ALEKS KOLKOWSKI / JON ROSE / MATTHIA BAUER
The Kryonics
Emanem Records
4047


Lets start by getting our bearings. This Bauer does not play trombone. For those of us familiar with Jon Rose, there is no clever text, high concept or radio-play involved. Next, the Kryonics do not much sound like the String Trio of New York, any edition. One reason is the instrumentation, all acoustic. A Stroh-violin is a violin using a megaphone horn instead of the normal horn box. The tenor violin is an octave lower than the standard fiddle, and then theres the Japanese-style one-string fiddle which also is equipped with a megaphone horn. The violinofón has a unique grainy quality, say the liner notes, closer to the sound of a small transistor radio.

The opening track puts us in a maelstrom of fiddling, a brief two-minute hurricane. When we land, the violin melodically meanders, with little squigglings and percussive touches. On Rigormorphso, Kolkowskis Stroh violin sounds like a theremin, with his confrères pizzicato-popping him and sawing at his legs. Frozen PP (I hadnt noticed the cryonic titles until I had to type them here) could melt the damned stuff with its hurdygurdy-like ratchet sounds. Damn Pitch builds with arpeggios and concludes in a single surprising, yet perfect, stroke. No piece overstays its welcome. The closer is almost a summary of the type of tones and instrumental tonalities produced within one three-minute improv, and again, only to create music.

There is total intuitive communication throughout, and these three use none of the instruments merely for effect, but to serve their creative interplay. The notes tell who plays what and where, left or right, but I just listen to this without caring; this is a unit. On my shelves, I might put this under Rose, a section I jump to frequently, with at least a dozen discs under the mad violinists name. but I hope the group as such records more and I being a Kryonics section.

Emanem continues to present the best of our improvisers, and dont for a minute be fooled into thinking that producer Davidson is content to rest on the deserved laurels of old tapes from London. Informative and witty liner notes by Boris van Weingarten of the Rosenberg Museum of Slovakia, whom I suspect might be Jon Rose, who informs us that this splendid hour was recorded in one take, with two mics, in the present sequence. Fine sound, recorded in Berlin.


--Steven H. Koenig


Track Listing: 1. Zero Grad; 2. Frigid Aire; 3. Rigormorphso; 4. Frozen PP; 5. Frigorific; 6. Shiver Me Timbers; 7. Sostenuto in Frigio; 8. Polar Ear; 9. Damn Pitch; 10. Fisch Fingerlied; 11. Konstanzes Kühlschrank


Personnel: Aleks Kolkowski, violin, viola, Stroh violin; Jon Rose, violin, tenor violin, Stroh one-string fiddle, Violinofón; Matthias Bauer, doublebass