EIGHT DUOS - REVIEWS

While Beins belongs to numerous working projects, including Polwechsel, Marmalsana, Sawt Out, and Splitter Orchestra, he's always been active in the sort of ad hoc collaborations that define the life of an improvising musician, so the eight duets recorded for the album nicely reflect that aspect of his practice in Berlin, where all of the participants live. But in a more profound sense, the triple album does a fantastic job at painting a rather expansive portrait of his overlapping sound worlds. That's not to say that every facet of his work is represented here, but the kind of sounds he makes are covered in wildly divergent contexts across these six sides of vinyl.
Few individuals have expanded on the sort of lowercase sound aesthetic that Beins himself helped forge decades ago, transforming and developing countless techniques into new worlds on sonic inquiry. Each duo draws out different sides of his work, whether than involves him turning to electronics or even electric bass, or using very reduced tools, like the amplified cymbal and bass drum he limits himself to on "Expansion," the opening duet with Andrea Neumann - using her "inside piano" device and mixing board. While the twenty-minute piece is marked by a wide variety of frictive and metallic sounds, it would be hard to consider that any sort of limitations were actually imposed because the evolving sprawl is so rich, varied, and fluid. He reunites with guitarist Michael Renkel, his partner in the duo Activity Center, on "Extraction," for which they are both credited with percussion and strings. As one quickly comes to realize, abrasion is more common than striking when it comes to Beins, and that's certainly the case on this piece, which blends tinkling tones and coarsely bowed strings of some sort, to say nothing of wobbly music box tones and berimbau-like twangs that emerge later.
One of the most surprising entries is "Excursion," the duet with pianist Quentin Tolimieri, in which Beins plays a more conventional drum kit. At the outset the keyboardist carves out a probing strain of post-bop, abstracting familiar cadences and progressions from the 1950s, with Beins delivering a stutter kind of energy, replacing the sizzling cymbal swells of Sunny Murray with irregularly surging tom patterns to suggest a similar sensation. Halfway through Tolimieri snaps into a more familiar pose-the hyper minimalism of his brilliant 2022 album "Monochromes" banging away at a single dissonant chord relentlessly until it starts wreaking havoc on our perception, as the hammering sound becomes downright psychedelic. Beins more or less maintains the same tack he started with, with stands in starker relief against the rapidly cycling piano. Eventually Tolimieri dissolves that into a sudden left-handed mass of thunderous bass, at which Beins does finally pull back in elegant contrast, shaping a splatter of precise cymbal play.
On "Unleash" Beins opts for analog synthesizer and samples, bringing in field recordings into a shifting morass of sound captured and sculpted by Andrea Ermke. The sounds are less tactile and physically weighted, but the sophisticated sensibility inherent in their deployment and arrangement certainly parallels what he does with percussive objects.
Duos with trumpeter Axel Dörner, pianist Anaïs Tuerlinckx, and sound artist Marta Zapparoli are no less compelling, each encounter eliciting a specific aesthetic and gestural/textural response, but I'm especially drawn to the collaboration with Tony Elieh. He and Beins play together in the trio Marmalsana, but they have also been working as a duo called Zone Null, and based on the strength of "Transformation" I look forward to hearing more. They both enhance and stretch electric basses with various electronics, beginning with splotches of distorted noises colliding with a twangy, meandering line that builds out a structure in real time. But as the lengthy piece unfolds the instrumental provenance frequently evaporates in a compelling swirl of shimmering electronic tones, from the most glassy and high pitched crackling to machine like vibrations residing in the lower end of the spectrum, usually with multiple sound streams bouncing around. Eventually a twitchy rhythm emerges, and one of the musicians moves back to bass, locking into a taut sort of dry funk that puts me in the mind of Radian-the superb Austrian trio whose drummer, Martin Brandlmayr, works with Beins in Polwechsel-before more abstract sound sculpting swerves to a satisfying conclusion.
