Kammerflimmer Kollektief INCOMMUNICADO "After a fascinating re-release on Temporary Residence earlier this year ("Mäander"), the Kollektief return to reinterpret some of those songs with a live band and add a few new compositions. The results are a mixed bag, but never dull. It's said that Thomas Weber, Kammerflimmer Kollektief's central figure, gave the members copies of "Mäander" and then asked them to come into the studio to play them as best they could. Considering "Mäander" was beat-driven electronic music, it's hard to see how a live band could rework that and come out with similar or better results. The Kollektief manages just fine. I found the reinterpretations to be better than the originals, but still lacking in some sense. Maybe it's that I like the music but it doesn't affect me all that much. But two of the last three tracks on this release, new material by Weber and the Kollektief, are well done. I liked them much better than anything else I'd heard from the band. The ambient wonder of "Kissen," for instance, is spooky in feel and in the way it builds but never quite achieves anything destructive or shocking. It's almost aural teasing, but in a good way. "Venti Latir" is hauntingly gorgeous, with violins and bass and keyboards that can cause the heart to soar. All in all, a solid release, even though two of the tracks are under minute, and really did nothing for me whatsoever. Weber got some amazing results on "Incommunicado," and it would serve this group well to try a whole release of original material. - Rob Devlin" BRAINWASHED.COM HYSTERIA "When Thomas Weber quotes Bob Dylan in the booklet to Hysteria, you're not sure if it's an act of self-assurance or the product of naiveté. It could easily be a mixture of both, as the German gearhound draws equally from an emotional and intellectual place in his concoctions; a kind of insular assemblage of studio static, rhythmic manipulation, post-rock smugness, and jazzy dalliance. For this mini-album outing, Weber sets the timbral disparity of double-bass and saxophone against the clicking minutia of digital experimentation. At times, especially in the three 'band' moments, Weber's experiment can seem a little bit ponderous, an open case of experimentation that doesn't grow beyond its inceptions. In the three collaborative pieces, which find Weber playing in a band scenario with five other musicians, he essentially delivers territories that seem a more ragged extrapolation of the streamlined machinations of Payola label-mates Tied & Tickled Trio. Weber serves himself much better when he goes alone, the album's three solo tracks providing him a framework in which he can explore the depths of his audio environments. The concept is the same - with twitters of defiled horns and humming double-bass patterns awash in so much scarified static - but the delivery is much more focused, Weber's use of dub production techniques pulling his range of treated sounds in and out of focus in a considered manner. BEAT.COM.AU NOV/2001 Kammerflimmer Kollektief status: I've left the group, got paid very little money musicians: Thomas Weber, Heike Wendelin, Johannes Frisch, Dietrich Foth, Christopher Brunner, Heike Aumüller, Anne Vortisch (has left the group) discography (only were i appeared): incommunicado LP/CD, 1999 hysteria LP/CD, 2000