Achim Kaufmann / Ignaz Schick

Eight slices of closely miked, interactive and ingenious improvisations spread over two CDs, offer the sort of immersive experience that must be carefully nurtured to prevent alienation. Luckily Berlin-based Achim Kaufmann playing piano and objects and Ignaz Schick using turntables, a sampler and live-electronics aren’t fussy or obdurate as they manipulate unadorned textures into articulated and sometime dramatic confrontations.

Someone who often plays with Wilbert de Joode, Kaufmann’s collection of glissandi, single-note outlining, key raps and internal string plucks add necessary acoustic humanness to this project. Meanwhile Schick, whose affiliations extend to Charlemagne Palestine, adorns the program with sampled and mutated vocal, instrumental and unidentifiable interpolations adding airiness and drama to the undercurrent of machine produced crackles, drones and static constantly present.

Kaufmann’s inventive pianism is evident from the first. Cannily using variations of recital-like pacing, dexterous note isolation, cascading chording plus internal string plucks and stops he quickly establishes a chromatic identity. And it takes place within Schick’s sometimes cacophonous, always polyphonic, miasma of door-stopper-like vibrations. Space-ship launching whooshes, electric drill like buzzes and ring-modulator clangs as well are also often heard. With the expositions moving from stop-time to stop-start, the fractured pace allows dissected key patterns and piano soundboard echoes to share space with programmed whooshes and echoes. As well the duo’s sound projections frequently divide or harmonize on the spectrum’s elevated or subterranean pitches. Strident electronic squeaks mark the culminating and achieved climaxes on “Third Alteration” and “Fourth Alteration”. But while voltage echoes and sped up voice mutations become more prominent so do keyboard extensions. Cutting through programmed rumbles and clashes are Kaufmann’s bottom board pressure, sudden kinetic accents and finally a restrained piano melody not unlike what John Tilbury advances through AMM improvisations.

Having established their parameters the two proceed to refine the interaction throughout the remaining tracks, each of which is slightly longer than the one preceding it. Longitudinal string rubs and buzzing echoes from inside the piano become place markers as horizontal theme elaboration intensifies. But its calmness also torques the samples so that half-heard voices and aviary caws join staticy rumbles and oscillations moving across the sound field. A crescendo of harp-like glissandi and key beating precede the duo’s concluding elaboration on “Eighth Alteration”. Constructing a logical, but high-pitched line, Kaufmann’s riposte judders alongside factory-whistle and rainforest downpour samples until a final sequence downshifts and relaxes into an exposition of pleasant key clips backed by crackles as soaring glissandi and ratcheting pulses dissolve into conclusive echoes.

Product of 2016 session Altered Alchemy augurs for additional sound surprises as the duo become more comfortable with one another. Still there’s plenty to savor with the muted virtuosity displayed here.

–Ken Waxman

Track Listing: CD1: 1. First Alteration 2. Second Alteration 3. Third Alteration 4. Fourth Alteration CD2: 1. Fifth Alteration 2. Sixth Alteration 3. Seventh Alteration 4. Eighth Alteration

Personnel: Achim Kaufmann (piano and objects) and Ignaz Schick (turntables, sampler and live-electronics)