Rüdiger Carl
Villa Hügel
For over half a century, Sven Åke Johansson and Rüdiger Carl have explored the boundaries of music together. Villa Hügel captures a rare moment: a concert with no audience, recorded in 2020 in the library of Villa Hügel during the 2 x Kippenberger exhibition. The few present could only experience it in-house via TV transmission. Carl on accordion, Johansson on percussion, cardboard, and crackle box—an interplay of structure and openness, sound and silence. This release follows Johansson’s exhib…
In Early November
Two historical heavyweights of European free music, clarinetist Rüdiger Carl and drummer Sven-Åke Johansson, join forces with younger bassist Joel Grip for a night of incredible trios. Recorded a few months before the pandemic clampdown, in November of 2019, at Berlin's Au Topsi Pohl, the music is exploratory and swinging, with Carl's viscous clarinet and a brilliant rhythm team steeped in time-based feel but loose and sometimes oblique. Johansson was part of the first Peter Brötzmann Trio to …
King Alcohol
A reissue of King Alcohol, recorded for the German FMP label in 1972. King Alcohol is one of the landmark recordings of free jazz in Europe, a mind-blowing studio session featuring Rüdiger Carl on tenor saxophone, Günter Christmann on trombone, and the astonishing Detlef Schönenberg on drums. Volatile and precise, anticipating much of the future sound of free music in Europe but also paying homage to American antecedents like Roswell Rudd and Archie Shepp, King Alcohol is truly a lost jewel. Fir…