Label: ECM Records – ECM 1006, ECM Records – ECM 1006 ST
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album
Country: Germany
Released: 1 Dec 1970
Genre: Electronic, Jazz
Style: Experimental, Free Jazz
Is it a bird, is it a plane.. no it’s Wolfgang Dauner’s lawless, studio downtime free-for-all released in 1970 for influential German Jazz pillar ECM Records. Without a doubt one of the weirder, or.. *ahem* more challenging, entries into their catalogue, ‘Output’ is an entirely non-conforming genre-tagging nightmare that rips open the guts of jazz, prog-rock and free-improv and collides them together into a freeform, unbridled bout of control room experimentation. Dauner drafts in Eberhard Weber on strings and Fred Braceful for percussion and voice, whilst managing to summon a surprising amount of chaos for this modest trio - the title track convulses with splattered drum fills and guitar-riffs turned inside out whilst battling against the radio-scanning electronic interference, whereas ‘Bruch’ flushes out the chaff and mangles the percussive DNA with a heavy-handed FX riot. ‘Nothing To Declare’ is the closest thing to something resembling jazz, but still runs off on tangents with Dauner having a field-day on the ring modulator, but it’s the last track ‘Brazing The High Sky Full’ that drips with intrigue, grounded in a stop/start, begging-to-be-sampled drum break amidst unintelligible, ghosts-in-the-studio murmurs and sporadic electronics that feels like a fever dream. Now over 50 years old and still igniting fires.. and that cover…!!! (NM)
Tracklist
A1 Mudations 5:45
A2 Output 7:42
A3 Bruch 4:15
B1 Nothing To Declare 10:40
B2 Abraxas 4:24
B3 Brazing The High Sky Full 4:25
