(Jazz-Rock, Free Improvisation) [WEB] Oliwood (Oliver Steidle, Frank Gratkowski, Kalle Kalima) - Euphoria - 2017, FLAC (tracks), lossless

AUDIOCHECKER v2.0 beta (build 457) - by Dester - [email protected]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-=== DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE! ===-
Path: ...\Oliwood - 2017 Euphoria [FLAC]
1 -=- 01 Octave Medley II.flac -=- CDDA (99%)
2 -=- 02 Flipper.flac -=- CDDA (100%)
3 -=- 03 Octave Medley III.flac -=- CDDA (94%)
4 -=- 04 Beast Mode.flac -=- CDDA (100%)
5 -=- 05 Octave Medley I.flac -=- CDDA (100%)
6 -=- 06 Epitasis.flac -=- CDDA (100%)
7 -=- 07 Der Diebische Elst.flac -=- CDDA (100%)
8 -=- 08 Sissy Melting Snow.flac -=- CDDA (100%)
9 -=- 09 Fat Bear of Korea.flac -=- CDDA (100%)
Summary 99,22% CDDA
158574356

 

 

http://oliversteidle.com/biographie/
The drums, more than any other instrument, have developed significantly in recent years in terms of playing technique and musical function. Jazz drummers have moved beyond the role of the accompanist, to an equal musical partner. Indeed, now they are often band leaders and composers. Their playing is not only defined by the beat, but also through their sound. Extremely fast tempi, huge dynamic range, as well as highly virtuosic poly-rhythmic playing are these days generally a matter of course. German drummer, Oliver Steidle, “ who pulls all the strings with sensitivity and efficiency “, “ an ace of dynamic and rhythmic flexibility”, “ a drummer who has developed from rhythmic servitude into a totally emancipated and unique musician”, has been influential in this development. Not only German music critics, but also the international press agrees that Oliver Steidle is “one of the most innovative young jazz musicians”, “a like-minded collaborator for many renowned musicians, [he] has admirably developed a distinctive style; he beats, whispers, and controls his instrument so fabulously as if it were the easiest thing in the world”.
_DSC1095The latter, a comment from the British music magazine The Wire, perhaps sums up the quintessence of Oliver Steidle’s accomplishments. Although he moves for the most part between the musical worlds of free jazz and new music, he is always focused on clarity of sound. He makes even the most complex rhythms comprehensible, while playing uncomplicated music with intense expression is a professed goal. Like so few, he succeeds in finding the right proportion of sound and energy. Beneficial no doubt was the shaping of musical versatility and variability from an early age. In his hometown Nürnberg, he started on piano before changing to drums at the age of 11. At 14, he was a fan of hardcore rock and punk bands the likes of Slayer, Mr. Bungle, or Napalm Death. Even today he describes rock as his musical origin, reconnecting to these roots in many of his recent projects.
This is carried out, of course, while incorporating knowledge of the jazz tradition, and its harmonic and melodic foundations. Already at the age of 16, Steidle had experimented with the vibraphone. After which he played in garage rock bands, as well as in jazz big bands before beginning a course of study at the Music Conservatory Nürnberg, under Hans Günther Brodmann, jazz drum teacher and jazz department head. Brodmann, a role model of stylistic openness, remains to this day a close friend of Steidle. Via the music conservatory, Steidle began to play in the Bavarian state youth jazz orchestra, the top ensemble in Bavaria. From there, it was only a small step to the first professional bands. Today, Steidle has performed with many of the great players of jazz, including Tomasz Stanko, Louis Sclavis, Sean Bergin, Vincent Courtouis, Ernst Reijseger, Josh Roseman, Simon Nabatov, Nils Wogram, Adam Pieronzcyk and Walter Wierbos.
By the end of the nineties, Nürnberg had become too confining for Steidle. He had won two music competitions, and was invited by pianist Ritschie Beirach for an extended stay in New York. In the year 2000, Steidle moved to Berlin, where he was immediately integrated into the jazz scene, the most vibrant in Germany, and is now an integral member. In 2002, he was a founding member of Klima Kalima, the trio led by Finish guitar player Kalle Kalima. He also joined the band Der Rote Bereich, with Frank Möbus on guitar, (one of Steidle’s former teachers, who also encouraged the move to Berlin), and Rudi Mahall, bass clarinet, both Berliner emigrants from Nürnberg, like himself. Der Rote Bereich would become immensely popular. Due to its unorthodox orchestration and avant-garde approach, the trio is known as one of the most prominent European jazz Trios. In 2005, it won the German record critic’s award for the Album “Live in Montreux”. In 2006 the trio was awarded the prestigious national Jazz award, the German Jazz Prize. Two years later with the band Klima Kalima, Steidle not only repeated this feat, but he was also awarded the prize for best soloist.
