BOHREN & DER CLUB OF GORE (Geisterfaust) CD
Long before I received the promo of the new album, I was pretty impressed by its title. I can't remember, when a band had chosen such an inspiring and obscure title for an album, but this German band had created and defined their own musical universe during the last fifteen years. Comparable with the pace of the music, changes are a slow process in this universe and after "Sunset Mission", their so-called "mainstream"-album, BOHREN & DER CLUB OF GORE have taken their music into darker and much slower regions with "Black Earth". The music reminds the listener still to the darkest songs from Miles Davis or John Coltrane, but performed in a doomier and, sometimes, heavier way. Now in 2005 the band raises the "Geisterfaust", again released by Wonder Records, and surprises the world with a definition of their music, which is can be entitled with one single word: reduction. The sound is stripped down to its blank bones, and played so slow that it don't seem to move for a second. Due to the album-title, the included five songs are named after the parts of a hand, and "Zeigefinger" is a good example for the new barren sound of BOHREN & DER CLUB OF GORE.
The album enfolds an tremendous hypnotic effect with every listening, and forces the listener into an extreme relaxed position. When I wrote in other reviews that not much is happening in their music (what is meant as a positive statement!), I have to correct myself at this point of the review, because this statement is more appropriate when I relate it to "Geisterfaust". Apart of the last song "Kleiner Finger", that is the only song with saxophone here, the other four cuts are free from any sort of melancholic jazz-laden melodies and it's the first time, that I don't associate their music with dark and rainy cities. But although the cover is in a vanilla-like shade, the music is still doomy and somehow sinister, but is also very helpful if you're suffering under stress and bad sleep. Absolutely magnificent and outstanding music and this album belongs to my personal top ten of 2005!
(KK)