Live Review: Peter & Caspar Brötzmann

Peter & Caspar Brötzmann (GER)

11/24/05
Schouwburg Luchtbal, Antwerp

You Are Like a Hurricane

I'll never forget the first time I came into contact with Peter Brötzmann's music. It must've been in the spring of 1996. He played three consecutive nights in an art centre in the city of Leuven, where I was studying at the time. Along with a friend (who also accompanied me to the performance reviewed here), I went to check him out on the first of those nights. The venue could hold at least 150 people, but about a dozen had actually shown up. In hindsight, it's almost incredible a musician of such renown and accomplishments didn't attract a larger audience, but that's a possibility when you haven't released even one accessible album in your entire career, I presume. Anyway, even though he was backed by a few more competent noisemakers (the only one I distinctly remember is guitarist Nicky Skopelitis, though), the brutal power of Brötzmann's tenor would've been sufficient to make even the most trained music fan almost shit his or her pants. Here was a force of nature at work, one whose main goal seemed to be utter and complete destruction. I'd only heard my share of Coltrane, Parker and Django Reinhardt at the time (Machine Gun - his legendary 1968 album, and still the standard by which I judge self-proclaimed heavy bands and albums - would become quite an eye-opener really soon), but I was so baffled andthrilled by that enormous wall of sound that people were probably wondering why all that saliva was dropping from my mouth. After the show, barely capable of talking about what we'd witnessed, we walked into a small and skinny guy, who cautiously approached us with his eyes wide open, Marty Feldman-style. I could've sworn he was trembling, too. I thought he was a customer of the centre's bar on his way home after a night of heavy drinking, but something else was bothering him

Trembleman: "Can I ask you something?"
Us: "Yeah sure."
Trembleman: "You just were at the, uh, concert, right?"
Us: "Yeah, we were"
Trembleman: "Oh… uh, welluh… what did you think of it?"
Us: "Well… quite an experience. Cool. Heavy, quite something."
Trembleman utters a sigh of relief: "Oh okay, phew."
Us: "???"
Trembleman laughs nervously and adds "I didn't know whether it was okay to like it."
Us: "Uh… there's nothing wrong with liking that, man."
Trembleman: "Okay… thanks, I just wondered. Well… goodnight."

The guy wondered WHETHER HE WAS ALLOWED TO LIKE THAT INFERNAL RACKET! It's not only that I'll never forget the look on that guy's face - completely puzzled, as if he'd witnessed the third coming of Christ - but also the fact that he actually wondered if there was something wrong with him. That is the effect Brötzmann's music can have on one. So, ten years later, with more baggage and wrinkles, I get to see the Monster of Wüppertal a second time. This time around, he only brought one sparring partner: his son Caspar, also somewhat of a legend in his own right. Basically more of a rock musician - with his band Massaker, he released some of the best German noise-rock available in the late 80s and 90s - but not willing to be pigeonholed either, Caspar's savage guitar experimentalism seemed to be a nice match for the stream of energy of his dad's playing. You can imagine my surprise when the son walked on stage with a bass guitar instead, and even more when he started playing. It had nothing to do with alienating feedback, ridiculously distorted noise or aggressiveness. Instead, he'd play in a very ethereal and abstract style, gently fingering the strings, creating a layer of reverb that was more soothing than forceful, even though it wasn't clear whether he'd head in a certain direction or not. Peter, on the other hand, immediately met my expectations, by blowing extremely hard on the alto saxophone. Now, it would be very easy to dismiss it as random improvisation, as tuneless garbage or noise without any substance, but those who've seen or heard Brötzmann, will testify that there's definitely a completely personal style to be heard. Yes, the man blows outrageously hard and yes, it all seems rather chaotic, but underneath the monolithic stream of notes, there's always a kind of melodic core that seems so steer the performance. The calmness that Brötzmann exudes before and after the show, when he slowly strides, fondles his instrument, replaces a reed or does something to his mouthpiece, that almost meditation-like inner peace remains a constant factor. Like a hurricane, he builds up a destructive force that gives the middle finger to convention, but the center of it all, the eye of the storm, stays a firm nucleus.

It's not the kind of improvisation that involves jittery melodic lines, sudden quacks, hilarious switches from the lower register to the higher or a game of postmodern hide & seek and reference games. Instead, it's a torrent of ideas that remains faithful to a certain core but develops itself as it goes along. The most interesting thing about it all is that it creates a completely hypnotizing effect. Because all of the five or six songs (plus one encore) were at least ten-fifteen minutes long, it gave you time to settle down, be engulfed by the sheer force of the music and the beauty that was created by its dynamics. While Caspar seemed to be entirely caught up by his playing and accompanying dance, the interplay between father and son became more and more apparent, as both steered each other, worked up to monumental climaxes (when Caspar's drones attempted to grandness of Peter's force) and soothing, meditative sections. For the second song, Peter switched to bass clarinet and after that to tenor saxophone, but the focused intensity of the playing remained the same. The sounds that he created with the clarinet were amazing - sometimes almost mimicking the screeching density of inner city noise -, but the performances on the tenor were most relentless in their sheer, entrancing brutality. Helped by huge lungs and jaws, Brötzmann Sr. displayed an almost animalistic force, but one that keeps its savageness in check. Exactly because of the overwhelming style and Caspar's abstract accompaniment, it was hard to distinguish the pieces from each other, but that didn't matter if you were willing to let yourself be overwhelmed by the music and treat it as one extended dialogue. Not a word was said and only a few glances were exchanged, but that didn't matter, as the performance spoke for itself, fearlessly and gracefully.