These are not the only prominent projects with which the tireless Oliver Steidle plays. Since 2003, he belongs to guitar player John Schröder’s trio, Uli Kempendorff’s Quartet Field, Aki Takase’s Tama Trio, the Hong Kong Quintet with Alexander von Schlippenbach, Philipp Gropper’s Quartet Philm, and in the collective band Outliers with Toby Delius, Haarard Wilk, and Clayton Thomas. In each of these bands, Steidle plays an individual and slightly different role, up to modern instant composition projects, such as those from Tristan Honsiger and Axel Dörner. In this context, Steidle alters the sound character of his drums with the use of objects ranging from cymbals to household appliances, producing a sound quite unlike the conventional drum sound. He collaborated with Ensemble Courage in the Maerz Musik Festival, performing the world premiere of compositions of the Swiss drummer Michael Wertmüller, who like Steidle has experimented over many years with various forms of New Music. With his involvement in the Bikini Orchestra, Steidle makes a contribution to the positive trend in which large ensembles experiment with new and unusual sounds.
Steidle also uses this versatility in diverse self-initiated projects, among others the Duos ddAa with Antonis Anissegos, and Lenina in collaboration with Daniel Erdmann, as well as the humorous Collective Band, Rowk Music (Ronny Graupe, Wanja Slavin und again Kalle Kalima), which operates within rock and jazz traditions. Also belonging to the category of collectively led bands is the trio Die dicken Finger, with guitarist Olaf Rupp and bassist Jan Roder, modelled after the hard rock styles of grindcore and metal. The athletic competition, and self-serving ossified virtuosity of the originals, is substituted with spirited improvisation and radical tempo changes. In 2014, the trio completed an extended tour with Peter Brötzmann, saxophone legend, and veteran of the German free jazz scene, with whom, somewhat logically, Steidle has collaborated on occasion for many years.
Steidle´s blood, sweat, and tears flows not least into the band SoKo Steidle, founded already in 2004. All sound colors and forms are intended to emerge out of nowhere. “The important question here is how we can combine swing and jazz traditions with modern sounds and rhythms, that is to say their extended and abstracted treatment in the form of free improvisation”. The development of the concept, together with Rudi Mahall, Henrik Walsdorff und Jan Roder, has taken place exclusively during live concerts, through the conscious exclusion of rehearsal. After over 100 concerts across Europe, and four CDs, this concept functions not only extremely well, but an unmistakably original band sound has also emerged in the process.
The newest of his many undertakings, initiated in 2013 is the Quartet Oli Steidle & the killing Popes, with the line-up of Frank Gratkowski, Kalle Kalima und Petter Eldh, where Steidle draws purposefully on his hardcore and punk rock roots. The result of his intensive involvement with these aesthetics is the translation of the immense energy of this music into the formal language of jazz. For the first time, he wrote lyrics for his songs, an expression of his growing interest in recent years in political themes. Concrete political statements find their way into songs like “Monopoly Experiment”, or “Robin Hood Index”, a continuation of the old and almost forgotten jazz tradition.
With such a multitude of activities, it is no wonder that Steidle is constantly on tour, a veritable festival champion. For quite some time, he has played in at least a dozen worldwide festivals each year, with increasing tendency. Countless tours, among others initiated and sponsored from the German Music Council, or the Goethe Institute, have taken him throughout Europe and the USA, as well as to China, India, and Yemen. The globalized world is increasingly able to hear the no less globalized music of Oliver Steidle. For Steidle, this is only a beginning.

