H. C. BEHRENDTSEN "Syncopes

Here, what belongs together is brought together: Hans Arnold, Christian Dähne and Konni Behrendt bring (new) music and (old) dance into close proximity to each other. Second concert at 11:30 pm.

Leaning far out of the window of music criticism, one could casually claim that math rock is the jazz among rock music. This is not to say that jazz and rock have never merged before. But if previous attempts at such marriages have always smelled too much like daddy's stuffy record cabinet, then Math-Rock may offer a fresher approach to the versatile thunderstorm of beats with basic groove and precision picking. Math-Rock as music close to the head and equally close to the body presents itself to inclined first-time listeners between uncoordinated excitement and unbelievable tidiness. And whether the H. C. BEHRENDTSEN to be reviewed here are part of this equation or not, clear intersections with their sonic and aesthetic ambivalences are nevertheless unmistakable. Beyond the all-embracing precision of their playing style, H., C. and B. from L. nevertheless manage to attach a pleasantly warm crust of dirt to their sound. Like fine porcelain with coffee rim or tarnished silverware, so to speak. So the eclectic instrumental fumbling of drums, guitar and bass sounds hurriedly ironed onto magnetic tape, but promises an experimental all-around that can hardly be grasped in one go. While reaching deep into the box of quotations, the group thus inevitably eludes rigid categories. Where bars and tones have once become canted, the nostalgic twang of rarely heard surf guitars breaks through or 90s rock ephemera pearls delicately on the surface.

For this year's edition of the Leipziger Jazztage, the musicians are taking on a cross-media composition project that aims to do no less than completely break down the usual linear mechanisms of reception, interpretation and expression in the field of communication and tension between music and dance. Based on a selection of meticulously databanked digital copies of global and local contemporary dance choreographies from the collection of the University of Cyprus, the project puts the cart before the horse. Time-based movement sequences become rigid data sets, from which music is composed again in a translation process. In the trio's own words, "We play new music for old dances.".

A wild ride between deconstruction and reconstruction, which also no longer relegates the mistakes, the stumbling, the stumbling to the edge of the stage. Their appearance is to be welcomed as festive and momentous. In the context of the stage performance, not only virtual extracts of originally recorded movements in space are used, but also the pictorial material of the archive is to find its way into the live visuals, giving us an unexpected insight into the compositional process.