Martin Schray, Free Jazz Blog
In recent years, Stefan Keune has mainly been involved with the reformed King Übü Örchestrü and the orchestra’s nucleus, XPACT (at least that’s how it seems to me). Keune, who has replaced the late Wolfgang Fuchs in the new outfit, is the perfect substitute, as he is a master of subtle, abstract and elegant playing. However, he can also play differently when his fellow musicians demand it. His trio with Dominic Lash on bass and Steve Noble on drums, with whom he has been playing for more than ten years now, brings out a more powerful Keune without pushing the nuance and the intricacy into the background.
In 2017, the trio played a few gigs in Germany, the last of which was at the Black Box in Münster, a renowned venue for free music in West Germany, before they played at the Moers Festival a few days later. Two days before the Münster gig, I saw them in Schorndorf and was impressed by how well they worked together and how organic the musical interaction was. In the liner notes to this new recording, Keune mentions that he plays too rarely with the two „but whenever the opportunity arises. There is a great familiarity and security, even in the freest of contexts, that I really enjoy.“ Black Box is the perfect example for these words.
The music simply kicks in and you’re thrown straight into the action. Keune’s lines smear around, while Lash and Noble rumble darkly. However, the music immediately becomes more precise, exploring its possibilities, bouncing against the limits of the registers. The musicians stretch out time, but then condense it in the next moment; the whole thing happens at a rapid pace and with the greatest possible elegance. In the trio’s music, the loud-quiet-passages, which structure the sets, are decisive. The improvisation then seems to implode out of nowhere, e.g. when saxophone and bass simply stop playing in the first piece and briefly leave the field to Steve Noble’s drums. But then they immediately feel their way back into the piece. And as is so often the case with excellent saxophone trios (and we are dealing with one here), it’s the quiet passages that are the most convincing ones. Keune, Lash and Noble create an enormous tension here, an urgency, a presence that we only know from the best of their genre, e.g. Evan Parker’s trio with Barry Guy and Paul Lytton. Keune’s rough melodies are turbulently taken by surprise by Noble and Lash, drum beats patter, rimshots hail, the bowed bass jerks and twitches and churns, the strings purr, bolt, creak and boom. It’s pure joy to listen to.
Anyone hoping for new magic and adventurous kicks from new chamber music, magic ignited by sparklers and a captivating interplay between cacophony and subtlety, melancholy and expressiveness – here is what you are looking for.
Jean-Michel van Schouwburg, Orynx-Improvandsounds
Black Box est une série de concerts de musique improvisée programmés par le guitariste Erhard Hirt à Münster, une ville importante située sur les liaisons entre d’une part Cologne, Dusseldorf et d’autre part Hannovre et Berlin, faisant de CUBA un idéal point de chute pour les tournées de groupes d’improvisateurs. Si Steve Noble a acquis une notoriété universelle dans l’univers du free-jazz et des musiques improvisées au côté de Brötzmann, Mc Phee, Alan Wilkinson, John Edwards, Derek Bailey etc…. le nom de Stefan Keune tend seulement à poindre assez récemment sur les programmes, tournées et festivals. Plus jeune que ces deux vétérans de la « seconde génération », Dominic Lash est devenu un contrebassiste incontournable de la scène British, mais aussi guitariste (Alex Ward, Pat Thomas, John Butcher, John Russell Phil Wachsmann).