- Peter Margasak, Nowhere Street -

Significant birthdays can also be a reason for an exploratory musician to reflect on his legacy. To celebrate his 60th birthday last year Berlin-based composer/improviser Burkhard Beins has released Eight Duos Ni Vu Ni Connu LP 053-055, whose eight selections feature his collaboration with a cross section of the city's other sound makers. Beins, who also creates sound installations, has for decades been involved in the German capital's evolving Echtzeitmusik or real-time music scene. Here he varies his instrumentation on every track bringing out an amplified cymbal, bass drum, snare drum, drum kit, analog synthesizers, walkie talkie and samples at various times, with his partners playing acoustically or heavily involved with electronics. 'Unleash' with pianist Quentin Tolimieri, is probably the closest to jazz. Using a full kit Beins' echoes and rattles complement the pianist's linear dynamics that slide down the scale and then reverse in such a manner that Tolimieri's sudden stops and hammered keys end up as percussive as Beins' beats. In contrast 'Transmission', where Beins' synthesizer and samples are interlaced with the antennas, receivers and tape machines of Italian Marta Zapparoli, is solely affiliated to voltage. The rugged oscillations output by both distend to mirrored affiliations which centre on extensive textures that commingle as widening electric lawnmower-like drones and unvarying rumbles are only infrequently pierced by suction-like projections, muffled rocket-launching explosions, airy whooshes and backwards flanges and shakes. The result is almost opaque until the final dissolve. Still the most characteristic duets involve two individual Echtzeitmusik theoreticians: idiosyncratic trumpeter Axel Dörner and Andrea Neumann, who plays inside piano and mixing board. Initially low key, 'Expansion' blends board hisses and reverb with Neumann's careful string slides that meld tolling, buzzing and clipped timbres. Beins' isolated cymbal vibrations and strained scratches end with reverberations sounding like distant thunder. The joint murmurs simultaneously suggest vibrant colors and crepuscule. A variant of this, Dörner's technique on 'Unlock' is to never emphasize a whole note but instead create brass architecture from half valve spits, hollow strains, toneless breaths, growly smears and distant whistles. Occasionally side snare scratches and foreshortened drum top rubs match up with trumpet strategy combining for tongue and palm percussion sizzles.
- Ken Waxman, Jazz Word -

Im ausgehenden 18. Jahrhundert gelang Franz Joseph Haydn ein Coup, den jetzt im angebrochenen 21. Jahrhundert die Klangkünstlerin Andrea Ermke und der Improvisations- und Echtzeitmusiker Burkhard Beins umgekehrt zu landen wissen. Bei Haydn war es in seiner 94. Sinfonie, der mit dem berühmten Paukenschlag, ein plötzlicher Lauschangriff des ganzen Orchesters. Ob als Überraschung oder als Weckruf gedacht, darüber geht die Überlieferung auseinander. Bei Ermke und Beins geschieht es, dass in ihrer Soundskulptur "Unleash" Analogsynthesizer, Sampler und Mini-Disks sechs Minuten lang vielstimmig rascheln und zirpen, bis unvermittelt eine halbminütige Brummpause einsetzt. Sie vibriert über einer spürbaren Stille und führt hin zu einer Klanganordnung, die als Filmkulisse denkbar ist: In einer Wartehalle erklingt ein Glockenspiel. Hast Du Töne!
Anhören kann man sich diese alles andere als weihevolle Mikro-Sinfonie der Drähte auf einer von insgesamt drei LPs, die sich Burkhard Beins Ende Oktober in einem opulenten Vinyl-Boxset mit Beiheft zum 60. Geburtstag schenkt. "Eight Duos" heißt der schicke Schuber, und in dem Titel steckt bereits, was die Musik von Burkhard Beins auszeichnet: Es ist ihr nichtmonologisches Prinzip. Eines seiner frühen Alben ist eine Zweierkonstellation des Perkussionisten mit dem Gitarristen John Bisset, "Chapel / Kapell", aufgenommen in der Stechinelli-Kapelle aus dem 17. Jahrhundert in Wieckenberg, Ortsteil der Gemeinde Wietze im Landkreis Celle. Beins' Geburtsort war Adresse eines niedersächsischen Ölfiebers, das von Mitte des 19. bis Mitte des 20. Jahrhunderts währte und dem durch die Förderung von Teer, Stichwort Satansspeck, bereits bekannt gewordenen Wietze einen beträchtlichen Aufschwung bescherte.
