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So while I’ve been listening to Alexander von Schlippenbach’s
The Living Music all day long, I don’t know what I can tell you
about it outside of some relatively cosmetic details. It’s six
tracks long, the longest of which is the title track (14:59) and the
shortest of which is a magnificent Manfred Schoof composition called “Wave” (3:33).
It was recorded on April 24th, 1969, by Conny Plank at Rhenus Studio
in Godorf, near Cologne. The recording session also produced Peter
Brotzmann’s album Nipples, although it would be far more amusing
to say “the recording session also produced Peter Brotzmann’s
Nipples” and then just pretend that we forgot to italicize. Most
of the tracks begin with a few formal figures, which is somewhat unusual
for this kind of music, though only somewhat: Hal Russell, for example,
did this sort of thing all the time. Generally speaking it is less “intense” than
your average Peter Brotzmann album: even during the more “free” parts,
i.e., the parts that sound like everybody is completely out of their
heads, there’s a prevailing sense of calm that somehow asserts
itself. The second track, “Into the Staggerin,” owes a
good deal to Ornette Coleman; the horn figure that leads it off has
that Colemanesque bop-via-Dixieland feel to it is what I mean, though
by the time the song’s halfway over the feel is much more guy-in-an-aluminum-trash-can-rolling-down-the-Alps.
And that’s mostly what I know and some of what I think. |
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