Jörg Zemmler — Piano Bar

As the title might suggest, Piano Bar is dominated by Zemmler’s piano, but shares time and space with ‘live loops’ and ‘live digital sustain’; this might suggest a recording that’s somewhat technology or gear orientated but the album doesn’t really carry that atmosphere or tone - for better or worse

Instead, we have ten tracks of mildly adventurous piano work which perhaps run out of ideas fairly quickly. In Zemmler’s defence the album is improvised live but, to cut to the quick, I feel the issue overall is that Piano Bar is rather halfway house in scope: it dwells largely in melodic territories (though toys with discordancy/atonalism) and though it pushes out to sea a little with the processing, it avoids deeper waters. For me, this feels like a missed opportunity - for other listeners it might present a perfect combination of lyricism and technological wonder. Looping is brilliant, it transforms a solo musician’s world and capacities - but it’s also a terrible trap, a harness that can lead the musician down routes that become repetitive, in a formal sense (I’m aware of the pun). It’s a difficult and treacherous discipline. I like the simpler piano parts, and would have enjoyed a stripped album of that bare instrumentation, I also like some of the textural aspects of the looping and sustain, and again would have enjoyed a more overtly droney recording; now, obviously this is Zemmler’s work and my preferences are meaningless at best, and at worst plain rude, but the point I’m making is that Piano Bar sits in the middle of these approaches - unsatisfactorily for my ears. I feel that often the piano and the effected signals get in each other’s way - a lot of the analogue piano would gain an intimacy without the processing, whilst the processed piano would work better on a minimal, repetitive, textual level without further acoustic notes overlaid. So ‘Vor Glück’ builds an effective drone through the piece, but then becomes too cluttered to my mind; ‘Verschanzt’, again, has nice shimmering textures, but they’re not encouraged to breathe at length.

I raise these issues not least because the release notes clearly state Piano Bar’s high ideals, as ‘a search for new forms for the piano, the expansion of the instrument with new technology without alienating it’; in this latter regard I think the album is quite effective and balanced, though on a formal level of volume the processing does overpower the acoustic piano at times.

The notes also nod towards ‘Cage, Feldman, Satie, free jazz, minimal music…Beethoven’ and whilst I’m happy to accept that you might hear traces of these musics and composers on the most mundane level (though I should make clear that I’m excluding Beethoven from this because they’re a mystery to me), the album has none of the true exploration of Cage, the space and rigour of Feldman, the crystalline micro-worlds of Satie, the energy and adventure of free jazz, or the textural expanse and play of minimal music. To pick on the last aspect, ‘Hinterrücks’ has an effective motorik feel, but it’s just shy of four minutes; extended to 20 minutes it would take on a new form, enter those deeper waters. At the same time, the curse of looping is people creating tracks that are way too long, so I’m pleased that Zemmler has tried to concentrate the album in shorter pieces - the longest is nearly five minutes in length - it just doesn’t charm my ears. ‘Mc²’ does sound like some player-pianos running wild at points, and also has a pleasing, quiet passage in the middle, but these are slim pickings. If I say that ‘Mondlicht’ - the one piece on Piano Bar that isn’t abetted by electronics - is my favourite track, you might mistake me for a luddite, or a traditionalist, but I’m really not; it’s just the one track that presents something distinct and strong, and sounds comfortable with itself.

In my opinion, there’s never any point in criticising an album for not being what you personally want; Zemmler has a vision and they should pursue it. I think Piano Bar is accomplished enough in what it does - it just doesn’t click with me. I’d love to hear Zemmler rein everything back and produce a really sparse album, utilising that sustain, that does pay overt homage to Satie and Feldman; conversely I’d also love to see them cut loose and really dig into the looping, produce something chaotic and assaulting - a cut and paste Cecil Taylor. However, these desires perhaps betray my polarised thinking rather than any faults with Piano Bar. To check it out