Dort, zwischen gewesener Industrie und Waldlage, so schreibt der Bad Alchemy-Herausgeber Rigobert Dittmann in seinen Linernotes zu "Eight Duos", traf der 15-jährige Burkhard Beins auf eine US-amerikanische Elektronik-Delegation: In der Nachbarschaft, im Studio des Strommusik-Pioniers Klaus Schulze, nahm die Band Earthstar mehrere ihrer Alben auf. Für Burkhard Beins war das eine prägende Erfahrung. Im Gespräch mit der taz - Beins zuzuhören, ob im Konzert, auf Platte oder in der Konversation, unterbricht Routinen - erzählt er von einer anderen frühen Inspiration, dem britischen Post-Punk-Trio der Sonderstufe This Heat. Mit deren Drummer Charles Hayward hat Burkhard Beins später zusammengearbeitet.
Die aufgeraute Raffinesse dieser anspruchsvollen, dabei unakademischen Musik - Beins ist Autodidakt - findet sich auch auf "Eight Duos". Sie alle nehmen mindestens eine halbe, manchmal eine ganze Plattenseite ein. Den Anfang machen Lidingö, Andrea Neumann an Innenklavier und Mischpult und Burkhard Beins an gekippter Basstrommel und Ridebecken. In ihrem dreiteiligen Stück "Expansion" geht es metallisch zu, es gibt Nachhall, ein Scharren und mittendrin eine Sequenz, die fast so etwas wie einen Blues anreißt. Dann sind da Activity Center: Mit Gitarrist Michael Renkel, hier mit Beins an der Zither und einer einzelnen über Karton gespannten Saite, war er Mitte der Neunzigerjahre schon im Quartett nunc aktiv, als Duo entwerfen sie das windschiefe Folk-Instrumental "Extraction". Am ehesten Jazz ist die "Excursion" von Quentin Tolimieri am Flügel und Beins am Schlagzeug, die sich mit steigernder Nervosität in ein Pianostakkato spielen.
Die Brücke zwischen dem geräuschhaften Ansatz Andrea Neumanns und dem das Piano noch Piano sein lassenden Spiel Quentin Tolimieris lässt sich in Anaïs Tuerlinckxs und Beins Beitrag "Unfold" hören. In "Unlock" gibt es Wischer auf der Snare wie im Cool Jazz, durch Axel Dörners Trompete, die er, nicht zuletzt durch Atmungsgeräusche, wie einen Synthesizer klingen lassen kann, wird das noch cooler. "Transformation", die A-Seite der dritten Platte, gehört Tony Elieh und Burkhard Beins, beide an der Bassgitarre und Elektronik unter dem Alias Zone Null. Der Name lässt an eine Jugendlektüre von Beins denken, an die sowjetischen Science-Fiction Autoren Arkadi und Boris Strugazki. Das hypnotische Stück ist ein schönes Beispiel dafür, was man mit einem Rockinstrument anstellen kann, wenn man kein Rocker ist.
Den Schlusspunkt setzen Vertigo Transport: Marta Zapparoli an Antennen, Radioempfängern und Bandmaschinen, und Burkhard Beins am analogen Synthesizer, mit Walkie-Talkies und Samples. Ihr "Transmission" ist eine Laboranordnung aus Mosaiksteinchen und Rauschen, aus Frequenzen und Codes. Verfremdete Stimmen mischen sich hinein. Es geht um ihren Klang, nicht um vorgegebenen Sinn, der manchmal der Sinnlosigkeit näher ist, als den Sinnstiftern bewusst ist. Ruhestörung will Burkhard Beins seiner Musik übrigens nicht als Auftrag mitgeben. Eher geht es ihm um Reduktion und Konzentration als Unterbrechung der Bildschirmwelt. Man kann mit dieser Methode die Kraft der Schönheit entdecken.
- Robert Mießner, taz Berlin -

Spread over the course of three lps, 'Eight Duos' is a heady collection featuring German composer- percussionist Burkhard Beins collaborating with like-minded players who dig deep into freeform- spatial music with shared musical bravado. On 'Expansion', Beins (amplified cymbal, bass drum) and Andrea Neumann (inside piano, mixing board) create a monolith of textural music, sustained tones, electronic gurgling, and Beins gleefully bowing and rattling a cymbal to its breaking point. The duo of Beins and Tony Elieh (both playing bass guitar and electronics) forges the weird blast of the 21-minute 'Transformation', where the traces of a major 7th chord are tapped out in a bass, while a veritable ocean of electronic frequencies attempts to either drown or keep the melody afloat-all dissolving into 15 minutes of digital impressionism. The album also contains similarly impressive collaborations between Beins and Michael Renkel (strings, percussion), Quentin Tolimieri (piano), Andrea Ermke (mini discs, samples), Anaïs Tuerlinckx (piano), Axel Dörner (trumpet) and Marta Zapparoli (antennas, receivers, tape machines).
