Super Axel Dörner

Axel Dörner - trumpet
Diego Chamy - percussion, spoken word, dance

1- April 20th, 2006
2- September 5th, 2006

Track 1 recorded at Axel Dörner’s house in Berlin.
Track 2 recorded live at Electronic Church in Berlin.

Limited edition 7 inch cardboard cover.
Cover photo: Diego Chamy by himself.
Thanks to Vered Nethe.

absinthRecords #018 / Get the CD

"Best title of the month!", Brian Olewnick

"Worst title of the year...", Gunnar Lettow

The first piece on this disc is composed of parts of an improvisation that we recorded at Axel Dörner’s house in Berlin. The second one is a live performance at Electronic Church, in Berlin. During this performance, as well as I playing music and reading texts aloud, I also danced. Although the movements can’t be seen on a recording, we believe that the music is in itself, worth to listening to. Moreover, I think that the tension of not seeing goes along with Axel’s timing - an invisible Axel Dörner, an invisible audience, an invisible universe made out of images. Yet here I am about to describe the dance.

Most of the movements that I made during this performance were repetitive patterns that added a visual stratum to the repetitions that were already present in our music. It’s not even an extra stratum, but a way of reinforcing the presentation of the repetition as something in itself instead of focusing on the substance or matter that is supposedly repeated. Some of the repetitive movements that I was making were abstract, but I guess most of them were based on everyday movements taken out of context. I wouldn’t make any distinction between the abstract and the recognizable movements. I believe that to proceed in this manner is a way of escaping from the old abstract/concrete dichotomy. It’s also quite an effective way of harming our capability to recognize and, therefore, a way of forcing the question about the unknown and the new.

Apart from these movements, I also worked with poses that resemble the ones of a model or a mannequin. I would hold a pose for quite a long time, on one spot of the stage, maintaining a certain amount of tension, releasing only micro movements. Then, I would suddenly stop posing by walking normally to another spot on the stage and recreate the pose there as if it had never been interrupted. It would be like a broken pose that is distributed with a certain sense of timing at two or more points of space; or as if one were folding together two supposedly separated spatial points. The music we were playing with Axel implies this breakage or these folds as well, but in pure time events instead of time-spatial ones (although I must say that for moments during the performance Axel was also moving, walking and slowly spinning).

I’d also like to mention that the sound that you’ll hear at 8´51´´ of this performance is me ripping off my T-shirt. From then on, I performed the rest of the piece bare-chested. It was a very tense moment both for me and for the audience (I don’t know about Axel, because when he saw me bare-chested after we bowed, he looked at me and said, "What happened?"). Now, after the series of performances that I’ve been doing with Axel and other artists since 2007, it seems incredible to me that a simple action like ripping off one’s T-shirt during a concert would have been so effective at that time - but indeed, it was. This concert with Axel is important for me because I was in a time of transition, when I was gradually giving up playing music and starting to work more with dance and spoken words (and later on with concepts, actions, etc.). I think that Axel was maybe the only person who has worked with me time after time, no matter what kind of material I suggest.

- Diego Chamy, May 2010

"Diego Chamy can be heard on “vocals” and “percussion.” Imagine Diana Krall and Dave Weckl. Then imagine the exact opposite and rejoice...", Stanley Zappa, Free Jazz

"I can't remember a more unbalanced improvising duo. Maybe compensating for his partner, Dörner gives a bravura performance, running through his repertoire. Most extraordinary of all is a period of several minutes after Chamy's belch during which the only sound is of controlled breath whistling through the tubing of the trumpet. Through such restraint, Dörner seems to be sharing and endorsing the audience's shock – "did he really just do that?" If the "super" tag of the album title is intended to be ironic, it's a misfire: Dörner more than justifies his superhero status. But the cover picture shows Chamy instead. Unjust." John Eyles, Paris Transatlantic Magazine

"...wrapped in an oversized, and shall we say ’striking’ sleeve. Diego Chamy and Axel Dörner’s new album, their second release as a duo, is titled, amusingly, and slightly provocatively, "Super Axel Dörner". [...] The design, as with the album’s title is amusing, but it seems there is a strong comment being made here about the notion of improvised music "stars". Axel Dörner is indeed a great player, perhaps even a super one, and a good number of people will be attracted to this release because of his appearance on it, but the duo seems to be laughing at the idea of celebrity in this area of music. They possibly also point towards the ridiculous aspect of all of this by placing a picture of Chamy rather than Dörner below the title, perhaps (I am guessing at all of this) bringing to our attention that only really the names matter when namedropping, and that the faces matters not. It's a clever design anyway, that when coupled with the title makes a statement even before the CD is put into the player. [...]

