Insomniac Wonderworld
After his highly lauded debut PurpleCoolCarSleep (2003), followed up by what Rolling Stone Magazine heralded as "The most exciting piano trio album of the year 2005 ", Bantha Food (2005), we are now presented with Insomniac Wonderworld, the third album from Carsten Daerr's original trio of himself (piano, organ), Oliver Potratz (bass) and Eric Schaefer (drums). Saxophonist Uwe Steinmetz appears as a guest on two tracks.
Insomniac Wonderworld - the title allows for a lot of associations: for example the world of sleepless creatures of the night, as portrayed in Jürgen Roland's 1959 film "Unser Wunderland bei Nacht" (" Wonderland by Night"). The director combines scenes from Hamburg's nightlife with the narration style of the American Film Noir here, so creating his own distinctive aesthetics. With the music of pianist Daerr (born in 1975) it's pretty much the same thing: For years he's been expanding the boundaries of his music by harmonizing the art of genuine American jazz with his German roots, finding his way to his own expression, his own individual language.
The insomnia on Insomniac Wonderworld is not one of nervous restlessness however; for Carsten Daerr "insomniac" means much more a condition of heightened wakefulness in which amazement and wonder constantly pop into in the present. Carsten Daerr has retained the ability to marvel at things, and along with that has the rare talent of literally playing between the lines. The impressions from his Southeast Asian tour aren't built into his works in the form of folkloristic reminiscing, but as far-reaching directness and suspenseful dynamics. On songs like "Manila", "Kuala Lumpur", "Singapur" and "Jakarta", it becomes obvious that traveling is the album's central theme. Travel destinations serve Daerr as the starting point for five of the twelve tracks; the atmosphere, architecture and sound tapestries from these Asian metropolises are worked into his compositions.
Daerr plays with the open structures of jazz, leaves the trodden path and seeks new perspectives to describe places in Southeast Asia. The results of this cosmopolitan approach are such unique songs as the energy-laden "Manila", the strangely impenetrable and mystically charged "Penang", or "Singapur", that starts like a sixty's instrumental, becomes increasingly complex, and suddenly ends up reminiscing of reggae and dub . Carsten Daerr, it seems, is stranger to no one and nothing in the world of music.
More introspective compositions supply the contrast to these songs, above all the lyrical "Epilog (for my father)" and the piano-solo composition "Lucia". These homages to people create a quasi antipole to the "travel songs".
A further caesura are the compositions drummer Eric Schaefer contributes to the album. In the wild and choppy "Negative FX" he appears to be dealing with his relationship to hardcore in the 80's, and on the seemingly other-worldly track "Flatus Voci", the trio uses sound samples of a church organ, among others. And finally, "R2D2 Reloaded" gives us a double recourse to the past: for one the song has the same name as the cuddly robot in the Sci-Fi cult epic Star Wars, for another on Bantha Food there was already a composition with the title R2D2 (Err-Zwo-De-Zwo). It's exactly this musical back reference that shows what quantum leaps the trio has made in the last two years. And how these nmusicians, after the Bantha Food excursion, have arrived in the here and now - distinctly more grounded.
After existing for ten years, Carsten Daerr and his trio have not only delivered the proverbial "difficult third album" as one says in the world of music, but with Insomniac Wonderworld, have pushed open a door to a new sound universe. And leave the amazement to the listener.
Recent CD:
Insomniac Wonderworld
and from Traumton Records' website www.traumton.de