Baloni - Fremdenzimmer (Clean Feed, 2011) ****½

By Stef

A "Fremdenzimmer" is the German word for a guest room, litterally "a room for strangers", usually paid for, in private houses, farms or other places, the kind of room which you have kind of accept the way it is when you are travelling and can't find no other lodging. The title demonstrates a willingness for adventure, including the risk of the unknown, and the acceptance of what will befall them.

Whether this relates to the musicians or the listener is not clear, possibly to both, and you're taken on this musical journey by Joachim Badenhorst on clarinet, bass clarinet and tenor, Pascal Niggenkemper on bass, and Frantz Loriot on viola, respectively of Belgian, German-French and French-Japanese origin.

The journey goes deep into the realm of lyricism and sonic beauty, a journey of strange harmonic encounters, timbral greetings, shared distances, differences of perspectives adding to the overall texture. As with these encounters, possibly hiking, on foot, the pace is slow, vulnerability a prerequisite for openness, openness the prerequisite for suprise, suprise the prerequisite for new ideas and the aha-erlebnis of new possibilities.

You get stories here, tiny and small and real and sensitive and authentic, the beauty of strangers meeting and becoming friends, immediately going to the essence, talking about joy or misery, without too much elaboration, without varnish and polish, because the chemistry is here, in the personalities, the voices, including the low-volume singing by Badenhorst, the emotional sharing, the musical vision.

Just beautiful. So real!

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© stef