http://www.freejazzblog.org/2017/10/oliwood-euphoria-enja-2017-12.html
Earlier on in the year this album seemed to slip out quite unobtrusively on the Enja label, without any fuss or hype. Having heard some snippets and the expectation that it promised I soon ordered myself a copy. Now some several months and many listens later I am still as convinced as when I first heard it that this is one of the best releases I have heard this year. The trio is Oliver Steidle on drums (Der Rote Bereich, Brötzmann, Klima Kalima to name but a few), Frank Gratkowski on alto sax (having played with Achim Kaufmann, Simon Nabatov, Hamid Drake amongst others), and Kalle Kalima on guitar (Klima Kalima, Johnny La Marama, Momentum Impakto).
In the sleeve notes Steidle briefly talks of the compositional approach to the album amongst all the different projects he has been involved in over the years, but highlighting that the one thing all of these other musics have had in common is improvisation, which for him is of the utmost importance. This is clearly borne out by the music, which has clear structures within each of the tracks but also, as he suggests, balances the material generated by pre-composed concepts and that of improvisation.
The opening angular and nicely syncopated melody of ‘Octave Medley II’, reminiscent of progressive bands such as King Crimson, and Thinking Plague, acts as a regular motive within the freer passages that open up within the music, with tempo and pulse moving between strict measures and non-time, whilst the punctuations or ‘hits’ disguise and displace the underlying beat. The ‘octave medley’ tag being a theme across the first part of the album, with ‘III’ being seemingly underpinned by a rather scatty yet mechanical sounding programmed piano sequence that the group then responds to in a free and slightly chaotic way, whilst the very short ‘Octave Melody I’ is just the sequencer track. I wonder if these sequenced pieces are examples of the templates that Steidl used for composing the pieces which the group then picked-up and ran with? If not, the three pieces still act as if there is an uncovering of the layers of music, moving from a complex and full group sound (Octave Medley II) to a stripped back sequenced fragment (Octave Medley I). Moving on from these pieces ‘Epitasis’ starts with a similar angular melody played in unison between guitar and sax, before it breaks down through micro-dialogues, found amongst the smallest melodic fragments and exchanging at lightning speed before eventually opening out into an open arena of sounds in a free improv vein. The overall structure being somewhat of a reverse mirror image (going back through similar events in reverse order) with a small lighter coda added on at the end. ‘Der Diebische Elst’ starts with an African-like pattern on the guitar, in both the pitches used and the timbre, before Gratkowski’s free-blowing sax comes in bringing with it a change from something sounding not a million-miles away from a Brotherhood of Breath piece, which it also ends with, to a high-energy cartoon-esque chase. ‘Sissy Melting Snow’ opens with Kalima’s guitar sounding like a musical saw (sustained e-bow type sound), which becomes the counterpoint to the lead sax line in what is ostensibly a modern instrumental ballad. The last track ‘Fat Bear of Korea’, the less said the better about the possible political connotations of this one, which musically comes to a rocky and solid ending.
As a power trio within the free jazz world, it cannot but help remind us of Bjorkenheim’s work with the Scorch Trio and his newly invested Triad, however the focus of the work is at times very much a metric one, not in some clever poly-math way, but in a much more organic ebb and flow of time – firm and solid one moment before free and pulseless the next. Rhythm is important to this album and there is an up-beat momentum that is carried throughout the tracks. If you like your free jazz a bit ‘rocky’ then this may just be the album you’ve been waiting for this year.

Oliver Steidle: drums, percussion, sequencer;
Frank Gratkowski: alto saxophone;
Kalle Kalima: guitar