Achter 76: How Noisy Are The Rooms?

Presented by JazzArchitekt Raimund Knösche + Partner

Can music cause whiplash? Let's put the answer to this question at the back of the queue. HOW NOISY ARE THE ROOMS represents an extremely provocative view of creative anarchy. The concentrated energy of three components, which constantly collide with each other, puts the listener in the state of a ball in a pinball machine, which is mercilessly hurled back and forth, never comes to rest and is always at all points at the same time.

Behind How Noisy Are The Rooms are the Berlin vocal visionary Almut Kühne, the Swiss turntable wizard Joke Lanz, who also lives in Berlin, and the Vorarlberg drumming multitasker Alfred Vogel. Vogel has been running an open ear festival for many years under the motto Bezau Beatz, where collisions and unexpected encounters can and should occur. One such collision was the meeting of Vogel and Lanz. The two extremists hit it off straight away and said yes to a joint project. But that alone was not enough for Vogel, and because he had long wanted to ask Almut Kühne to the dance anyway, it became a threesome. They got together in March 2020, checked out their shared vibes over dinner and kicked off with a jam the next morning. As Almut Kühne with her voice, Lanz with his sounds and Vogel with his instrument occupy three completely different sound and reference areas, no matter how much they clashed, there was always creative friction.

The drummer raves about the common thread that emerged from these sessions. Unraveling this thread is a challenge for the outsider listener. It only takes a few moments and you are in danger of completely losing your bearings. And that's a good thing, because like the Goldmarie in Frau Holle, you suddenly wake up in a utopia in fast motion. Categories such as past and future collapse, the anachronistic becomes futuristic and vice versa. The sweet dream is called chaos.

Despite the subatomic fragmentation of all the elements, which are hurled at the naked auditory membrane as if by an out-of-control particle accelerator, there is also a moment of structure and deceleration. While the center of power in most formations is the drums, in the constellation of How Noisy Are The Rooms Alfred Vogel provides the grounded counterpart to the general high-speed confusion. "Sometimes I had the feeling that I needed to bring a little structure to the chaos," he sums up mischievously. To draw on a comparison from a completely different musical quadrant, he fulfills a similar function here as Charlie Watts between the guitars of the Rolling Stones. Although he has no chance of catching his partners, who are speeding away at the speed of light, he almost never takes his foot off the stoic brake, so that gravitational and centrifugal forces work against each other. These completely opposing time beams create additional tension.

Again, can music trigger whiplash? Yes, it can - if it exposes our sensory center to a meteorite hail of impressions and perceptions. In an era in which we accept the permanent revaluation of all values as the norm, Almut Kühne, Joke Lanz and Alfred Vogel succeed for the first time in recent human history in giving the term "overload" a positive connotation with their post-musical hidden object picture "How Noisy Are The Rooms". More revolution is not possible!

Almut Kühne - vocals
Joke Lanz - turntables
Alfred Vogel - drums & percussion