09-06-2015, 11:51 AM
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#14 (permalink)
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one-balled nipple jockey
Join Date: Dec 2010
Location: Dirty Souf Biatch
Posts: 22,033
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solo bass
Pascal Niggenkemper - Look with Thine Ears
Record label hype:
Squidco: Niggenkemper, Pascal: Look With Thine Ears
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Why is he so special? Well, because Niggenkemper is part of a rare number of bass players who prepare their instruments, being maybe the one who goes further doing it, because he has one of the most beautiful and personal sounds around and also because he has an endless vocabulary for the lower-sounding variant of the violin family, creating entire worlds and soundscapes. Living in New York, and being part of the rich scene of the Big Apple, this German-French virtuoso is undoubtedly one of the most important masters of the bass language in activity. Don't you know him yet? Well, this is the best opportunity to discover him."
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critics/fans
The Free Jazz Collective: Pascal Niggenkemper - Look with Thine Ears (Clean Feed, 2015) ****½
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Like a child he seems to be surprised by his own playing, he likes listening to what he creates, where the music takes him – and at the same time he wants to avoid patterns and routines. In order to accomplish his notion he uses preparations and it is unbelievable what you can do with materials like two funnels of a different size, a clapper, a tambourine, the skin of a bongo, percussion sticks and a güiro. Very often you think that the bass is distorted, that there are electronics involved, the double bass simply often doesn’t sound like one. But this is the most interesting aspect of the album: Niggenkemper is able sound like a brutal Colin Stetson on baritone saxophone (“This shall not be revoked”), like a percussion set (“Let me kiss your Hand”), a didgeridoo (“Men of Stone”) or as if he was playing serial music with a strong percussive momentum (“At Fortune’s Alms”) when he lets the güiro dance on the strings. “Unpublished Virtues of the Earth” reminds of a bass version of Ry Cooder, it’s a soundtrack for a trip through the Mojave desert, where the rattlesnakes watch each of your steps distrustfully, while “Sharper than a Serpent’s Tooth” sounds like a whole saw mill in action. Every here and then Niggenkemper throws in an almost classical bass solo track (“If you will marry, make your love to me”), which mainly functions as an ironic comment on the other compositions.
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Gapplegate Guitar and Bass Blog: Pascal Niggenkemper, Solo, Look with Thine Ears
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Pascal sometimes uses objects to alter the sound of the instrument, what you could call prepared bass. They give us a variety of sounds depending on how they are employed, of course, and the materials involved. So we get, for example, a fuzzy sound as Pascal bows over strings that apparently have been inter-leavened with metal objects. These are not gimmicks, for sure, but rather ways of extending the sonic-timbral qualities of the bass.
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