EXILE ON MAINSTREAM 20 June 2025
The last time I came across Caspar Brotzmann it was with a series of reissued Nineties albums with his band, Massaker; terrifyingly loud sounds from a deconstructed band. In the intervening twenty-five years he has followed other paths and little music has been recorded but here he is, with new material and a powerful sound. Bringing things up to date, this is definitely the same experimental guitarist but the screaming feedback and rumbles are delivered with more subtlety. It’s still incredibly loud, with the instrument amplified so high that the tiniest of touches create huge sound, meaning Brotzmann can play his guitar to the ultimate electronic level. Spirals and washes of sound float out of caresses of the body, strings make crushing sounds, feedback hangs in the air.
Thinking of a new album, Caspar realised that his live work expressed himself better than the studio. Feeling oppressed by the horrible times we are living in, he took the pain and anger that flowed out in live improvisation and chopped it into an album of two long pieces and an introduction. Nominally the long works are the same song but they really aren’t. In the screwed heavy rock / jazz world the band conjure up, the framework is left far behind once the sound starts happening and the sound flows, like lava, where it wants to.
This connects to nothing else, except to say it is as slow and heavy as Dylan Carlson’s music. It is a catharsis, an expression of horror and a shedding of the feelings that brings. Atonal, formless, menacing, yet a prayer for something new. The trio of Saskia von Klitzing (drums) and Eduardo Delgado Lopez (bass) shuffle round each other and the result is intense, the concentration and emotion heavy in the air, released only by the sound of the crowd as each piece quiets to a close.
Brotzmann talks about “finding the space between black and white, between light and darkness, between lightness and heaviness…. Words are just a tool, of course, and a means to an end, eventually building a cage I do not wish to step into. This is why I love the freedom of music so much. Music comes along just like that and wants nothing, needs no explanation, demands nothing”.
Play loud.