itself is a fitting if optimistic tribute to what in terms of
politics and warfare, at least, was an abysmal year for many.) On it,
pianist Marlies Debacker (see ‘Convolution’ below) and drummer
Etienne Nillesen, here solely on snare, join bassist Schönegg in a 44’
realization of his composition referenced in the title. Schönegg and
Nillesen have released several albums of the former’s compositions in his
Enso project. Debacker joined them, it seems, for the first time on the
previous release, 2023’s Enso: A Simplified Space.
The base of Enso: On the withered tree a flower blooms is a heavy
ribbon of oscillating drones provided firstly by Schönegg’s arco, but also
a background of mellitic churning that seems to come from either internal
piano or drum and cymbal bowing, and more likely both. The various drones
fade in and out, though Schönegg’s bass is the insistent trunk to a tree
otherwise limp. To extend the metaphor, it is this continued repository of
life on which the flowers – the twangs of resonance, whatever is going on
with the percussion and piano – bloom. The analogy is imperfect.
Twenty-eight minutes in Schönegg hands the leadership to what sounds like a
soft organ, which picks up the tone as the bass ceases. Slowly other
glimmering sounds enter, as well. But, then comes the bass again, playing
lower than before and adding a different vibrational wavelength that seems
to quietly ring Nillesen’s cymbals. That is, unless Nillesen himself is
performing this delicate task.
I swear I hear electronics in this piece, but I have been assured all this
acoustic. In that, all the more power to Schönegg, Deback, and Nillesen.
This piece shows incredible control in its strange and patient sonic layers
and fusions, and in that it also shows an attractive vision of music that
pushes the listener to confront the mutually constitutive dialectic between
stasis and movement, convention and perception, and deterioration and
blossoming.