Polwechsel & Klaus Lang — Unseen

Polwechsel is a name I know purely because the ever impressive John Butcher was once a member, and on the strength of Unseen it’s a name I should investigate further. Put simply, this is an incredible album, and you can stop reading now… Polwechsel is a quartet, here consisting of Michael Moser on cello, Werner Dafeldecker on double bass, and Burkhard Beins and Martin Brandlmayr on ‘cymbals, selected percussion.’ They are joined on Unseen by Klaus Lang on church organ, and, as the liner notes rightly point out, the ’resonant space’ of Grosskirche of St. Lambrecht’s Abbey, where the album was recorded. There are three tracks, all long - 25, 16, and 25 minutes respectively - and all occupying the same territory, without becoming boring or repetitious.

At the risk of appearing cursory, I have often listened to the album as one long piece, despite each track being the work of a different composer; so whilst ‘Easter Wings’ is composed by Lang, ‘No sai cora-m fui endormitz’ by Moser, and ‘Redeem’ by Dafeldecker, together they work well as a focussed yet expansive world of sound, despite the arguably limited set-up. The liner notes refer to ‘Easter Wings’ as an ‘illusory work’ but for me that sums up the entire album; Unseen has a dream-like, hallucinatory quality, where the whole is far greater than the sum of its parts. Instruments merge into one another, become indiscernible, often synthesising drones of shifting frequencies. Whilst there are passages where the individual instruments can be heard and recognised, very often the listener has no concrete sense of which instrument is doing what - something the liner notes ruminate on: the difference between hearing a sound, and watching that sound being made - the acousmatic elements of listening. Sometimes the church organ, amplified by the church itself, provides a bed for all the other sounds to submerge in, at other points it emphatically announces its presence and superior power with deep bass drones. The album is often delivered in long lines, sometimes thick, sometimes thin, and tiny details which dance across them - percussive jangles, and cello harmonics, for example.

Unseen is a tour de force of textural improvisation and sensitive ensemble playing. It does sound like an improv album - to put it clumsily - but the compositions keep Polwechsel & Lang focussed; the pieces are undoubtedly exploratory, but there is never any sense of wandering, or of the peaks and troughs of free improv. The overall effect is often eerie or dark - the start of Redeem, for example, is almost akin to a dark ambient drone, with buried whistling - but also overwhelmingly warm and welcoming. Unseen certainly isn’t new age drone, but it isn’t a remotely difficult listen. Without knowing the source of the sounds, in the spirit of the liner notes, the album could very easily be mistaken for an electroacoustic work, but instead it is the result of superb composition, sublime musicianship on a technical level, and sensitive listening and playing attuned to the recording environment. Recommended without reservation.