- Daniel A. Brown, The NYC Jazz Record -

Eight Duos is a collection of duets featuring one common performer, only, it's German percussionist Burkhard Beins. Percussionist doesn't begin to cover it: Beins is as at home with analog synths and bass guitars - in fact, anything that makes a noise - as he is with conventional percussion.
The first duet features Andrea Neumann, a prominent member of the German Echtzeitmusik ('real-time music') scene. I say scene, rather than genre, as it's a difficult thing to define. Echtzeitmusik has been linked to Reductionism - an approach to improvisation typified by subdued, unstable sounds, the creative use of silence and a renunciation of gesture - but any attempt to pin it down tends to flounder. As a  scene, it possibly has more to do with the social network of musicians and listeners involved in it as it has to any particular approach to free-form music-making. Neumann herself started life as a classically-trained pianist. Her interest in piano preparation led her to have a strung frame specially made (the 'inside piano') which she plays in conjunction with a mixing desk.
The second is with Michael Renkel. A guitarist, he - like Neumann - is classically-trained. Also, not unlike Neumann, he plays a string-board, only one that he made himself. He also uses preparations and real-time electronic processing. Here, though, the resources are modest and both players are only credited with playing percussion and (somewhat enigmatically) 'strings'.
The third, with pianist Quentin Tolimieri, is perhaps the most conventional-sounding: a substantial part of it being rooted in the language of modern jazz. The fourth, with Andrea Ermke, couldn't be more different:  it's entirely noise-based, using synths, minidisks and samples. As Beins says in the album notes, 'on a conceptual level, the idea was that I would play with different instruments or with a different set-up each time in order to present the breadth of my current work'. The duet-partners were chosen with this in mind. Each session demanded a different methodology. The next duet, with pianist Anaïs Tuerlinkx, is different again, in places being very reminiscent of Cage's works for prepared piano. The sixth features trumpet-player Axel Dörner. In the seventh, Beins - here, on electric bass and electronics - is joined by electric bass player Tony Elieh. This, the longest of the duets, unfolds as a series of static textures. The final duet, with Marta Zapparoli, sounded intriguing, featuring, as it does, 'antennas, receivers, tape machines - analog synthesizers, walkie talkies, sample'. It did not disappoint. It's quite a noise-fest.
Stylistically diverse, this album, paradoxically, defines a style, though not in the sense people usually talk about it. The style here has little to do with how the music sounds: it's about process, not end result. And the process is that of collaboration, the process of finding common ground with another performer. You could compare it to speakers of different languages evolving a pidgin language which allows them to communicate. This is music as the process of human interaction.
- Dominic Rivron, International Times -

Last year was full of round birthdays for notable figures in free jazz and improvised music. In these pages, too, we pompously celebrated Evan Parker's 80th birthday or John Butcher's 70th. Agustí Fernández and Mats Gustafsson and Ken Vandermark, a decade younger than him, also played the role of celebrated jubilarians.
Also celebrating his round 60th birthday in October 2024 was German multi-instrumentalist Burkhard Beins, a musician of a thousand talents, although less frequently featured on the front pages of non-existent newspapers devoted exclusively to improvised music. The last weekend in October saw a jubilee concert in Berlin, with Luxembourg-based label Ni Vu Ni Connu supplying a triple vinyl containing eight duets the jubilarian made with artists of various provenance. In each of them, Beins presented himself in a different instrumental set, which perfectly illustrates what a versatile, multi-genre musician he is. Improvisation reigned supreme during the recording sessions, but we are well aware in these pages that it is not the only method of creative work of this exquisite artist. The eight duo recordings were recorded in the spring of 2023 and are housed on six vinyl sides. Four of the duets last about twenty minutes each and fill the side of a black disc on their own, the other four are intervals of ten minutes or less, so they share a side with another duet.
