Matthias Kaul, the renowned German percussion artist and composer, has done some very interesting things, and sometimes in artistic collaboration with others, like for instance Malcolm Goldstein; the Vermont and Quebec wizard of the haywire fiddle. A new CD (“The Smell of Light”) with that duo is not yet placed with any label, but is already reviewed elsewhere on the Sonoloco site.
On the CD reviewed here Matthias Kaul gives a glimpse of his collaboration with vocal artist Ute Wassermann. The CD, which is very short, is to serve simply as a promotional sample for record companies and other parties to hear, hopefully to get interested in releasing a full-scale issue at a later date. The 24-minute sample stems from 12 hours of recordings made by Kaul and Wassermann during a week of studio improvisations. The duo plans to refine the material into an essence of three CDs, which I long madly to hear! I am – admittedly – completely fanatic about sound poetry, and this brilliant mix of percussion and sound poetry really sharpens my auditory senses; elevating them to a winter sky star shimmer kind of clarity!

The sound of the recording is right on, straight in your face, no mercy! Cleverly utilized, the new binary methods of recording are awe-striking in their closeness and immediacy, and these recordings are ample proof of the possibilities, with Ute’s lips smacking loudly right up your nose (you feel the saliva!) and Matthias’ percussive showers falling like heavy drops of rain in the water barrel at the corner of your house!

Ute Wassermann is a well-known and prolific vocal artist and singer, who has worked with Peter Kowald, Malcolm Goldstein, Jaap Blonk, Matthias Kaul and others in the field of improvisational and semi-improvisational sound art.
In the 1980s she studied sound installation and vocal performance at the Hamburg School of the Arts. In the mid-80s she started focusing on her own development of vocal techniques, but she also studied classical singing in Hamburg and San Diego.
Ute Wassermann has collaborated with a number of composers who have written pieces especially for her, such as Henning Christiansen, Richard Barrett, Chaya Czernowin and Sven Åke Johansson.
She has also participated in theatre productions in Italy, France, Germany and Switzerland.
Wassermann is also conducting workshops and lectures on her art.

The six pieces on this promotional sampler are only haphazardly named, and the temporary titles on this stage are irrelevant to everything but a sense of humor: “One for the money”, “Two for the show”, “Three to get ready”, “For the go”, “Cat go”, “But honey”!

When I listen to Ute Wassermann’s art I am reminded of an obscure Swedish sound artist who is almost completely unknown; Hebriana Alainentalo. I have about 20 CDs worth of material by her (on DATs and CD-Rs), mostly strictly sound poetic, but also percussive, in a simple, Saami, shamanistic style, even though Alainentalo also moves through other disciplines of sound art, such as environmental recordings in the vein of Luc Ferrari’s “Presque rien” and other obscure art forms. She is a mystic from Lapland who also picks up Bardo influences and glitches from walking a tightrope across the void of schizoid surges and temptations.

Ute Wassermann and Matthias Kaul opens up with a brainstorming, head-picking little venture that tacks along intensely along the line of popping metal drop metallics and lip-popping saliva surges, painstakingly nailed along a wooden fence with fast-hitting little hammers at the far end of the meadow! Be-bop-a-lula! The instruments that Kaul utilizes spread an incense fragrance of Eastern parts, and soon the twosome gets into a furious conversation of percussion and vocals, sometimes shadowing each other, sometimes in counter-pointed bliss, and yet again in a full-fledged conversation, in which they comment on each other in bright and witty little responses! It’s brilliant, fast, slashing like blinding samurai swords through the incense!

The 2nd piece opens on a whining, shrill, extended note, both in the cat-meowing Ute vowels and the iron-works ring of Matthias’ industrial timbres and overtones of the instruments. This reminds me of some of the parts of Stockhausen’s “Aus den sieben Tagen”, and like in those pieces you feel also here as if you were setting the sails for the sun, out of misty, gloomy landscapes, on dreary, died-down shores of oily oceans…
There is an ominous and still shivering, hopeful feel to this piece, wherein Wassermann’s and Kaul’s voices at times join in the venture, grinding against each other as the ship leaves shore, leaves the ground… and sails up through misty skies towards a sun that is only sensed through the haze – and this vision could easily be exchanged for an even more metaphysical – and even more realistic – sight, wherein the spirit of the newly departed feels his way on through his Bardo, past all those karmic, self-inflicted scarecrows of his own imagination, towards the Light which will liberate him, if he can recognize liberation – or towards rebirth and a new start…

Track 3 pulls you right into an Appalachian world of ducklings and freaked-out farm wives, getting on in the henhouse with all kinds of erotic perversions in the smell of fresh eggs and hen shit. Ute’s voice breathes, trembles, saliva running down her cheek, the fluids of intense lust seeping down her anatomy, her trembling and chuckling voice directed upwards, to the hen house ceiling, open-mouthed, teeth grinning, cramps down her bottom…and she gasps for air… Kaul’s accompaniment provides such a perfect sounding environment for this almost medieval hide-away erogenous moment of animalistic lust that I don’t even think about it until I listen for it, as it grinds and frictions around the trembling anatomy of Ute’s voice, which is so close and so lost in pleasure that a materialization in the listener’s room in fact seems to take place, and you can smell the sweat! Masterly! A henhouse catharsis of ecstatic animalistic lust; feathers flying, eggs crushed on the floor, the hinges of the henhouse door screaming with rusty, un-oiled joy!

Track 4 commences with sharp, sparse, pointillist exclamations of voice and percussion, until Wassermann’s lightning-fast bursts of clarity slashes out in brownish prayer beads of side-of-the-mouth remarks. Kaul’s Spartan percussive rudder-touches steer the sounding vessel into surprising realms of sound, the needle of the stitching going in and out, under and above, slowly causing a picture to appear in the tapestry, parts missing here and there – leaving the interpretation of the meaning up to your imagination - and through the irregular openings you can see Lake Saimaa of Karelia… and the destitution of generations in the bark-deserts of Kalevala…
A murmur in the percussion, invoked out of some of Kaul’s inventive utilizations, pulls the carpet from under your feet, and in the free fall that follows Wassermann starts sounding exactly like Hebriana Alainentalo in one of her universal mating calls, but accompanied by tablas in a Rajasthan tala mimicry her popping lip rage sweeps me in a circular movement at a cruising altitude of about 40 000 feet above Scandinavia and Northern Germany, but probably through very alien time layers, because I see no planes and the air is fresh, the oceans un-oily!

The 5th piece has a glassy characteristic, wherein the voice and the tingling percussion join each other on the rim of a wine glass, which pure existence rubs in moist circulations, causing a spiral motion to appear in the sound, bringing you up through the heavens through eerie timbres of phasing overtones, in an angelic beauty tat really leaves me at loss of words. I’ve experienced before how Matthias Kaul can pull magical sounds out of his instruments, which at times sound all but percussive, but instead like elastic bands of rainbow audio, moving in the wind like prayer fliers in Tibetan mountain passes – and I take a sip of coffee and just enjoy this remarkable beauty which Kaul and Wassermann extract from this particular stretch of time and space.

The concluding track 6 has a kitty-kitty feel of glaring eyes in the dark and soft paws on kitchen tables at 3 AM to it… and a growling Eartha Kitt hint is delivered by Ute as Matthias sweeps the floor with arms outstretched in circular scrubbing motions.

This is too good to be forgotten or lost. I hope… no, I crave… a triple-CD with this couple of audio wizards. It gets no better than this. This is sound poetry and percussion taken to the limits of pleasure! Recording companies, heed this call!