URS LEIMGRUBER · MARILYN CRISPELL · JOËLLE LÉANDRE · FRITZ HAUSER — Quartet Noir (1999) FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

Recorded live at the Victoriaville Festival in 1998, this 67-minute spontaneous composition is explosive not only for what happens in it, but for what doesn't. The guns don't blaze here very often, but they are just as deadly with silencers on. And needless to say, when Urs Leimgruber is the least-known musician in a quartet, you have some heavyweight players. The quartet is aptly named, given its performance, which uses night not only as a metaphor, but as an m.o. for improvisation, where texture, space, and economy become a hypnotic wilderness of sound devoid of light and all sensation but hearing. The opening section is the longest, at 14 minutes. It is the area where the band members establish the language from which they will speak. That syntax develops very slowly on this record, moving one step at a time but no less packed with ideas for its easy, even tortoise-like pace. There is nothing tentative in the manner in which these players relate to one another, but it is subtle. Crispell clearly has control; she keeps each element blending into the others with her colorful swaths of clustered notes and mode-changing lines. Leandre and Hauser forge their own sense of rhythm for Leimgruber to create the group's melodic sensibility and intervalic coordination. Finally, in the very last of eight movements, dawn begins to break and the light startles the players. Crispell drives into the coming storm first, charging in a flurry of augmented chords and single-note runs. Leimgruber follows as Hauser triple-times everyone. As tension reaches a fever pitch and everyone has been wakened from their somnambulant pondering in this beautiful abyss, Leandre brings in the final aspect of a dawn rooted to not only the sun, but the earth, and the piece comes to a winding, floating halt -- leaving, I am sure, everyone in that audience wondering just what had taken place during that hour when they were hypnotized. 
-> This comment is posted on Allmusic by Thom Jurek, follower of our blog 'O Púbis da Rosa' <- 
Tracklist :
1.    Quartet Noir Part I    14:32
2.    Quartet Noir Part II    6:25
3.    Quartet Noir Part III    2:45
4.    Quartet Noir Part IV    10:29
5.    Quartet Noir Part V    4:28
6.    Quartet Noir Part VI    6:07
7.    Quartet Noir Part VII    8:48
8.    Quartet Noir Part VIII    9:05
Credits :
Double Bass – Joëlle Léandre
Drums, Percussion – Fritz Hauser
Piano, Percussion – Marilyn Crispell
Tenor Saxophone, Soprano Saxophone – Urs Leimgruber

URS LEIMGRUBER · FRITZ HAUSER — L'énigmatique (1992) Hat Jazz Series | FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

This 1991 pairing of two of Europe's finest free jazz and improv characters is a lesson in duo dynamics. Long before this date, Urs Leimgruber and Fritz Hauser knew each other well enough to dive deep into the sonic waters and trust that everything would come out OK. It came out better than that, in fact; this session is, for lack of a better term, a stunner. The sense of hearing that Leimgruber and Hauser show toward one another is so deep that they are able to display an economy of expression almost completely absent from the scene they participate in. On "The Arrival," Hauser moves first with a complex, constant 12/16 time signature while Leimgruber plays snake charmer over him. The music winds through two kinds of phraseology, involved only with sound and feeling and never method. The pace is very fast yet no extra notes are played, making the music sing. On "Distant Smell," tonal variation and spatial relationships are explored and elongated into a trancelike improvisation where the whisper of cymbals shimmers underneath soprano overtones by Leimgruber. He needs no drums to make his horn moan against the hushed ring of Hauser's "anti-percussion." And you can feel in this tune, and in the others here, genuine surprise on the part of the players. Leimgruber's tone on soprano is like Jackie McLean's alto -- the edge is part of the charm. His angularity in scalular investigation provides a wedge for intervallic expression by Hauser. On the title track that closes the set, Leimgruber multi-tracks his horns and Hauser's rhythms. The interwoven melody lines by soprano and tenor, playing like traffic signals against the rhythms, are playful and graceful, and they swing. Short, punchy phrases animate Hauser into Raymond Scott territory rhythmically. But the real gem here is the ten-minute "Long Forgotten Night," with its deep resonating percussion played from tom toms and log drums. From hushed phrases to long, droning soprano lines, Hauser and Leimgruber call out of the desolation to one another, attempting to speak in the darkness and lessen the distance the darkness seems to impose. What is "forgotten" by the musicians is the outside world; in this piece they exist in a void, and therefore have no one but each other to communicate with -- and they accept their fate and go about the business of communicating in the blackness. This sparse, hunted piece puts an already exceptional set over the top. 
-> This comment is posted on Allmusic by Thom Jurek, follower of our blog 'O Púbis da Rosa' <- 
Tracklist :
1.    Ping    3:28
2.    The Arrival    4:34
3.    Hula-Hopp    3:21
4.    Distant Smell    5:05
5.    Benafim    1:18
6.    Flying Windows    3:38
7.    Wux    2:47
8.    Pong    3:34
9.    Le Départ    3:39
10.    The Commuter    8:23
11.    African Device    3:18
12.    Long Forgotten Night    10:57
13.    L'Énigmatique    3:58
Credits :
Drums, Percussion, Composed By – Fritz Hauser
Soprano Saxophone, Tenor Saxophone,Composed By  – Urs Leimgruber

