The Free Jazz Collective
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By Martin Schray
The last words on this album are: “Can you tell me about hell?” They are spoken by Anja Plaschg, who is better known under her moniker Soap&Skin. The actress and musician can only be heard on the title track, where she speaks dark lyrics over minimal set pieces. Breath in Definition creates an apocalyptic musical landscape. At some point, the piece stops and there are 70 seconds of complete silence - before Plaschg says the above-mentioned sentence. This is disturbing, but - astonishingly - the piece is also breathtakingly beautiful. This applies not only to the piece, but to the whole album.
Ingrid Schmoliner (prepared piano) and Alexander Kranabetter (trumpet, electronics) - the duo behind Drank - are prominent sound researchers of the Austrian improv scene, their focus is on experimental music. The pieces they create combine improvised music, pop, ambient, minimal music, folklore and electronic new music and they link dark loops and drones with recurrent patterns, church bell-like, meditative sounds with fleeting melodies and bumpy beats. The textures are varied and open, and what is always interesting is what is not played.
The beauty of the duo’s music lies in the fleeting melodies, the repetitive structures and the sounds that ricochet through empty echo chambers. They outline the sound architecture and give the music the necessary stability - as in “Iridescent”, the album’s opener, which sounds like a roughened composition by Kenny Wheeler. Kranabetter’s polyphonic trumpet floats weightlessly over broad surfaces, Schmoliner keeps a very low profile. This is music that could also be released by ECM if it weren’t for the barely perceptible dissonances in the background, that push themselves more and more to the fore towards the end of the piece. However, “Iridescent” does not set the tone for the rest of the album, it’s rather a starting point. “Min” and “Gitta”, the pieces that follow, are reminiscent of minimal music, Schmoliner gets more involved in the music. She determines the basic structure, Kranabetter sets the accents, whereby the trumpet is heavily distorted. “Gitta”, featuring Lukas Koenig on marimba and effects, has something of a tricky ambient techno piece. The tectonic soundscapes move only slowly, but the music’s appeal especially lies in these repetitions and slower shifts.
The highlight of the album is the aforementioned title track, the piece that it all comes down to. It’s where gloom and beauty come together most perfectly, because on the one hand the monotony is almost unbearable, but on the other hand you don’t want the piece to end. The rhythms are restrained and stoic, Kranatwetter’s trumpet is delicate but also askew, Anja Plaschg’s lyrics are desperate and lost, then again they go straight to the heart.
For fans of 23 Skidoo, Robert Wyatt, LaMonte Young and early Jon Hassell. Very recommended!
Breath in Definition is available on vinyl, as a CD and as a download.
You can listen to the album and order it here:
Breath in Definition by Drank (Ingrid Schmoliner & Alexander Kranabetter)
Mon Apr 21 04:00:00 GMT 2025