Harald Kimmig, Daniel Studer, Alfred Zimmerlin – Black Forest Diary (Wide Ear Records, 2024)

By Nick Ostrum

I have been following Harald Kimmig, Daniel Studer and Alfred Zimmerlin for some time. They are one of the premier string trios of the satisfyingly abrasive corner of the experimental music scene they occupy. Black Forest Diary , however, is different. Hitherto primarily an acoustic trio, on this album they pick up the electrified versions of their instrument (violin, bass, violincello), with Kimmig and Zimmerlin doubling on various electronics as well.

The liner notes by exceptional outre pianist Jacques Demierre invoke Dylan’s turn electric in 1966. I am not sure the vernacular in which this trio works was as protected as American folk was in Manchester, England, or at the Newport Folk Festival the year before. That said, even the freer musics fall into formalisms and presuppositions that need to be challenged periodically. Why should that challenge not come from Kimmig, Studer and Zimmerlin?

Still, it is remarkable how natural Black Forest Diary sounds. The trio might be stretching their own comfort zones – however unconventional that zone already was – but the result is entirely convincing. For one, the band leans into the electronics. The music is often heavy and tones linger longer. This is not acoustic music gone electric, but three musicians wielding electricity – harnessed through traducers, effects pedals, possibly other contraptions – to new effect. One still hears some of that impulse toward acoustic purity, wherein the strings are plucked, struck, swiped and muzzled in ways that unlock the full sonic potential of the various, especially if the listener turns up the volume on, for instance, entry five. The electronics here enrich and amplify. On other selections, such as entry two, and sections of entry five, one hears an over-amplification, wherein the various electronic implements become instruments in themselves rather than appendages of the classical strings. The band sounds avant-rock, albeit with scant attention to rhythm.

Black Forest Diary is not what one might expect from this trio. That said, through the years and various collaborations with John Butcher and George Lewis, or in the quintet that produced Extended and Extended II, of which this trio forms the core, is this not precisely what we should expect: another, unanticipated vision of what chamber music can be?

Black Forest Diaryis available on CD and as a download on Bandcamp:

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