Marmo Music’s latest roster addition, Giraffe, is a group that share this experimental edge, this desire to throw caution to the wind and allow improvisation to lead the way.
You’d probably have more luck predicting the ever changeable Irish weather than you would pinning down Marmo Music. The Berlin based imprint actively ignores the biases of the club and the limitations of genres as it pursues a spread of sounds with a devil may care attitude. The label’s latest roster addition, Giraffe, is a group that share this experimental edge, this desire to throw caution to the wind and allow improvisation to lead the way.
Sascha Demand, Jürgen Hall and Charly Schöppner,a partnership with an admirable CV of music creation, came together to create Climate. Their disparate ideas, different influences and inspirations, are married by the common theme of instantaneous invention. “Climate 1” and “Climate 2” are born in a jungle of instruments during live jam studio sessions, sessions where textures and tones are unfettered to flow and form without borders or boundaries. The result are two pieces where no line is set. Melodies meander and melt on a quicksand of percussion. Notes take shape before being painted over. Layers are built and then disappear. Reference points are blurred and ultimately buried by these Hamburg audio guides. This lack of familiarity means that the excursion this trio are taking you on is a challenging one, but not an unpleasant one. The triumvirate complement one another, working off each other to sketch in similar shades whilst allowing margins to bulge and split as new lines are penned and played. Marco Shuttle’s “Moody Samba Treatment” attempts to harness the nomadic energy of the original. Measured percussion gives some welcome support while haunting bars maintaining that roaming spirit in this thoughtful remix.
The press release for Climate claims “Words cannot express its meaning. Notes cannot spell out its score,” so what am I up to I ask myself? Trying to nail down Giraffe is a near impossibility, by definition their sound eludes definition. For this very reason it can be easy to find yourself on unsteady ground with this 12”, unsure where to look, or listen, as a cacophony of concepts collide. Although Marco Shuttle is an island of solidity on an EP of tumultuous waves, his interpretation is still brimming with the wanderlust of Giraffe. If you thought Marmo Music was ready to give up its audio adventures into the obscure, think again.
Climate is available on Marmo Music.
