John Eckhardt - Forests (2014)

Kontrabas za vađenje vremena iz šuma i močvara.




www.johneckhardt.de/

In special unity of form and content, „Forests“ presents John Eckhardt’s latest ventures into a secret realm of bass, space & time. After his pioneering, widely acclaimed solo-bass CD „Xylobiont“ on Evan Parker’s PSI imprint, on „Forests“ John Eckhardt perpetuates his passionate contemplation of the manifold physical and musical nature of his 120 year old sound device.
In nearly two hours of music for four double basses, developed by means of overdubbing, he takes the listener to unknown sounding forests and woodlands. In extended, organically branching and often dramatic pieces, he keeps seeking out places where smallest fluctuations in perception and in the connection of body and instrument are crucial. As in other projects of Eckhardt’s, polarities of observation and action, intuition and planning, atmosphere and detail are combined so continuously and intensely until something else emerges, and starts a life of its own…
Together with two hundred of John Eckhardt’s forest photographies and texts about music and making, the music is provided on a wooden USB memory stick. It is lying in a transparent box with moss, lichens, bark and other forest material. As the photography, it comes from Staksund, the Swedish forest land of the Eckhardt family, which John frequently visits.






 


John Eckhardt is a double bassist living in Hamburg, Germany. His activities range from solo improvisation and ensemble work to club and multimedia projects. His interests focus on “natural principles such as variety, dynamics and self-organization,” which he uses to explore “bass, space and time” in ”hyper-acoustic improvisation as well as in immersive architectures of sub-bass and digital delay.” He has released one solo album, 2008’s Xylobiont via PSI, and contributed to Mode Records’ album of Iannis Xenakis’ string music. His latest project is FORESTS, a multimedia USB package. The USB stick, itself embedded in a stout twig and nestled in a box full of moss and leaves, contains almost two hours of mesmerizing double-bass string quartets achieved through overdubbing his improvisations. It also includes Eckhardt’s own photographic survey of his heavily wooded, family ancestral land in Sweden, and two essays delving into the history of solo bass performance and Eckhardt’s own methodology. - dustedmagazine.tumblr.com/post/102025171761/listed-john-eckhardt