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Tied & Tickled Trio

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The Three Doors Pt. 3
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The Three Doors Pt. 3
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Released: Apr 1, 2011
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General Info

  • Genre: Dub / Jazz

    Location munich - berlin, Bitte Bundesland/Region auswählen, De

    Profile Views: 136148

    Last Login: 3/8/2011

    Member Since 3/21/2006

    Website www.tiedandtickledtrio.com

    Record Label morr music

    Type of Label Indie

  • Bio

    With versatility comes the risk of spreading oneself too thin. Musical versatility is especially nice, but it can be a burden. Especially if the musician feels the urge to actually realize all their many ideas. For then you are adding massive organisational demands to the problem of channelling a sprawling creative drive which simultaneously meanders in many different directions. Tackling and mastering this seething cluster of possibilities and tasks has become part of the everyday work of some musicians. The Brothers Markus and Micha Acher have made the best out of their abilities. They are key figures in the now internationally recognised trademark that is the „Weilheim Scene". Every one of their projects, be it The Notwist, 13&God or Tied & Tickled Trio has grown to become a working cosmos each of its own while remaining open on all sides. Their new album comes thanks to their preference for creative collaborations as Tied & Tickled Trio have really had a thrilling artistic liaison this time. The drummer Billy Hart is among one of the most accomplished contemporary jazz drummers in the world. Along with his recordings as band leader Hart, who celebrated his 70th birthday in 2010, can be heard drumming on more than 600 albums. Among other groups he was a long running member of the Herbie Hancock and Stan Getz bands. Hart was highly involved with the composition and arrangements on La Place Demon. The permanent members of the Tied & Tickled Trio also occupied themselves intensively with Billy Harts music prior to and during the composition of the album. Over the course of his discography he has covered everything from spiritual jazz to free music and electronic music. This album charts this development in broad strokes and as such is something like a biographical album. The Tied & Tickled Trio play jazz music from an indie perspective and so are by definition not afraid of contact. Its amazing that a project which practically has a new approach for every composition can still have a unified sound. And the guys from Weilheim have an instantly recognisable sound - regardless whether their playing crazy free jazz, static drones or complex patterns. Perhaps it's something to do with their love of wood-wind and rather melancholy harmonies, which one knows well from The Notwist. La Place Demon never gives us too much of a sense of security. Even in harmonically and rhythmically simple passages one senses the abyss which surrounds these temporary islands of order. Something seems to warn us that the apparent clarity is nothing more than ambiguity and that this order can at any moment descend into freedom and chaos. Everything is always in limbo, light and feathery, but at the same time unfathomable. A flurry of trills on the flute and thin yet threatening string parts see to it that any feeling of homely comfort is left behind. Out of this abstract sound-scape, driven by dark percussion and electronic effects comes a masterfully arranged piece of chamber music. Woodwind instruments in part manipulated with effects and strings interweave to form quietly pacing figures. One could relax in this sound-scenery, if not for those nervously beating drums. In the end the chamber music descends into a whirlpool of free-jazz, dominated by drums and saxophone. Often sounding cinematic, tension is indeed built up in the way that soundtracks do. Although with Tied & Ticked Trio this tension might suddenly turn into a slow bebop riff. In which case there is an all-pervading atmosphere of coolness, like in a 70s detective film. We hear bold and moving harmonies with a seamless group improvisation over the top. Or threatening expanses with no rhythmic pulse, which after seven minutes mutates into a cool slow-motion groove. And complex fugue-like structures with clear melodies in swing-time played on brass, strings and glockenspiel. One constantly has a sense that these are musicians so masterful that they no longer need to prove anything either to each other or anyone else. The core members of the "Trio" are Markus and Micha Acher, the drummer Casper Brandner as well as the visual artist and electronic musician Andreas Gerth. There are also compositions by Johannes Enders and Carl Oesterhelt, who recently released their wonderful album „Divertimento für Tenorsaxophon und kleines Ensemble" on Alien Transistor. In total 14 musicians have worked on La Place Demon. For their studio work the ensemble have done without any spectacular effects. Nothing is overloaded, nobody is playing in the foreground. No particular musical event really has to happen as the players have just taken their time. The pieces unfold themselves with a pleasant calmness and all the parts simply fall into place, as if by their own accord. At the same time this album is so multifaceted and diverse that even within a single piece, one really never knows quite what to expect. Of course Tied & Tickled Trio follow a classic pattern of theme and variation. But their DIY jazz is neither markedly eclectic nor does it depend on music-historical references. Tied & Tickled Trio were founded in 1994 by Markus Acher and Casper Brandner, at the time purely as a drumming duo.