The first track is the most active and boisterous of the two pieces. It opens with a rasping, gritty roar from Dörner in full flight as Chamy bashes out a repetitive low thud on a bass drum, starting slowly, increasing in pace a few times until disappearing three minutes in. Chamy also speaks all of the way through in a voice I recognize well from the only occasion I have seen him perform live, some four years ago now in France.[...] After six minutes or so the talking stops and a very lovely little interlude appears in which Chamy strikes something bell-like for a while as Dörner allows a muted siren to ring from his trumpet. After the vague aggressive tones of the opening minutes and the confusion of the voice parts this moment is very warm and enticing. It leads into a further very nice section of stabbing air rushes from Dörner and sparingly used bass drum strikes from Dörner until the track ends at the ten minute mark. Although it shifts about a lot this track is strong, intriguing in its structure and not allowing the listener to rest into any comfort zones, but confidently and precisely executed around a very attractive set of sounds. [...]

The music here was recorded back in 2006, just a couple of months after I saw Chamy live, and a little before he began to gradually give up playing music in the traditional manner and brought the dance and spoken word elements to the fore in his work, later even replacing these to some degree with more conceptual considerations. Irrespective of where his performances later went, or where they are now, the music here seems to have captured an important and interesting time for Chamy, and coupled together with Dörner the music here often works very well as a thoroughly intriguing set of ciphers that cause you to try and picture in your head what Chamy may be up to and how his actions might impact on what we hear. [...]

This is hard music to write about, just as it isn’t an easy listen. The two pieces have a habit of avoiding convention from the moment you first begin to spot it. If things start to feel comfortable, musical maybe, then it all stops suddenly, or it flips on its head and goes somewhere different. The music confounds as much as it delights, but in a good way, leading to a fair number of consecutive listens here trying to find patterns, meanings in the way it is all folded, not particularly neatly, together. A good listen then, interesting stuff, while Dörner is, as usual, super.", Richard Pinnell, The Watchful Ear

"I can say nothing more about the awesome cover and album title.

I've only heard Chamy here and there, notably on a DVD sent to me by Lucio Capece in which his performance, rather humorous, involved a video projection that wouldn't function properly, producing only a text screen on which Chamy typed his apologies and sought help for the "problem". There's performance here as well, Chamy credited with dancing as well as percussion and spoken word and taking pains to point out 'that the sound that you'll hear at 8'51" of this performance is me ripping off my T-shirt.' Duly noted.

Two tracks, a 10-minute one recorded in Dörner's house and close to a half hour live in Berlin. The first has a nice concision to it, Chamy's bass drum prodding, his words, in Spanish (I think), remote, somewhat muffled, Dörner sputtering, injecting pure, quiet tones. It's very airy, flows very well, with a gorgeous bells/muted trumpet/voice passage toward the middle. The second is, not surprisingly, more expansive but equally effective in its own way, beginning with what sounds almost like an announcement (one imagines, perhaps, a dancing accompaniment--elsewhere, one can discern footpads) before Dörner wends his way in with insistent, same-note interjections. It's bumpy in parts, at one point Chamy loudly sounding the bass drum, reminding me a bit of Milford Graves on "The Soul is the Music" ("Dialogue of the Drums", with Andrew Cyrille), eliciting broad, bent tones from Dörner. It meanders, but in an amiable, unforced manner, like a quiet amble with occasional conversation, attaining several points of quiet beauty. A fine set, would have loved to have seen it in all its quirkiness.", Brian Olewnick, Just Outside

"Here's a hero you may not have heard of. Forget Spiderman and his skyscraper-athletics. Forget the incredible Hulk and his involuntary t-shirt-ripping. Forget Batman, forget Robin, forget the Batmobil and the grimly gleaming towers of Gothham City. And while we're at it: Who needs Clark Kent, when there's „Super Axel Dörner“? Defying laws of nature and traditional text books, the Cologne-born Berlin-based Trumpeter is faster than a sequencer, smarter than an entire music-academy and capable of surmounting even the most challenging creative hurdles in a single leap. [...]

