Jinx

This is the sixth full-length release from Karlsruhe, Germany's Kammerflimmer Kollektief, recorded by Tobias Levin at Electric Avenue Studio. This band is still a "collective," although within the last years and extensive touring through Europe, a group of three core members emerged from the original line-up: Thomas Weber (guitar, electronics, piano), Heike Aumüller (harmonium, vocals, synthesizer, percussion) and Johannes Frisch (double bass and percussion). Whispering, a laid-back pop rhythm and something that sounds like an overwound gramophone, the eight songs on Jinx leave the wide-screen cinemascope soundscapes of the previous albums behind. With their serenity, these songs sound almost like a sediment of the band's earlier approach. This becomes evident in a track like "Nest" (which is reminiscent of the folk-jazz-approach of early Pentangle albums), or the beautifully minimalist yet very touching country-epic "Live At The Cactus Tree Motel." Faced with this music, the usual groping for stylistic comparisons and genre attributions appears more helpless than ever. This is mainly due to the focused use of instrumental improvisation on this album. In their dialogue with the sound impulse, the musicians re-endow data-folk with a body and electronic music with its metaphysics. This becomes evident on both the title track and in "Both Eyes Tight Shut," where in a repetitive swing, Aumüller's voice persistently fishes half-words from the vortex of sound particles. On "Gammler, Zen & Hohe Berge," a tiny echo from the beat on a small wood block that is electronically slowed down, dies away. Time drips through the spheres, quietly. Jinx -- the mythological bird that heralds bad luck -- comes to you when you return from the quest for happiness in the computer game world of virtual identities. With Jinx, the Kammerflimmer Kollektief has created a touching soundtrack for these moments -- when you leave the simulated wonderworld of commerce like "Second Life," when you log off your avatar and suddenly find yourself confronted with the disdainful universality of your own thinking.