专辑简介

by Eugene Chadbourne

This is only the second album in existence entitled Achtung, despite indications to the contrary. The other is a work in the electronica genre by Timo Maas. Of course there is a larger subgroup of album titles in which the German word "Achtung," something said to get everyone's attention, is combined with something else, usually kind of inappropriate: Achtung Baby, Achtung Jackass, Achtung Salaam, and so forth. Something about the word in its purest form must attract the rarefied practitioner of musical arts involving knobs to twirl and buttons to press; first the Maas mass of electronics, released in 1996, and in 2003 this document of duo free improvisation on a Köln-based label that is home to several other recordings involving synthesizer performer Thomas Lehn. Despite their relative popularity in the improvising world, the duet of Lehn and veteran percussionist Paul Lovens received controversial reviews, perhaps a symptom of how hard these two players would push, in terms of both level of concentration and the actual nature of the music being created. Drums and electronics are hardly an unacceptable combination, but these two players are exceedingly reluctant to fall into the norms of what either instrument might be expected to sound like, even in terms of a genre in which distorting the sound of the instrument is expected. Yes, even in freakout la-la land there are ways an audience might expect a synthesizer player and a drummer to interact and even in the case of the individual how to act. ... Read More...