The parade of duets opens with Andrea Neumann, who prepares the piano and uses a mixing table to transform her acoustic phrases into electro-acoustic portions of seasoned noise. Beins uses cymbals, which he delicately amplifies, and a bass drum, on which he kneads mysterious objects. This improvisation is conglomerated into three self-contained stories. The first is focused, almost ritualistic, concentrating on all-acoustic phrases scattered across a space whose echoes seem endless. In the second, the phonemes flowing from the inside piano are covered with a dusting of something definitively post-acoustic and take on a percussive form. They are echoed by Beins working in a similar style. The third strand, on the other hand, is saturated with a twisted melodicism, coming from the piano's sound box and meeting the sounds of kneading objects on the snare drum. The level of intensity of this section leads us to describe it as post-industrial.
The other side of the vinyl consumes two duets. The former, accompanied by Michael Renkel, is a double set of percussion and stringed instruments. The artists tug at the strings, polish them, hit the percussion accessories. They generate pure, but also intensely prepared phrases. There is no shortage of guitar and zither-like sounds. On the one hand the gruffness of post-blues, on the other the ritual celebration of acoustic phrases. The second duet, with Quentin Tolimieri, is in turn a jazz narrative for piano keyboard and percussion. The story has a compulsive drive, takes on an appropriate dynamic and falls into free jazz repetition. Lots of emotion, although the aesthetic itself is very distant from the other duets.
On the third side we find our good friends from the last edition of the Spontaneous Music Festival. First up is Andrea Ermke and her mini disks equipped with unique samples. Beins also uses samples, but his primary working tool is an analogue synthesiser. The several-minute narrative here sticks together from multiple threads, intelligently woven into the narrative scroll - rain-swept urban noises, multicoloured hums and murmurs, harsh-ambient interjections generating an almost post-industrial atmosphere and synthetic, sometimes bass-heavy pulsations. The drama of the story is also created by doors closing twice with a bang. The side is completed by an all-acoustic duet, with Anaïs Tuerlinckx phrasing both inside and outside piano. Beins accompanies her on percussion instruments. After a gentle opening, full of separative, trembling phonies, the story takes on an intensity but also a darkness. Foam phrases here seek the sky, those of the shuddering snare swirl across the floor. After a brief cool down, the flow is created by the filigree sounds of piano strings and rustling cymbals. The anguished acoustics eventually stick together into a drone of singing resonance.
The second side of the second disc is given over to Axel Dörner preparing trumpet and working on snare drum and objects. The nearly nineteen-minute improvisation is a state of permanent dramatic change.The story initially gives the impression of being minimalist, and the musicians seem to be clad in patches of silence.Over time, however, they do not drip us with well-constructed explosions of noise and narrative thickening. Even if Beins seems the more delicate of the bunch, he too, as a consequence of only successful decisions, is able to master the narrative spectrum. As both musicians cleverly prepare, the viewer's cognitive dissonance grows, and pinpointing the source of the sound seems far more difficult. Sometimes they phrase imitatively, in which case they stick together in a homogeneous stream of intense noise.An interesting idea, in the contact of the whole, is the phase of subtly prepared trumpet, supported by percussion action.
The third vinyl takes us permanently into the world of non-acoustic sounds. On its first side we find a duet of two bass guitars, connected to electronics. In the role of partner jeweller Tony Elieh. The longest improvisation in the set is inaugurated by heavy, rather lazy, bass phrasing on the left flank and a portion of juicy, semi-noisy electronics on the opposite flank. The flow quite quickly reaches an almost noise-like intensity, but after only a few minutes it sticks together into a homogenous drone of dense, rough ambient, making this moment perhaps the most beautiful part of the whole three-pack. In the middle of the piece, the musicians delve into noisy electronics, only to return shortly after to bass phrasing, here done with some rhythm. Before the story fades out, the musicians serve us portions of singing ambient, a rasping electro beat, and finally a minimalist bass dialogue, ultimately submerged in a streak of ambient. The birthday three-pack closes with a duet with Marta Zapparoli.
Here the escape from acoustics is definitive - radio aerials and receivers, tape recorders, walkie talkies, analogue synthesiser and sample dispensers land on the mixing tables. Right from the start, the artists build a multi-layered drone, filling it with buzzing and pulsating noise. Systematically, they add more elements to it, causing real wars of worlds to take place inside. After a laser-like buildup, the crucible of cooled, quite dark emotions is followed by samples of sounds, as if suddenly all radio stations on earth had started their talking broadcast. This hustle and bustle in the ether goes through various stages of intensity - first a plethora of electro-acoustic sparks, then a portion of grating glitches on the links, and finally a fading, post-electronic anthill.
- No Fuck, Trybuna Muzyki Spontanicznej -

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