• artist:
  Bob Rutman
• featured artist:
  Rutman, Irmler, Hentz, Ginsberg
• country:
  Germany
• release year:
  2011
• style(s): Experimental Acoustic
• formats:
  • CD (Compact Disc)
• record submitted by:
  Konzertbuero Ginsberg
• label:
  Klangbad
• publisher:
  Freibank
• 
  buy this record

RUTMAN'S STEEL CELLO ENSEMBLE
feat. Ginsberg, Hentz & Irmler

You can produce quite astounding results with the bows of a violin, a viola, a cello or a double bass. Especially when you use them for purposes other than what they were intended for. It should be pointed out though, that for classically trained percussionists, it's common practice to glide over cymbals and gongs with a bow now and again. In this way, a ghostly, screeching and singing tone arises that simultaneously has a warm, metallic sound. And there are indeed all sorts of things you can treat with a bow: countless guitar players use bows. If you glide a bow over the vibraphone or over plates of glass you can come up with astonishing effects. And Sven-Åke Johansson's symphony for bowed cardboard boxes amazes with its musical richness.

Bob Rutman has invented what may well be the largest stringed instrument ever made. With a bow
made of fishing line, he bows the suspension of a gigantic steel sail and in this way creates drones whose volume is not unlike the noise of a plane taking off. We might be reminded of Russolo and "The Art of Noise" by the futurists, or of machine music or industrial. And we're right and wrong there.

Of course, simply the look of Rutman's steel cello gives a martial impression. So, it's not
surprising that in 1998, he was successful in playing support for the Einstürzende Neubauten while they were touring the United States. Yet, Rutman's work doesn't have the cold, dehumanized character which is part of the nature of industrial music. In Rutman's music, even its grinding and rasping soundscapes, which rub against each other like huge layers of feedback, sound warm and personal.

This album doesn't simply document the enormous range of sounds that can be created by a unique
instrument. It is, in addition, a document of a musician coming to terms artistically with his
impressions of war - being, as he is, from a generation who personally experienced the noise of fighter aircraft and bomb attacks.

Bob Rutman, who will be celebrating his 80th birthday this year, is not only a musician and instrument maker. After four years of studying fine arts in New York City and Mexico City, he set up his own gallery in New York. He has always worked as draftsman, painter and sculptor. He founded The Steel Cello Ensemble in 1975. After intensive touring in the seventies the ensemble took a sabbatical until 1990, when Matthias Osterwold encouraged Rutman to move back to Berlin. There, he pursued the ensemble in several different line-ups.

Hans Joachim Irmler, founding member of the group Faust, who also runs the label "Klangbad" and
organises the festival of the same name, has already made his mark with countless collaborations. His favorite instrument is the organ, but for the Steel Cello Ensemble, he also acts as guitar player.

The experienced drummer, Kersten Ginsberg, adds his own special twist to the typically krautrock-like "sewing machine drums" by using shuffle rhythms. The drums in this production (for which Ginsberg and Irmler are responsible) slog their way bit by bit through a standing wave of noise. At times the drums almost seem to drown in the sea of sound, but then slowly work their way back out again. This is certainly also due to the fact that Rutman, with his voluminous playing, rich in harmonic overtones, predefines a high degree of intensity to his fellow musicians.

And then we have Mike Hentz, the Jew's harp playing performance artist and art professor.
The sound of his instrument adds an almost humorous ease to the ensemble's music, on the one hand. And then, the pulse of the Jew's harp untiringly urges the other instruments on and complements Ginsberg's drumming very organically, on the other.

This is music whose physicality can, as it were, be taken hold of with both hands. The ensemble
recalls the old virtues of industrial and psychedelic music in a very dynamic album production: speaking voices like those from police radio, distorted buzz, wahwah guitars, driving drums, and expansive soundscapes. An album which does real justice to the label's name, "Klangbad" (literally translated from the German,"Sound Bath")!

Links

• Klangbad
• Management
• Viedeo teaser Rutman