From Official Myspace :
"Hippie vermin" hisses the bank employee who still thinks of himself as a punk. He’s sitting next to me as we’re watching the Kammerflimmer Kollektief playing. He says it because he doesn’t understand. In fact, he doesn’t understand anything. He sees them play, but he does not listen.

I wonder: Does the word "play" suffice? Maybe the members of the Kammerflimmer Kollektief even perform. I am not sure. The presentation is authentic, but it’s still a presentation. You see people, you hear their souls but no one exposes him/herself mindlessly. No one makes a fool of him/herself. No one plays the stick-in-the-mud. No one disengages him/herself. Three people who play music.

Heike Aumüller sits on the floor, making music, singing in a type of English which can only be understood by people who listen. Those who look, who want to see music, do not see anything at all. And they feel nothing. Johannes Frisch fondles his double bass like Kate Bush did in her video to "Babooshka". But while Kate Bush didn’t play, Frisch does while simultaneously playing around with it, winding himself around the instrument – 1:0 for the venerably aged jazzer. On the other side sits Thomas Weber, bent over his guitar, occasionally operating the electronics in front of him, while his other hand is being played by the guitar. Again and again, it drags the other hand towards the instrument – it’s as simple as that. The audience has to want to listen and not only see. Those who can see, see the art of Heike Aumüller which graces the cover. What one sees there is vulnerable and strong at the same time. Anyone who has ever watched a Bruce Willis action movie will know the sentence that Willis – suddenly more than just muscles and smiles – utters to the obligatory child (or woman, anyway, something to rescue): "Of course I’m afraid." What do we learn from this? Those who make themselves vulnerable become strong. The Kammerflimmer Kollektief has made itself strong, had made itself strong even before it merged into a band and then as a band, is grew even stronger. And more vulnerable. Where the music used to be beautiful, it now became powerful and momentous. Dietmar Dath speaks the truth when he suggests that one should listen to the music loud – because thus it gains even more depth.

The Kammerflimmer Kollektief is emotive and impassioned. It is also as lucid and precise as those moods which Robert Musil (who is above suspicion of a being a romanticist) called "daylight mysticism". The lyrics and the music want to be heard, they want to be explored, even suffered. Sound builds songs which are made of sounds, and yet they’ re no longer songs.

"Wildling" is the trio’s strongest and most vulnerable album to date. It is a solipsist, which floats solitary in its own space, somewhere between the orbits of jazz, krautrock, pop and hell. This space is an earthly heaven, which we are permitted to inhabit – if we only can hear, with our ears as well as our heads.

by Jörg Sundermeier

Tracklist :
1. Move Right In (Drums - Christopher Brunner)
2. Silver Chords (Saxophone - Dietrich Foth)
3. Aum A Go-Go (Drums, Xylophone - Christopher Brunner)
4. In Transition (Version)
5. Spookin' The Horse (Drums - Christopher Brunner, Saxophone - Dietrich Foth)
6. Blind
7. Rotwelsch
8. Time Is The Fire In Which We Burn
9. Cry Tuff
10. We Paint The Town Beige (Drums - Christopher Brunner)
11. There's A Crack In Everything
12. Milte Hi Ankhen (aka Bird In Hand) (Written By - Lee Perry)

Dans la sélection très intellote et expérimentale des 3ème Qwartz Awards, qui ont eu lieu à Paris cette année pour récompenser les musiques dites "nouvelles", se trouvait l'album "Tijuana sessions vol.3" des mexicains du Nortec Collective, nominé dans plusieurs catégories, notamment la catégorie "dance-floor"... Sélection inespérée, malheureusement passée totalement inaperçue parmi une ribambelle d'opus obscures et chiants.

Tijuana, cette ville de la côté Ouest mexicaine, frontalière de la Californie, réputée pour son industrie électronique, est une plaque tournante des cultures américaines, qu'elles viennent du Sud ou du Nord. Et c'est là que le Nortec Collective s'est formé, incluant toute une bande de musiciens et de DJ's au background varié, qui ont l'air de s'être beaucoup éclaté à l'enregistrement de ces sessions electro-acoustiques.

Démarrant par les excellents "Tengo la voz" et "Tijuana makes me happy", qui vous donne l'irrémédiable envie de bouger, alternant tropicalisme bon esprit, dub à l'accordéon roots, trompettes mariachis sur rythmiques electro incendiaires, l'album de nos amis est une véritable petite mine de bonne humeur et de jovialité, comme les images de ce Mexique métissé pouvaient le laisser présager... Le groupe Calexico, l'un des fervents défenseur des hybridations musicales Nord-Sud, accompagne même le collectif sur "Esa banda en dub" pour une ritournelle plus atmosphérique aux allures de vieille mélodie de cow-boy, à fredonner le brin de paille aux lèvres, le chapeau bien vissé sur la tête pour éviter les coups de soleil en plein désert.

Je vous rassure quand même : l'album est bien ancré dans l'actualité et pourrait très bien se trouver une place sur vos étagères, pas très loin du projet "Electric Gypsyland", de Suba ou même de Transglobal Undeground ; autant de références qui savent nous faire voyager à travers le monde et découvrir des musiques aux accents surprenants et d'une ouverture d'esprit toute réjouissante.

par Guillaume
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Tracklist :
1. Tengo la voz
2. Tijuana makes me happy
3. Funky Tamazula
4. Doon loope
5. Olvidela compa
6. Autobanda
7. Dandy del sur
8. Almada
9. Coolorado
10. Narcothéque
11. Esa banda en dub (feat. Calexico)
12. Bar inferno
13. Revu rockers
14. Tijuana bass
15. El fracaso