It's fantastic and alien. DOWNTOWNMUSICGALLERY (USA)
The constant slippages and shifts within the arrangements make this an absorbing “pop” record... It’s also fascinating approached as an experimental record—the radical techniques of free improv gain power when they’re focused by composed structures. CHICAGO READER (USA)
A superb example of how less can be so much more. THE SQUID'S EAR (USA)
This is a uniquely rich , strange album that deserves to be very influential. ALL ABOUT JAZZ (USA)
Abstract Pop of very first choice. SANDS-ZINE (I)
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selected as BEST TRIBUTE RELEASE 2009 by ALL ABOUT JAZZ NEW YORK
While being true to the spirit of the music's composer, Dok Wallach is as true to their own take on Mingus' music, adding to the tradition versus regurgitating it. ALL ABOUT JAZZ (USA)
A highly remarkable quartet. JAZZTHETIK (D)
Den vier Berlinern gelang eine Hommage, die das Innerste von Mingus' Arbeit aufgreift. RONDO (D)
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Unununium is a magnificent piece of work by four musicians at the height of their powers in a vibrant new music scene documented by an essential label. PARISTRANSATLANTIC (F)
Tasteful and inventive on the highest level. ALIAS (IL MANIFESTO) (I)
The music is full of humor, pleasantly (un)pretentious and poetic, which make this a very sympathetic quartet. The best thing you can do is to surprise yourself with this cd. It is worth it. VITAL WEEKLY (NL)
Music with a genre-spanning vibrance. DE:BUG (D)
Spectacularly inventive.THE WIRE (UK)
A tasteful CD of surreal jazz. BLOW UP (I)
Schön versponnene Sounds in klug erdachten Strukturen. FREISTIL (A)
One of the most intriguing reed players around today shows his compositional wisdom through a systematic deployment of sparse elements in rather ample structures...Even in the most suggestive inventions, coherent delicacies prevail over abstruse difficulty, keeping the comprehension degree at an accessible level while yielding a lyricism whose exhalations pervade the whole album. Not necessarily in dramatic fashion, Unununium present some unusual perspectives without overly trespassing the borders; this CD is probably the best showcase of Thieke's universe until now. TOUCHING EXTREMES (I)
What characterizes saxophonist/clarinetist Michael Thieke’s music throughout this thoroughly engaging CD is its bristling intelligence. Each piece is the result of a penetrating gaze at the possibilities inherent in the musical seeds found in the compositions themselves... Unununium reveals an imaginative world filled with surprising locales and intriguing inhabitants. Highly recommended. EXCLAIM (CAN)
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A subtle, precise album...Overall it‘s a proud example of the new Berlin music, convivial, intense and light-hearted at the same time, and effortlessly blurring Improv into composition.THE WIRE (UK)
Pieces are warmly meditative, growing out long tones and multiphonics whose pipe-organ texture slowly changes dynamics and sonorities in an organic way. .... What captures the ear here is their impeccable attention to detail, especially the resulting frissons that come when microtonal shifts give rise to beats and resonances that well up and recede in dreamlike waves of sound colour.EXCLAIM (CAN)
Great stuff.PARISTRANSATLANTIC (F)
Fagaschinski and Thieke's playing really captures the attention, their analysis of timbral gradations showing the finest properties of thought-out-in-advance improvisation, which is probably the best method of taking virtual photographs of a pure creative act that ideally shouldn't even be recorded. But hearing the beating frequencies and cyclically regular howls generated by the couple is pure pleasure, which puts all this theoretical nattering away while inviting us to repeat the experience. TOUCHING EXTREMES (I)
For fans of reeds (and clarinets in particular), the extraordinary duet with Kai Fagaschinski and Michael Thieke - a miniature symphony of extended, blended sounds like sine waves - is a real treat. DUSTED MAGAZINE (USA)
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A wonderful suspended soundscape. In its cohesiveness and variety of inputs, this is a cd to be listened to many times. CHAIN DLK (USA)
A pleasure to hear: improvised enough, but also a bit composed, played freely among tight plans, crossing the boundaries of old and new improvisation. Quite nice! VITAL WEEKLY (NL)
The trio works amazingly well, with balanced interaction between silence and noise, sound layers of the AMM school and tones that move between piercing notes and percussive timbres...This is the new berlin school, captured at its best! SANDSZINE (I)
Flowers has the slight edge. Dense timbres, sonic juxtapositions and structural quiet are as much a part in the tunes as clearly defined instrumental sounds...Undoubtedly Thieke and his associates have many CDs ahead of them.
