It’s been three years since Steamboat Switzerland created a sensation with the release of the CDs Budapest (GROB 315) and ac/dB [Hayden] (GROB 316). Since then the bad has played over 100 concerts and expanded it repertoire considerably. The Hammond organ post-progrock and post-death metal trio of the Swiss men Dominik Blum (organ), Marion Pliakas (electronic bass) and Lucas Niggli (drums) has included numerous compositions of other composers in its program, has worked out an acoustic set (with piano instead of organ, and an amplified acoustic guitar instead of the electronic bass), has played two-fisted rock sets, curated festivals, and has merged into larger ensembles. A new, long overdue Steamboat CD could have meant anything: a rock CD, an acoustic set, work with a larger ensemble.
From this rich pool of work, they have decided to release a cycle of work: twelve compositions that Michael Wertmüller (who can be heard as a drummer on GROB204 ; some of his compositions are collected on GROB545 ) who wrote for (the fully amplified version of) Steamboat Switzerland. In addition he chose five poems from Michael Lenz, which appeared in the poetry volume Aller Ding in 2003. They are recited by Daniel Lieder, who is known as a singer of the legendary free-core combo Alboth! And by the way, Michael Wertmüller played drums for them.
The music is austere in the clearest sense of the word: exact, without embellishments, worked out by composer and musicians into the smallest details (Wertmüller participated directly in the recording production and studied the text parts meticulously). This unshiftable order does not serve to create drab, monotonous or brutal music, however. The music is alive and very lithesome. The compositions correspond to the complex way the band works and the band has downright absorbed the compositions – nothing sounds put on here, nothing played with effort, or even haphazardly. A dialect relationship: the musicians completely submit to the compositional material and the compositions become a means through which the band expresses itself.
On Wertmüller he most exact order is the catalyst for the vivid performance. The compositions are in constant movement, the music appears to move itself, reels, shoots forward and back. Therefore it rocks and there are terrific thundering power passages. But they also step back behind a multifarious, dazzling, constantly homogenous tonal image.

 Steamboat Switzerland (also on GROB315, GROB316, GROB859, GROB961)

 Dominik Blum (Homepage) (also on GROB960)

 Lucas Niggli (Homepage)

 Marino Pliakas (Homepage)

  back to GROB catalog

GROB656 Coleman/ Hautzinger/ Sachiko_M/ Yoshihide - Concert in St.Louis