Akşak is a drummers’ album for people who don’t like drummers’ albums. Many tracks are “just” percussion, but uncannily melodic—some angular, others flow like the river over the rocky river bed. When the innovator meets the traditionalist, they churn up something uncategorizable.
This is savory stuff. Jaki Liebezeit, probably the world’s most interesting drummer, and “specialist in rhythmic traditions” Holger Mertin meet in a divine Westöstlicher Diwan. Joining the duo on certain tracks are mostly Cologne-based artists, including violinist Justyna Niżnik and the enigmatic Joseph Suchy, “Cologne’s very own professor of guitar research”, who also produced.
Akşak means “evening” in Turkish, but propelled by Liebezeit’s metronomic “world drum kit,” it’s No Sleep ’til Istanbul. The seemingly multi-limbed Mertin switches between (deep breath now) hang, hand cymbals, gongs, Modulationsscheiben, cymbals, tube sticks, frame drum, snare drums, melodic and metal percussion, helix bowl, tambourine, spoons, singing bowls, kalimba, marimbula, waterphone, K.G. sound sculpture, and overtone drum.
“Sägelatt” encompasses everything that is right about this recording—obviously a world music but of no fixed address, with the somewhat sluggish, narcotic beat shimmering like the Taj Mahal pool, ringing like a Tibetan firehouse, crashing like Hokusai’s great wave and curling like Balkan tobacco smoke out of Tom Waits’ nostrils (much due to the muted horn-like bass of Achim Tang). Harald Sack Ziegler on flugelhorn blows the (here quite reticent) duo to the ambient fourth world of Jon Hassell on “Stückflügel.” “Yallametal” is where the muscles really flex, and the rising-descending zamar (traditional Moroccan, wide-mouthed bamboo flute) of Andreas Oscar Hirsch adds a tribal keen.
Akşak is a drummers’ album for people who don’t like drummers’ albums. Many tracks are “just” percussion, but uncannily melodic—some angular, others flow like the river over the rocky river bed. When the innovator meets the traditionalist, they churn up something uncategorizable.
Akşak is available on Staubgold.
