Christian Weber = Joëlle Léandre + Ray Brown + George Crumb

Despite a list of collaborators longer than your genealogy, upright bassist Christian Weber demonstrates his ability to go it alone for 38 minutes with no edits, no electronics and no loop stations on this live recording. Exploring the entire spectrum of the instrument’s ability – and then some – Weber begins his monolog by pinching and pulling strings deeply and intently enough to resemble the team of lumberjacks who first bore his bass. Continuing in this fashion, he slowly introduces his gamut of techniques, furiously juggling slaps, sul pont, scraped rhythms, pizzicato, felt-not-heard drones, sprinkles of melody, microtonal pulses and wood creaks into a lovingly tangled texture; despite this History of Extended Techniques, Weber is a master who manages these into a cliché-free, hypnotic performance. After an intoxicating, growling climax, Weber descends into muted plucks and carefully paused punches of harmonic waves that echo the Zürich concert hall as the curtain falls.

Dave Madden
Slug
Slug #236
August 2008