  • Members

    Markus Acher, Micha Acher, Christoph Brandner, Andreas Gerth, Johannes Enders

  • Influences

    press: flow (at) morrmusic.com booking : info (at) powerline-agency.com www.morrmusic.com

  • Sounds Like

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Bio:

In 1994, Markus Acher and Christoph Brandner founded the Tied & Tickled Trio in Weilheim, Bavaria as a polyrhythmic duo playing drums only. On the occasion of an exhibition of sculptor Andreas Gerth (later becoming a busy musician on the Weilheim scene), he and Markus’ brother Micha joined the Tied & Tickled Trio adding bass (Micha) and electronics (Andreas) to the two drum sets. Everything that later would define the band’s sound – rhythm, dynamics, improvisation - had been present within this early nucleus already. Even if those qualities can all be ascribed to jazz in general, the early Tied & Tickled Trio was still far from being jazz influenced. It took some time for all of the band’s members to be able to translate their interest in music in a way that wasn’t directly linked to The Notwist’s indie-verse, to a kind of music with its own qualities and means. It had certainly been helpful to get in touch with Johannes Enders, a studied jazz sax player. Additionally, the brothers Markus and Micha had long been active (and still are today) in their father’s dixie band, a kind of common-jazz thing. Micha Acher even studied jazz trumpet but refused to oblige to the dogmatic rules of the school that eventually kicked him out. In other words: The focus on jazz from this snobbish and safely educated academic point of view did not fit with the passion and the lust for bricolage which became soon typical for the Tied & Tickled Trio. Since that time Ulrich Wangenheim and a few other, often changing band members, have joined the Tied & Tickled Trio. In 1996, the band recorded their self-titled debut „Tied & Tickled Trio“ for Payola (re-released on Morr 2006), an album that opened the floodgates of reference pigeon-holing for the band. In attempting to describe the new sound of the Trio, journalists compared their music to anything and everything from Chicago’s post rock scene, Adrian Sherwood’s On-U Sound to Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Herbie Hancock. Those references were certainly flattering and appropriate somehow, but at the same time a tad problematic. Coming from a D.I.Y. punk and hardcore background, the Tied & Tickled Trio always tried to approach their music in a sponantenous and intuitive fashion, free of dogmatic undertones. In retrospect, the Tied & Tickled Trio look at their debut as quite „in your face“, an attempt to combine the multitude of their influences. The band improvised a lot, they piled up a lot of tracks from which they built the actual songs and flirted with an attitude that could at times be seen as random . Their sophomore effort „EA1 EA2“ (1999, Payola, re-released on Morr 2006) saw the band exercising more discipline and self-control. This eventually led to the band losing themselves in the details. The roughness and immediacy of their debut made way for a slickness that critics compared to the cool jazz of Miles Davis. After Morr Music released remixes of the „EA1 EA2“ album by Opiate, Thomas Brinkmann, Console and others in 2000, the Tied & Tickled Trio produced „Electric Avenue Tapes“ (Clearspot) in 2001, a concert recorded by producer Tobias Levin (Blumfeld, Tocotronic) at Hamburg’s Westwerk venue. The album was a logical progression, highlighting the Tied & Tickled Trio as a live entity, a seperate commodity from the studio-based outfit, placing the emphasis on the immediacy and improvisation of the live performance. Every Tied & Tickled Trio concert becoming a unique, one-off event. The positive experience of „Electric Avenue Tapes“ inspired the band to concentrate on their live qualities once again, recreating that atmosphere in the studio. The Tied & Tickled Trio, which now consists of up to twelve members, has recorded large parts of their 2003 album „Observing Systems“ (Morr Music) completely live in the studio. Apart from influences like Sun Ra, J. Coltrane („Africa Brass“), Herbie Hancock („Sextant“), African Headcharge and Pharoah Sanders (that all of the memebers acknowledge as a foundation for their most important references), „Observing Systems“ is partly dominated by a „copy and paste“ aesthetic well known from many hip hop productions. On stage, the Tied & Tickled Trio exists in two different variations. Version one features six members focussing on the band’s more electronic qualities. Version 2 consists of all twelve members delivering the entire musical spectrum the Tied & Tickled Trio has to offer. The intuitive strength of this nearly orchestra-like liveband is well documented on the DVD “Observing Systems”, released on Morr Music in early summer of 2006. From many camera positions and on many (retro and brand new) mediums – from super 8 to digital video – this film shows a T&TT-concert in Munich, bavaria. And it shows the Credo of a band whose understanding of (jazz-) music is in the combination and in the collision of tones and traditions. Parallel to the release of the “Observing Systems”-DVD Morr Music is going to re-release remastered versions of “Tied and Tickled Trio” and “EA1 EA2”, each added by one unreleased track .

Member Since:

March 21, 2006

Members:

Markus Acher, Micha Acher, Christoph Brandner, Andreas Gerth, Johannes Enders

Influences:

.. I edited my profile with Thomas' Myspace Editor V4.4

Record Label:

morr music

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