Diego Chamy is such a like-minded individual. Just like Dörner, he shuns schematic simplifications and maintains a strict „No CV“-policy on his website. Just like him, his actions and ideas occasionally fall between the stools. And through their years of continuous collaborations, the two have turned into a powerful creative entity to the point that, on the CD's cover and directly underneath its garish title, it is actually Chamy's face rather than the album's namesake who is looking at the listener in a mixture of surprise, mockery and what could be taken for drastic sleep-deprivation. [...]

The two pieces contained here convincingly demonstrate why they make for such a convincing match. Especially on the September-track, the ability to sculpt perfectly complementary unisono-passages on the one hand, while also granting the other long solitary stretches of exploration is remarkable. As part of the former, insistent and unpredictable repetitions of a single note pierce rhythmically accentuated spoken word passages; and shifting patterns on an orchestral bass drum relentlessly propel flutter-tongued-textures forward as if in a trance. The latter manifest themselves mainly in an almost uninterrupted ten-minute long middle section, which sees Dörner sink into a deep and focused meditation. Like a methodical shaman, he creates a chain of clearly delineated movements, each of which highlights a particular technique, sonic colour, process or idea. Ranging from discrete sheets of condensed air and subtle but precisely placed pulses of breath to synthetic-sounding sheets of static, playful rubbery plops and intricate micro-beat patterns, each thought is given a stretch of time and space to develop before giving way to the next. At what seems to be the point of maximum immersion, Chamy again joins in the action. Rather than rupturing the state of surreal calm and quiet concentration, his glassy drone, probably culled from a prayer bowl or gently brushed cymbal, meanwhile, only serves to intensify it.

A lot of the action inevitably goes by unnoticed. [...] The inability of the sound recording of capturing these figurative addendums never works to its disadvantage, though. Quite on the contrary, one finds oneself listening even more attentively to all but imperceptible ambient noises and the creaking of the wooden planks as both improvisers moves across the podium. [...]

The suggestive background action is also an important distinction between the live recording and the studio improvisation on the first track, which took place roughly four and a half months earlier. All of the musical and conceptual themes are already present here, up until and including a striking part where Dörner's trumpet and Chamy's tender bell-sounds engage in a weightless, time-suspending duet. But it is the additional tension, potential and uncertainty of the live-situation, the myriads of planned and unpremeditated events going on at the same time, which lends the gig at the electronic church its unmistakable and powerful impact. [...]

The question of mechanical repetition is thereby turning into a central theme of the album as a whole, with or without the visuals. Dörner and Chamy seem to maintain that it is, in fact, not so much machinal precision, but rather the tiny but seminal alterations, deviations, possible mistakes and unintended changes taking place by interacting with your instrument, musical partner, the room and the audience which create the most profound engagement with a work. What makes these musicians „super“ are not their heroic gestures - but their ability of remaining perfectly human while relentlessly pushing forward in their quest for the new and unknown.", Tobias Fisher, Tokafi

"Two pieces made of juxtaposed stripped-down actions like parallele discourses instead of an actual dialogue, two different takes on the same music. The first piece is bold, provocative, and one senses that Chamy is wilder than Dörner...", François Couture, Monsieur Délire

"...a curious improvisational collaboration between Axel Dörner the Berlin-based trumpeter and Diego Chamy, who I suppose to be a unique form of performance artist; on his website he takes the stance that he’s not going to publish an instant CV of his life just to keep the media happy, thus turning himself into another artistic form of Cup-A-Soup: “If you want to know more about me, I kindly invite you to spend some time taking a look at the works that are published on this site.” Bravo! I love him already. There he is on the cover of this item in fact, looking out at the viewer with a mixture of vulnerability, amazement, and mild scorn. [...] All of these Absinth Records I regard as strong artistic statements, even if I don’t always like the music on them; this release is no exception (and I should add that I also like it very much).", Ed Pinsent, The Sound Projector

"An interesting CD in need of conscientious listening; it works on many levels, pushing its unpretentiousness forward to make it become a fundamental trait.", Massimo Ricci, Touching Extremes