More 'eai' that deserves your attention. Kommando Raumschiff Zitrone ('Commando Spaceship Lemon', an unusually quirky name for this genre) is one of those one-off projects again. Apart from one more track ('Roger') on the 'Improvised Music from Japan Extra 2006' compilation, there's only this one album. And seeing how it was the one and only release on Quincunx Sound Recordings, this is yet another of those records that have all but vanished from the collective memory.
The artists who make up this Kommando aren't exactly nobodies though. German clarinetist Kai Fagaschinski is known to connoisseurs for his involvement in The International Nothing, Los Glissandinos, Rebecca and No Furniture, as well as other projects with the likes of Chris Abrahams, Burkhard Stangl, Bernhard Gál, etc. He is also a member of the highly original and highly great eai-meets-popsongs-project The Magic I.D. (check out their album 'Till My Breath Gives Out', Erstwhile 2008), as is Vienna-born Christof Kurzmann (currently living in Buenos Aires), who also plays the clarinet (only on track 4 here), as well as manning the computer and playing 'devices'. He also plays in Schnee (with Burkhard Stangl) and Hammeriver, and appears on some fine duo recordings with Ami Yoshida and John Butcher.
As it flirts with traditional songforms (Roberta Flack's beautiful song that inspired the album title pops up a few times), 'First Time Ever I Saw Your Face' (recorded in March 2004) seems to anticipate The Magic I.D., but for the time being they make do without any non-sampled vocals, and at heart this still quite hardcore eai, which is to say: drones, crackles, extended techniques on the reeds, no hooks, no beats, no traditional song structures. The label seems to be gone, but this can still be found at a few distributors, such as Erstwhile. Investigate!
320kbps.
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