URS LEIMGRUBER · JOËLLE LÉANDRE · FRITZ HAUSER — No Try No Fail (1997) FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

Part of Hat's limited-edition series (1,500 copies, issued in 1997), this trio date featured a longstanding duo of saxophonist Urs Leimgruber and drummer Fritz Hauser extending an invitation to über bassist Jöelle Leandre to join in the fun. That party took place in a Koln loft in 1996. It's amazing that, despite the fact that a piano is missing from the mix, they sound like the original Ganelin Trio in spirit and humor. If there was a more natural bassist to make this a trio, it is hard to imagine. Leandre had a huge responsibility here, entering into an already established musical language established by the other two. Having played together for such a long time, they almost perceptually knew each other's cues, linguistic tendencies, dynamics, and rhythmic instincts. Leandre rewrote the book, however, by inserting herself so firmly into the middle of this powerhouse improvising pair. And it's not just her bass playing -- her voice is a rhythmic instrument as well as a singing bowl or a drone. The five pieces here are all about process; there are long silences in the beginning and the tension of soft speech, whispering in the dark, looking for a signpost in how to communicate. Next there is the back and forth call and response to hear, as well as speak, to voices in the wilderness; finally, there is signing in sound, the construction and deconstruction of barriers, tensions, languages, influences, musical architecture, polyrhythm, assonance, dissonance, and the very notion of improvisation itself. The music sputters, sighs, spits, splatters, and finally sings to the rooftops in a cracked voice full of power and wonder. This is music that takes the breath away; it's full of joy, discovery, and surprise, and at times gets a little scary, but hey, when people are learning to speak, especially to one another, they get frustrated and angry occasionally. But mostly it's strident, proud, and full of an energy that is infectious. A must have. 
-> This comment is posted on Allmusic by Thom Jurek, follower of our blog 'O Púbis da Rosa' <- 
Tracklist :
1.    First  12:05
2.    Second    10:38
3.    Third    6:53
4.    Fourth    10:25
5.    Last    9:06
Credits :
Double Bass, Voice – Joëlle Léandre
Drums, Percussion – Fritz Hauser
 Soprano Saxophone, Tenor Saxophone – Urs Leimgruber

URS LEIMGRUBER · ADELHARD ROIDINGER · FRITZ HAUSER — Lines (1994) Hat Jazz Series | FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

From Art Lange's outrageously pretentious liner notes, one might get the impression that this bad-assed trio was trying to re-invent the line and extend it out into the nothingness of the beyond and perhaps beyond that into non-being. I dig Lange, but his liner notes on this set are pure junk. What the word "lines" refers to in the title of this record is simple: This is for these well-known improvisers a quest in playing the line, playing in a linear -- for them anyway -- fashion. The seven selections on this disc, all of which have references to the linguistic construct "line," are formidably constructs in and of themselves. This is some smoking new jazz that features a depth of communication and commitment to energy as they translate in a mostly linear fashion to the transfer of emotion from musician through musical instruments through to the listener. Period. Along the way are some pretty stunning solos and sharp ensemble playing that take the "lines" of melody and make them somewhat angular though never twisting them into something they're not. For instance, check out the call and response between Leimgruber's soprano solo and Roidinger's double bass, one line answered succinctly and precisely with another. And it gets better where spatial dynamics are used to created complex harmonics and polytonal inventions. Here, melody is ever-present -- the touch of "Blue Monk" and "Lonely Woman" in "Shifted" -- and "shifted" into a different melodic reality, one where overtones -- via the bowed bass -- create a drone for melodic improvisation to create a new kind of framework where rhythm and counterpoint all become part of the whole. On "Red," which closes the album, line is played out across rhythmic sections and splays itself over the entire construction of microtonal ambience and rhythmic pulse which is subtly shaded, but constant and, yes, linear. Line is what the best of new jazz is about, taking the bull by the horns and going as deep musically as the particular abilities of the musicians involved will take them. All lines lead to this trio. 
-> This comment is posted on Allmusic by Thom Jurek, follower of our blog 'O Púbis da Rosa' <- 
Tracklist :
1.    Open    12:42
2.    Shifted    18:51
3.    Off    4:26
4.    Twisted    6:14
5.    Forgotten    6:15
6.    Up    6:56
7.    Red    10:26
Credits :
Composed By – Roidinger, Hauser, Leimgruber
Double Bass – Adelhard Roidinger
Drums, Percussion – Fritz Hauser
Tenor Saxophone, Soprano Saxophone – Urs Leimgruber