Few acoustic visionaries are able to render the details of their methodological prowess as visible as bassist Christian Weber does. His playing sounds grounded, strong-rooted, at times even soiled by a griminess that’s all the more mystifying in view of the altitudes frequently reached by the Swiss artist, either as a member of some group or - as in this case - performing alone. This particular outing is quite disobedient, an uncharacteristic facet of Weber’s intention: the “exploration of a resonant space”. Something not easy to achieve when your comrades, as perceptive as they may be, sabotage healthily egotistic plans in favour of collective expressiveness.
It’s not a smooth experience. Recorded September 13, 2007 at Zurich’s Walcheturm art gallery, the set begins with what resembles the protagonist’s will of magnifying the crackling of a self-destructing instrument. Sinister noises with practically no harmonic content instigate a series of sliding shifts indicating that a creature born from the crumpling wood is expected anytime soon, the strings becoming the medium in a preliminary ritual which gradually introduces the spirit of the improvisation to a scarcely populated assembly of aghast testimonies.
Sure enough, Weber’s arco starts rubbing and scraping, the bass responding with a tarnished chant of excruciating poverty but, at the same time, unusually wealthy in timbral impact and moaning passion. It doesn’t last: at one point, the percussive qualities of the big box get painstakingly exploited, bumps and knocks blemishing the gritty magnetism, if only for a pinch of valuable minutes. Then we’re back to longer “notes”, if we’re allowed to call them so. Their austere temperament summons forth the ghost of dead virtuosity, yet it takes a virtuoso - a courageous one - to perform in this concentrated, severe, ultimately admirable manner with such a difficult tool. The reiterative tolling at the end of the performance seals an act that deserves the utmost credit, the music warily circumnavigating any sort of archetypal “aural gratification”. This is not a divertissement for head-swinging, glass-in-the-hand real estate agents.
Sometimes we have to dig deep - filthy hands, mud in the face - to find the heart of beauty. Someone might not be persuaded of its existence in Walcheturm Solo. How wrong these people would be.
>Massimo Ricci, Bagatellen, 8.2008

It's not just in packaging that Jason Kahn's Cut imprint is consistent: the attractively sleeved discs often contain a musical aesthetic as steeped in simplicity as Kahn's design sense. The Cut catalog is full of discs with a fairly constrained trajectory, discreet musical instances with a well-defined focus. Walchturm Solo upholds this curatorial tendency, featuring Christian Weber on solo contrabass, and while Weber's technique varies throughout the disc's thirty-eight minutes, the performance is one of a steady determination, a long-form improvisation that largely avoids superfluous gesture or aimless wandering. Solo bass recordings can have a tendency to become taxing in the wrong musician's hands, but Walchturm Solo maintains a compelling arc, far from static, but also without needless fiddling or hyperactivity.
The single track that comprises Walchturm Solo begins with Weber create a creaking cacophony, like a chorus of doors in an old boat's undersea cabin being opened and closed in a collection of groans and squeals. Weber's concentration on the diverse textures of his instrument remains a near constant throughout the album. An interlude of pizzicato plucks and percussive slaps gives way to bowing that hints at a repetitive melody that is never birthed, with the almost tactile sound of the bow rubbing the string more important than any specific note that might resonate. It may be the character of the room in which Weber performed, or perhaps the means of Kahn's recording, but the bass sounds wonderfully deep, its lowest emanations sounding forth with a titanic rumble. Work higher on the neck elicits a rich, reedy texture, though Weber seems dispositioned to the nether regions of his instrument's range. One can practically hear the physical form of the instrument explored in detail by hands and bow. The disc isn't especially brief, but there's little in the way of long-windedness within; Weber takes the time to explore the different facets of a sound or technique, but doesn't linger too long.
He may not be a big name amongst players of his big instrument, but Christian Weber's made one of the more interesting solo bass albums to hit these ears in recent years. He explores the many voices of his instrument without giving in to the indulgences that can strike the soloimproviser, and what might be Walchturm Solo's best quality (aside, perhaps, from the character of its fidelity) is the way that Weber takes his time. He's not exhaustive, but Weber knows just how long to tarry in one spot or the next, making for a journey that moves along at just the right pace.
>Adam Strohm, fakejazz, 8.2008