ONE FINAL NOTE (USA)
Our ear up to the wall of the neighbours hotel room, contact microphones on the border of lilliput. What we hear is the noise of the wall, the surface, and what stays behind and underneath is hallucinatoric. Our everyday instinct, used to various abnormal spectacles, fails, and finds itself standing bowed and astounded before an ominous rabbit hole.
BAD ALCHEMY (D)
It is pretty impressive when a band succeeds. This band succeeds.NEO-ZINE (USA)
A sensitive and well-executed set of six improvisations. PARISTRANSATLANTIC (F)
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Music of subversive beauty. JAZZ NOTES (F)
Nickendes Perlgras is one of the the most exciting sounds presently coming out of Berlin. KINDA MUZIK (NL)
A splendid and powerful Trio. BLOW UP (I)
The music is very joyful, full of wit and soul,.. a very complete and human music. VITAL WEEKLY (NL)
This melica nutans is addictive, once digested. TAZ (D)
A refreshingly impertinent product with depth! CONCERTO (A)
Powerful music, dynamic music, a sound verging on hard, fat drums, precise timing, very clear structured forms, improvisations that mesh perfectly in the ensemble sound... in any case it is a music firmly rooted in its time. JAZZMAN (F)
Nickendes Perlgras makes music that is free to roam, essentially melodic, accessible, intelligent, and, above all, deeply human. Recommended. EXCLAIM MAGAZINE (CAN)
Pieces full of complex developments and grotesque poetry...the Berlin musicians maintain their orientation in their aural garden with the sovereignty of people who wander in their own dreams... JAZZPODIUM (D)
The Band offered two entertaining sets of unusually self-willed contemporary music. NEU ULMER ZEITUNG (D)
A refreshing music. IMPROJAZZ (F)
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The whole sound organization is remarkable; minuscule fragments and more violent emissions weight the same, accumulating anxiety and tension that don't ask for help. Self constraint can yield more power than you could guess, if it's channeled into the right conduits. TOUCHING EXTREMES (I)
There is a subdued power to this music that grows with each listen. DUSTED MAGAZINE (USA)
The album as a whole is refreshingly light and colourful. THE WIRE (UK)
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This is a very inventive trio that works wonders with a seemingly limited instrumental pallet. CADENCE (USA)
This is the kind of session that gives the dubious term chamber jazz a good name. To say that it sounds like a set of exercises is not to condemn it as dry, academic and over-formal but to acknowledge its exemplary qualities: Bartok’s Mikrokosmos and Bach’s Clavier-Uebung were exercises, and my big brother will fight anyone who says they aren’t excellent music. Ballads is an object lesson in how to explore and exploit textures and colours available from a single instrumental family, and alongside the more acerbic lines there are a number of highly beguiling melodies. The album is emotionally engaging as well as being technically interesting. JAZZ REVIEW (UK)
A must-have for clarinet fan-addicts like you and me. DOWNTOWNMUSIC GALLERY (USA)
One of my favorite things about the Clarinet Trio is the flexibility with which they inter-relate. They've taken the most unusual aspect of their particular ensemble configuration -- the lack of a rhythm section -- and turned it into a plus, allowing for expansive phrases and considerable metric sophistication. One part chamber music, another swinging improv, Ballads and Belated Objects may be difficult to peg, but it's certainly stimulating music. SPLENDID MAGAZINE
Il jazz sconfina in un territorio altro, forse classico, lievemente astratto, mai eccessivamente acquietato. Aspetto questo di grande interesse. ALL ABOUT JAZZ/ITALY (I)
Trialogues amusés, silences attendus, parcours sinueux, écriture profonde, complexe et d’une rare richesse harmonique: autant d’ingrédients pour construire un événement à la hauteur des envies musicales grandissantes et en évolution constant. JAZZOSPHERE (F)
The Clarinet Trio Ballads and Related Objects has chamber music precision, kaleidoscopic arrangements, hot blowing, and dynamic overall pacing of ideas and intensities. As well as being adventurous, accessible, abstract and mysterious. Highly recommended. EXCLAIM (CAN)
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