Hauschka’s new album, Salon des Amateurs, oscillates somewhere between a primed piano under institutionalized conditions and expressive dance in the light of a stroboscope. Within this adventurous hybrid, the composer and pianist Volker Bertelmann conceptualizes and improvises with the piano’s endless possibilities in his usual manner and flirts increasingly with the rhythmic Pop-appeal of a Francesco Tristano. Being inspired conceptionally and uniting arts and club by the choice of name, Salon des Amateurs uses mostly rhythmical instrumentalizations (similar to the parallely recorded Ferndorf), which are applied in an exhilarating yet burdensome way, especially in tracks like Two AM or Radar. This bass-based and vibrating maximization of the sound-spectrum is, amongst others, due to Joey Burns and John Convertino of Calexico, who together with Hillary Hahn are partially to be blamed for this audiophile excess. In addition, Bertelmann orders the body onto the dance-floor, softly and almost analog, by using numerous percussion-elements. With Hauschka, arts and physicality meet in expressive dancing, persuading the listener through its archaic and amateurish originality.
Salon Des Amateurs
