Marlon
Klein's 'Real Ax Band'
Irrespective
of society, country or marketing creed, it is a simple
fact of supply and demand that scarcity ratchets up prices.
Look at the sighingly high prices that certain record pressings
command. Rarity value and collectability go hand in hand.
In extreme cases when demand outstrips supply suppliers
may have recourse to 'alternative' options in order to
meet demand. Ugly words like bootleg and pirate spring
to mind. Consequently, many a reissue has been predicated
more on the original record's rarity value than its aesthetic
or musical worth, conjuring the sneer of Ireland's wit
and man of letters Oscar Wilde who famously put down an
opponent marking him as somebody who knew the price of
everything and the value of nothing. This is the Real Ax
Band's only album. Its initial pressing reached maybe 2500
or so copies - to be frank, nobody seems sure, those were
different times and a different spirit was abroad. That,
and the fact that 'Nicht Stehenbleiben/Move Your Ass In
Time' commanded high enough prices to become a pirate CD,
would qualify it as proper supply-and-demand KrautRock
rarity on several counts. But much more important is its
musical worth. And its place in the history...
Marlon
Klein and Toffi Mache founded the Real Ax Band in the unusually
long, unusually hot summer of 1976 when mercury was exploring
rarely visited barometric heights. Between then and early 1977
people came and went while the group played dozens of small
Beatschuppen and clubs in Germany, Switzerland and Austria.
Early in 1977 the line-up that made this album coalesced when
Maria Archer, Heinz-Otto Gwiasda and Dieter Miekautsch entered
the frame. Maria Archer and Dieter Miekautsch were newly returned
from Africa and were looking for a new band with whom they
could perform. Both had already worked with Embryo, a chimera
of a collective first founded in 1969 that defied - and defies
- any stab at tidy-mindedness or attempt at musical compartmentalisation.
By 2000 some fool calculated that Embryo had had more than
300 collaborators pass through its ranks, so, historically
speaking, Maria Archer and Dieter Miekautsch figure as relatively
early participants in Embryo's experiment - the kind of experiment
that Georg Capellen predicted as early as 1906 and dubbed Weltmusik
or 'world music' in English.
Of
course, the Real Ax Band was a young band very much stamped
in the temper of its time. It mixed and matched rock, jazz,
soul and Latino elements in ways that showed off influences
with candour and little attempt at concealing the group's influences.
In Maria Archer the group had a vocalist who sounded real when
singing English, not like KrautRock's standard painful Anglo-American
imitation from over somebody's weirdest rainbow. She came from
Ghana. That helped.
When
this line-up of the Real Ax Band came together, it was a time
in Germany, as anyone who lived through the period will remember,
when many were still living the dream of community hard. Many
bands lived in Wohngemeinschaften or Kommunen - the choice
of word largely determined by social or political adherences.
Some bands living in communes emulated the likes of the Grateful
Dead in Haight-Ashbury or Traffic in the Berkshire countryside.
Most were just flat-sharing under a more grandiose guise, sharing
a living space with like-minded people, whether connected by
music, art, politics or a mutual search for something better
but until then...
One
day the Real Ax Band’s drummer, Marlon Klein, later of
Dissidenten fame, went to load up the band-bus for the next
gig. Mercifully, somebody had already stowed the gear and the
equipment room was empty. One by one, late-risers stumbled
into the Wohngemeinschaft's kitchen. They sat chatting, breakfasting,
drinking coffee. Until it came out that nobody had loaded the
van. With the theft of their unpaid equipment went their idealism
and innocence. The theft saddled them with a bunch of debts
that the small fees they could command would take years to
clear. Sometimes all it takes to tip a band over the edge is
one disaster. It signalled the end of the Real Ax Band. The
band crumbled. Nicht Stehenbleiben/Move Your Ass In Time is
all that remains of that youthful excitement. But the Real
Ax Band led to still better things...
Ken
Hunt April 2001 |
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Esther Bertram - Marlon Klein Duo
Circumnavigating the World of
World Music
Although the Australian singer-songwriter Esther Bertram has been
living in Europe for only a comparatively short time, in that
time she has already become an established artist. Given her Aussie
upbringing and the fact that her mother comes from Finland, it
is fair to say she has roots in both hemispheres of the globe,
roots under both the Southern Cross and the North Star.
Esther began her advanced music training at the Canberra School
of Music before studying composition at the Queensland Conservatorium.
Since 1999 Esther has been living and working in Europe both as
a solo performer and as a producer for various other projects
including working with her London-based electronic-chill duo PiXiEFiSH,
and the Chicago house D.J. Tyree Cooper. She joined the German-based
world music band DISSIDENTEN in 2001 and soon was working with
DISSIDENTEN's percussion maestro and producer Marlon Klein in
an offshoot duo.
Marlon Klein is a founder-member of DISSIDENTEN as well as
a producer of artists of the calibre of Gary Wright, George
Harrison, Stephan Eicher, Angelique Kidjo and Pili-Pili. Work
on Esther & Marlon's
debut NU-Folk album is under way and well advanced. Even with
his extensive knowledge of world music, Marlon is spreading
his production wings over new, uncharted regions of Nu-World-Folk.
