Tony Buck (The Necks)
Martin Siewert (Trapist)
Steve Heather (Efzeg)
zeitblom (Pole Band)
Towards the end of a long journey, one starts to look forward to coming
home. A similar feeling might be experienced by musicians who have spent
years engaging themselves in artistic utopias, explored new fusion
styles and investigated modern production tools and found themselves
glued to a computer in the process. After all these years, these
musicians might have developed a certain craving to once more play in a
sturdy, sweaty, hands-on live band (with a keen drive to create
something new, of course).
"Heaven And is a band which does not recoil from obvious musical
references", guitarist Martin Siewert remarks. "It's this approach alone
that distinguishes us from the majority of projects in the field of
improvised music." Siewert's partner in production and bass player
zeitblom adds: "To let our joint musical backgrounds flow into this
music is a vital part of the concept. Thus, ideas from archaic blues,
psychedelic rock, Sun Ra's Arkestra and Miles Davis' electric jazz are
fused. We have isolated the individual influences from their original
context and put them into a new musical environment." The bold play
with homages and codes is very risky, but then the individualists who
make up Heaven And are experienced enough to dodge all snares and
springs of the bland musical quotation. And even if the listener might
find a lot of stylistic devices and fragments which sound (deceptively)
familiar - Heaven And's second album simply cannot be attributed to any
genre.
Earthy bottleneck guitar licks or wailing lap steel harmonies are
occasional references to folk and blues, yet they're only an acoustic
sheet lightning on a heaven in which - occasionally - violins play on
cloud nine. But the delicately tared string quartet does not emanate an
acoustic cotton wool cloud c....... więcej