B.i.l.l.
Spielweise 2
The name Bill stands for the B of Clive Bell (who played wind instruments with Jah Wobble, David Sylvian, Jeff Beck, Bill Laswell), the I of Hans Joachim Irmler (Faust), the L of Robert Lippok (of To Rococo Rot fame) and the other L is Jaki Liebezeit, best known as the drummer of Can. Quite a supergroup line-up, me thinks. They went into the Faust studio for one week as part of a project called ,Spielwiese Scheer to work on an album. They only played together once at the Faust festival Klangbad. A drummer, a wind instrument player and two persons responsible for all things with keyboards. The music sounds partly improvised, based loosely around the drumming of Liebezeit. In one track, ,The Thrower a sequencer driven backdrop provides that everybody can improvise loosely, but its the weakest track here. When things are shorter, they are also more coherent, such as in ,Lovely Ending, with a spooky bass riff, electronically treated fl utes and far away electronics. Or the joyful opening of ,Glassbamboo, the fi lmic, eastern sounding, Under Water (although perhaps a bit long) and the ambient atmospheres of ,Das Boot. Six of the seven pieces are very nice, offering a variety of moods and styles and is executed with some great care. And all of that in the matter of one week.