Cassiber (phonetically: 'a message smuggled out of prison') crashed like a locomotive into the Deutsche Neue Welle. Founded by Heiner Goebbels, Alfred Harth, Christoph Anders and Chris Cutler (his first major project after News From Babel), Cassiber managed to fuse materials and attitudes drawn from experimental rock, fringe jazz, punk, pop, plunderphonics, improvisation, close structure and musique concrete into an energetic and complex form of studio (and then concert) composition unique in its fusion of highly diverse experimental approaches to form with risky, emotional and expressive execution.
This CD collects unreleased live recordings and studio sketches, sequences like a typical concert and, as luck would have it, these turn out to be great recordings that paint the best – and most devil-take-the-hindmost – picture of this extraordinary, groundbreaking band. The sound is exemplary and the music constantly thinks itself around corners. Plus you have all the complexity and serendipity of live interaction and spontaneous rearrangement - you can hear the band is having a good time, even when some of the sounds seem to come out of nowhere. The programme is radical, mixing music, dramaturgy and cultural debris with organised noise, rhythmical intensity, lyricism and semantic complexity.