Souvent l’orientation musicale d’un saxophoniste improvisateur détermine la dynamique d’un trio avec basse et batterie comme celui-ci. La dimension ludique et le souffle de Stefan Keune allie la virulence expressionniste et éruptive post Ayler du free – jazz sanglant et la recherche sonore détaillée evanparkérienne « d’obédience British » qui s’est répandue parmi un série de souffleurs « expérimentaux» ou improvisateurs libres radicaux comme Michel Doneda, John Butcher, Urs Leimgruber et Stefan Keune lui-même. Il suffit d’écouter les deux CD’s gravés par Stefan Keune avec John Russell : Excerpts and Offerings (ACTA) et Frequency of Use (Nur Nicht Nur) pour s’en convaincre ou son album solo Sunday Sundaes (Creative Sources). Ce trio Keune – Lash – Noble a déjà publié deux albums : le LP Fractions pour No Business (2017) et le CD And Now pour FMR (2020). Bien que le genre de trio sax basse batterie est une commodité courante et même redondante dans le flux productiviste improvisé et free-jazz dont j’ai parfois envie de me passer, j’ai quand même un vrai faible pour ces deux sets de club, séparés en six improvisations de durées différentes. On y trouve une série de perles détaillées où le jeu de percussions de Noble, un sérieux catcheur benninkien dans d’autres circonstances, devient une merveille de détails sonores, de déclinaisons ultra-sensibles de frappes, de dynamique ouverte et sélective toute en nuances à la hauteur des Lovens et Turner. Le contrebassiste a un sacré talent à s’insérer dans les frictions sonores et l’éclatement des formes de ces confrères et cimenter la cohésion à l’aide de soigneuses oscillations d’archet boisées et ligneuses à souhait. Keune presse la colonne d’air de tous ses poumons avec des doigtés croisés hallucinés et une articulation mastication dantesque de ses spirales, coups de becs sauvages, cascades de notes broyées et étirées et ses éructations savamment mesurées. Il allie en alternance la rage brötzmanniaque ultra-expressionniste à l’atomisation evanparkérienne des sonorités,notes, diffractions des fréquences. Et laisse aussi l’initiative à ses collègues. Un vrai phénomène triangulé par deux experts en improvisation libre et assauts survitaminés. Il faut réécouter cela à plusieurs reprises pour réaliser à quel point ces lascars sont capables d’entretenir le feu sacré en renouvelant incessamment le propos, l’énergie, l’invention instantanée. À s’taper la tête contre les murs de l’indifférence et du formatage. C’est à cela que sert le label digital scätter… Vive la liberté sauvage !!
Dominic Rivron, International Times
The recent Scatter Archive release, Black Box, sees sax player Stefan Keune playing together with regular collaborators Steve Noble (percussion) and Dominic Lash (bass). Regular, in this case, doesn’t mean frequent, although the fact that they do keep coming together suggests there’s a real chemistry between them. As Keune says, they meet ‘rarely, unfortunately, but whenever the opportunity arises; there is a great familiarity and security.’
The album consists of tracks from two sets, which the trio played at Black Box, a performance space in Münster, Germany, in 2024. Densely-packed, fast moving sections dissolve into solos. Fragmentary interjections from the others build into passages of intense ensemble-playing. A scratchy, staccato conversation can suddenly turn into three musicians pursuing fast moving, independent legato lines towards an imaginary conclusion. Some of the sparser, slow moving textures are strangely reminiscent of whale-song (I’m not suggesting there’s some crude attempt to create that impression going on: what resemblance there is, I’m sure, is purely coincidental). High points include the third track: although short, it packs a lot of rich, varied music into a few minutes. Another is the fourth, the main track taken from the second set. Spaced fragmentary ideas resist coalescence at first, gradually becoming more sustained. Lash dominates quietly. Three minutes in, the music starts moving but remains restrained, the bass still at the centre of it all. Five minutes in, it goes up another gear. By ten minutes in, the music has settled down to a more intimate conversation although – I’m not quite sure why – it always, still, seems to be about the double bass. Inevitably, the sax and drums drop away and we’re treated to a long, often haunting, bass solo from Lash before the conversation is resumed, with Keune and Noble now more to the fore, although, when it subsides, the last man standing is still Lash.
It’s easy to see what Keune meant when he talks of ‘familiarity and security’: more than once, in the more conversational passages, I found myself feeling as if I were listening to an intriguing alien language, perfectly understood by the participants, to be appreciated as music by the rest of us.