Ah, the music! Esther & Marlon's sound is wholly original,
a heady blend of wholesome, earthy ingredients that connects
the emotions, mind and body... Their sound blends Sami yoik
singing techniques and percussion from the Indian subcontinent
and Africa to create a music that is rich, powerful and.quite
unlike anything you will hear anywhere else. Timeless yet contemporary
folk idioms underpin their music. Add technology to voice,
skin and wood and you have the lightning-rod down which the
elemental connects with the emotional.
And what energy they channel, as audiences at such music festivals
as Fusion Festival, Fiesta de San Isidro / Madrid & Salamanca
and Las Dalias / Ibiza can testify.
Like a world music glitter ball, ever changing as it spins,
Esther
& Marlon are embarked on a journey, a journey to the unified
Nu World...
Guest artist performing with Esther and Marlon is London based
singer/percussionist Manickam 'Yoga' Yogeswaran from Srilanka.
Among many musical projects Manickam is a singer for the London
vocal group 'The Shout' and the berlin based ethno band ' Dissidenten
'. His latest succes was writing and singing on the soundtracks
of Stanley Kubrick's Hollywood hit ' Eyes wide shut ' and more
recently for Spike Lee's latest movie ' The 25th hour '.
Stay Tuned...and hold your boarding pass tight.
Ken
Hunt |

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Marlon Klein's - Path Of Rhythm
Marlon Klein, Schlagzeuger
der Dissidenten und Co-Autor von Worldbeat-Klassikern wie "Fata
Morgana", "Telephone Arab", "Lobster Song" und "Jungle Book"
ist seit vielen Jahren auch als Gastmusiker und Produzent in
anderen Konstellationen aktiv. Nicht nur Insidern dürfte
die euro-afrikanische Urgewalt des Dauerprojektes" Japer
vant Hof & Pili Pili" bekannt sein, bei dem Marlon
Klein seit 1984 als Taktgeber auf der Bühne sowie vor und
hinter dem Studio-Mischpult mitwirkt. Seine aktuellen Arbeiten
für und mit Stephan Eicher sind besonders in Frankreich,
der Schweiz und weiteren europäischen Ländern extrem
erfolgreich.
Nun geht er mit seinem eigenen, lange
vorbereiteten Projekt an den Start: Mit "Marlon Klein & Path
of Rhythm" will er endlich eine authentische Fusion zweier
musikalischer Welten schaffen, die einander bislang nicht
gerade hold waren. Es geht natürlich um "Ethno" und Worldbeat
auf der einen Seite, die auf intelligente Weise mit elektronischer
Musik, die wir mal unter dem Überbegriff " Nu World "
subsumieren wollen, fusioniert wird. Zugegeben, manche Projekte,
die in den letzten Jahren ähnliches versuchten, sind
gescheitert, vor allem weil den Protagonisten entweder die
Musiker-Qualitäten abgingen, oder weil zwar gestandene
Musiker am Werk waren, denen aber das Gespür eines DJs
für aktuelle Sounds fehlte.
Diese Gefahr besteht bei Marlon
Klein, der stets mindestens ein Auge und ein Ohr in der
Clubszene hat, nicht. Schließlich hat er bereits 1980
mit Dieter Meier (Yello) und in den Neunzigern mit Sven
Väth und Oliver Lieb (The Ambush, L.S.G.) gearbeitet
und reichlich elektronische Luft geschnuppert. Das Klein
andererseits mit George Harrison auf einem Gary Wright-Album
("First Sign of Life", 1994) zu hören ist, empfindet
der klassisch ausgebildete Orchester-Schlagwerker als "völlig
normal".
Ebenso wichtig wie das Gespür
für den richtigen Sound ist die Fähigkeit, auf
die persönlichen Qualitäten und Eigenheiten der
unterschiedlichsten Musiker-Charaktere einzugehen. Spätestens
hier scheitern viele Vertreter der "Ethno-House"-Fraktion,
weil sie ihre Mitmusiker nur als dankbare Sample-Quellen
(miß-)verstehen. Dem global gebildeten Dissidenten
dagegen fällt es naturgemäß leicht, arabische,
afrikanische oder gar indische Polyrhythmik "live" umzusetzen
und seinen Gast-Musikern und Sängerinnen eine Plattform
aus "Loops, Elektronik, akustischen Drums & Percussion"
zu bieten, auf der sie "ihre Ideen im tanzbaren Groove darstellen
können". Das besondere dabei ist, wie Marlon Klein
betont, daß die Songs von Pili Pili, Angelique Kidjo,
Tomás San Miguel, Dissidenten und anderen befreundeten
Künstlern in "club-orientierten Arrangements live eingespielt
werden".
Durch die tanzbaren Rhythmen wird
die Intensitaet der Solisten zu echten Erlebnissen", sagt
Klein, und es ist nicht auszuschließen, daß
diese Musik durchaus "Trance"-hafte Zustände hervorruft,
ohne sich irgendwelchen Genre-Klassifikationen unterzuordnen.
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