HAUSCHKA – room to expand

(CD, Fat Cat)

I liked the first album by Hauschka so much I reserved a special place for it. A place were I can listen to music without being disturbed and focus on it with concentration. Unfortunately that place is about 100 miles away from where I am now and the album is still there. So I am unable to refresh and check my memories about “substantial”, but if I remember correctly it was based mostly on piano, bass and some electronic sounds. “room to expand” starts a lot fresher, bigger and more lively. A string section, percussions, the same lonely piano and a rhythm that swaggers and swings like a drunken monkey with classical education. Further onwards piano chords and melodies sprinkle like drops of water on a sunny summer afternoon, with bass and percussions doing all kinds of interesting things. Melodies will move into more introspective, darker territories as well. And then back to lighter places with more open views. Just like this place I mentioned in the beginning. During the day the view is wonderful, sweeping over a vast landscape. At night it is so dark you can’t see the hands in front of your eyes if you step out. But in some nights the stars in the sky are so grand you start to doubt your eyes and you revel in the beauty of creation.

Volker Bertelmann has honed his compositional skills and visions to a lot sharper and individual language since “substantial” and the title of the record is thematic to its vision. Wide open spaces evoked by the combination of piano chords and a variety of other instruments. The piano being the basis throughout, though, and sometimes it stands alone and does well so, as in the aptly named “kleine Dinge” (small things. Transl) or on the closer “old man playing boules” which plays as much with piano chords as with the reverbing body of the piano itself, letting the overtones and harmonies fill the room of sound. The “room to expand” can be found everywhere, and in this instance might be nothing more (but is it so little?) than the confined space of the body of the piano.

All in all Bertelmann has moved from being a solitary electronic music writer with an affinity to the piano to a serious modern classical composer. The difference is remarkable. It is hard to reach into the depth and mechanisms of these compositions, but in its basic rhythmical manner seems to be about taking little piano licks and then trading them off towards other partners, a trombone, violin, harp, etc., and to see whats in them by playing with and against them. Structures with loops and holes in them that nevertheless feel and work out stable and grooving, sometimes a little akwardly, sometimes edgy, but mostly moving and never without gracious style and manners.

It is an eerie feeling to get the notion that the music of Hauschka might help to solve a lot of the small riddles in life, of which there are many: There is a milk drink with Aloe Vera in my refridgerator that I didn’t buy? It always rains on weekends? Teenagers on the bus making fun of streetnames and other jokes I just don’t get? Why is my mother not at home when I try to call her? If my laptop doesn’t work until I took out its battery and shook it, what does that mean. Windows are dirty again. Sometimes a simple arrangement of piano chords can help you to wipe away these petty thoughts and leave you open for new steps and movements. Life is good, even when it is bad. Sometimes a record like “room to expand” seems to pass the time, and I mean actively help in the movement of time. After all the title of the record might not only be meant thematically for the music and the development of the composer but also as a description of what the music will offer to the listener and how he has to operate with the music on here. How to peruse it to his or her own ends and means. An unspoken theory of musical form and function comes to light, but right now we are still unable to grasp it.