Burkhard Beins - Drums, percussion

Martin Brandlmayr - Drums, percussion

John Butcher - Tenor and soprano saxophone

Werner Defeldecker - Double bass

Michael Moser - Cello

John Tilbury - Piano

The group was formed by the Viennese quartet of Dafeldecker and Moser alongside trombonist Radu Malfatti and guitarist Burkhard Stangl. This lineup recorded their first album in 1995, following which Malfatti left, to be replaced by saxophonist John Butcher. This lineup recorded Polwechsel 2 and 3 and in 2002, with Fennesz guesting, “Wrapped Islands”. Stangl left in 2003, and the instrumentation subsequently changed significantly with the addition of percussionists Beins and Brandlmayr, although their sound becomes not significantly more percussive as a result. This lineup recorded the groups’ last album, “Archives of the North” (2006) and now, on “Field”, they are joined by pianist John Tilbury, who is best known for his work over many years with AMM.

The tracks on “Archives of the North” were atypically brief. If this was in an effort to focus the groups’ material and/or methodology in order to make the recordings more readily appealing and digestible for the listener, then the strategy was unsuccessful. “Archives” is by some measure the least satisfying Polwechsel recording. As a step in the groups’ constant evolution or auto-renewal, on the other hand, the evidence yielded by “Field” suggests that valuable gains were made all the same. The album’s two long tracks (Place / Replace / Represent and Field, both around 20 minutes) reveal the composers’ (Moser’s and Dafeldecker’s) unique imprints more strongly than ever before; but also, they further consolidate every contributors’ effort into a coherent collective identity.

In the slowly developing structures of these two strikingly different compositions Polwechsel show themselves to be quite egoless. It took a few listens for the inclination to set in to pick apart the instrumentation. It’s not easy; the group plays such exactingly complementary lines. But without doubt, on close listening it is Tilbury whose identity emerges most vividly; his piano adds a rich resonance to some already gloriously deep and rich sonorities. 

Place? begins with the collective extracting slow, almost ghostly lines from their instruments, and frequently intruding sympathetic silences. Tilbury interpolates finely judged, soft key and wire strikes, the partial effect of which is to instill a subtle and widely-spaced pulse. Proceedings become increasingly shrouded in a rarefied, foggy ambiance. A gong, or gong-like cymbal strike about five minutes before the end of this piece signals the start of a curiously unsatisfactory movement that unsettles this mood while nothing new is added, so an abrupt burst of static to herald the beginning of the title track is quite welcome. Three minutes later this gives way to a brief, spooky almost vocal sound and a single line of tautly bowed gut, before the static swarm returns, amplified and enriched with the ringing of metal percussion, a rich cloud of noise that abruptly cedes to a high, metallic spiraling, then a silence punctuated by wooden clicks. And so the piece goes on: the evanescent static cloud returns after each variable interpolation denser and more all-enveloping, each time enriched by a new element (notably a softly sustained, gutturally woody incantation).

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