Klaus Lang/Apartment House — Geschrieben In Wasser

Geschrieben In Wasser brings together five modern chamber works from Austrian composer, organist, and improviser Klaus Lang. They are played by the highly respected ensemble, Apartment House. Sonically, the works shift between pitch swooning bleakness, spritely angularity, and wonky-to -wavering gracefulness.

Lang has been active since the late 1990s, releasing to date twenty-three albums, and these have seen him both playing his own work and others. Over the years, we’ve reviewed a few of his albums on the site- and I must say Geschrieben In Wasser it stands as one of the more impactful/ memorable releases.

We move from “My Heart Is Singing Like A Bird”- a 2022 piece for clarinet, violin, cello, and double bass. The fourteen and a half minute work blends swooning ‘n’ sawing semimetal with waving ‘n’ warbling pitch warp- all to create a wonderfully unbalancing work. It shifts from woozy merry-go-round pacing to more stretched out & sombre reaches.

There’s 2019’s “Aki” which is for organ, clarinet, bass clarinet and violin. This just over eleven-minute piece sits somewhere between hazed wavering ambience, steadily escalating pitch study, and bitter-sweet dwell. It very much gives the feeling of slowly walking through a barren landscape, as the sun beats down, and your vision starts to warp & your balance just goes off.

Finally, we have the title track, which is from 2007 and is for piano quartet. The work comes in at around the six-minute and forty-second mark. It brings together taut ‘n’ wonky- yet- tense key plonks, and string work that shifts between sourly simmering and foreboding. A great unease, at points, a low-key horror-filled end to the release.

If you have a penchant for where angularity, unease, and sad wonder meet, then I think Geschrieben In Wasser will be for you. Another great release from Sheffield’s Another Timbre.