For objectivity’s sake, I’ll drop the pretence of impartiality right here: I’ve been waiting for this release ever since I fell in love with the “Signal to Noise” albums on Swiss label For4Ears. Every volume of this six-part series was thoroughly worth the time and concentration invested in it, yet somehow the two CDs involving Christian Weber stood out for me: The warm, multichromatic minimalism of “Volume 2” and the silent meditation that was “Volume 4” greatly benefited from attentive listening and careful advancement on all sides - while relying on the crisp timbral explorations and nocturnal Jazz sensibilities of Weber’s Contrabass as a splendid foundation in particular.
While “Osaka Solo” from 2006, Weber’s first solo release after a 16-year relationship with his instrument, was again culled from the “Signal to Noise” tour and, at eighteen minutes duration, represented more of a sublime foretaste of things to come than a full-fledged album statement, “Wacheturm Solo” presents him in an appreciative local environment (an arts and music space in Zürich) and with complete freedom regarding the spacing and length of his performance.
For 38 minutes, the stage now belongs to no one but Weber. Like a painter, he carefully begins delineating a space, filling the canvas with clear and resolute strokes. “Wacheturm Solo” opens with determined string tectonics and sharply outlined groanings and moanings, like the rigging of a ghost ship sailing through an infinite fog bank. Gradually, the painfully organic utterings are counterpointed by textural pads of abrading tones: Weber establishes a dialogue with the different characteristics of his Bass. It is a technique he will continue to display over the course of the improvisation, with various lines of development, noisy frequencies and pitched material running at different speeds yet closely related to each other.
Ten minutes into the piece, the halucinatory introduction has given way to a section of rigidly plucked high tones and a groovy Bass-counterpoint. Weber thinks in segments, in series of scenes driven by an inherent and intuitive logic. He doesn’t need silence to structure his piece and eschews the dynamic undulation typical of many improvisational interactions. His aesthetics are not so much dominated by terminologies such as “loud” or “quiet”, nor by the somewhat banale method of minutely building up tension and releasing it in an erruptive burst. Slowly and fluently, motives are replaced, rhythms subtely adjusted, sounds finely tweaked, until a completely different situation has established itself, offering fresh potentials and new horizons.
As the music progresses, Weber moves from passages with a focus on sound transformation and drone-stasis to strongly percussive phrases, in which deep, teethgnawing episodes are fueled by almost snaredrum-like impulses. Only seconds later, the wood of the Double Bass appears to expand and contract as if it were placed on a rack, while some strings sound as though they’d been torn on purpose, snarling metalically. From this tortured acme, the track seems to fizzle out, but Weber has kept the best for last. In a series of irregularly hit chords, he drifts in a dreamy slipstream of reverb and sensual harmonics pulsing languidly in the air. Time is suspended in one final breath, until the sensation of infinity is veiled by the darkness of silence.
Thanks to this emotive and overwhelming culmination, “Wacheturm Solo” leaves the impression of a carefully composed concert, moving from a state of entanglement to complete harmony. The exact balance between pre-planned material and in-the-moment spontaneity doesn’t matter, however. The real point of fascination is how Weber has avoided the pitfalls of navel-gazing and kept things interesting for himself and his audience alike. In an intruiging display of benign schizophrenia, his solo efforts are marked by the same attentive listening and careful advancement as his group work. No need to be impartial here: Easily one of the more unique and inspiring albums this year.
>Tobias Fisher, tokafi, 7.2008

Was Clayton Thomas für Berlin, das ist Weber für Europa, der Kontrabassist, den man gehört haben muss, um es zu glauben, dass den Reichtum, die Phantastik von Klängen ein Mann allein und ohne Strom dem sperrigen Instrument abringt. Weber knarrt und knurpst, als würde er die Saiten statt mit dem Bogen mit einer Raspel traktieren. Aber allmählich wird das Geknurre sonorer und verwandelt sich in das wohlige Brummen und den schrägen Gesang eines zottigen Urviechs, dessen Grimm verraucht ist. Jetzt klopft das Ungeheuer sogar einen munteren Beat auf seinem Wanst, der Bogen federt und erzeugt seltsam maultrommlige Geräusche. Raues Gegeige abseits von Wohlklang beginnt enorm reizvoll zu schillern. Die tiefen Frequenzen wummern bodenlos, aber oben krault die Linke die zu Berg stehenden Haare. Um die Taille rum wird gesägt, als ob Weber eine allzu üppige Jungfrau halbieren wollte, die sich zudem als zäher als vermutet erweist. Knarrend und klopfend prüft er die Güte des Holzes, findet dann wieder einen sonoren, wie von Dampf getriebenen Sägezahnschwung, oder schnaubt er vor Anstrengung? Der Klang selbst scheint sich zu spalten, wird zweistimmig, zweihändig ist er sowieso, Pizzikato mit der einen, peitschend und schnalzend mit der andern, dann auch twangend mit langem Nachhall, twänggg, twonggg - der Bass als reines Schlaginstrument. Stark.
>Rigobert Dittmann, Bad Alchemy, 7.2008

Despite a list of collaborators longer than your genealogy, upright bassist Christian Weber demonstrates his ability to go it alone for 38 minutes with no edits, no electronics and no loop stations on this live recording. Exploring the entire spectrum of the instrument’s ability – and then some – Weber begins his monolog by pinching and pulling strings deeply and intently enough to resemble the team of lumberjacks who first bore his bass. Continuing in this fashion, he slowly introduces his gamut of techniques, furiously juggling slaps, sul pont, scraped rhythms, pizzicato, felt-not-heard drones, sprinkles of melody, microtonal pulses and wood creaks into a lovingly tangled texture; despite this History of Extended Techniques, Weber is a master who manages these into a cliché-free, hypnotic performance. After an intoxicating, growling climax, Weber descends into muted plucks and carefully paused punches of harmonic waves that echo the Zürich concert hall as the curtain falls.
>Dave Madden, Slug, 8.2008

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