"BULBS"

Unsolicited Music Ensemble Martin Küchen, soprano & baritone saxes plus other objects. Tony Wren, double bass. Raymond Strid, percussion.

 Tracks 1 - 5 recorded atFylkingen, Stockholm, Sweden.25 Feb. 2002.

Track 6 recorded at Ekocafeét, Uppsala, Sweden.25 Feb. 2002.

Track 7 recorded at Anagram, Stockholm, Sweden.26 Feb, 2002.

SLAMCD 250 Bar code 5 028386 025023

TRACKS:-

1 Fjarilsamaryllis 1m 23s

2 Capsules8 57

3 Mandelbrot and Julia 8 48

4 Small Edison Screw 6 37

5 Onion Shallot Garlic Chive 6 46

6 Mecablitz 8 58

7 Bongardia Chrysogonum 11 42

HI-FI NEWS May 2003 Martin Kuchen (soprano and baritone, 'objects'), Tony Wren (bass) and Raymond Strid (drums) play an attractive species of improv, coming on like an exceptionally active form of jazz. They don't suspend time, instead using their skills to unfurl deliciously variegated sounds. Wren's big bass and Strid's sonorous drums make everything sound gorgeous, while Kuchen's Shepp-like blurts add immediacy. Recorded at various locations in Sweden last year, this pushy, unguarded trio sounds really fresh. Ben Watson

Transatlantic Magazine - Paris - January 2003 The Unsolicited Music Ensemble (unsolicited as opposed to spontaneous, it would seem - though John Stevens often comes to mind) is a trio featuring Martin Küchen on saxophones (and objects), Raymond Strid on percussion and Tony Wren on bass. Wren, formerly a member of Phil Wachsmann's Chamberpot in the 1970s, made a spectacular return to improvising with 2001's "Angel Gate" - though that particular line-up of his Quatuor Accorde has now split, after violinist Phil Durrant and cellist Mark Wastell chose a quieter path to follow - followed up by last year's excellent "Four In The Afternoon" (with Howard Riley, Larry Stabbins and Mark Sanders), both on Emanem. The sax/bass/drums line-up on "Bulbs" might on paper recall such legendary improv power trios as Brötzmann/Kowald/Johansson or Parker/Guy/Lytton, but the UME's music is closer in spirit to Stevens' SME, as hinted above; Küchen, though a forceful free jazz player with his Exploding Customer quartet, is content to embed himself in the group texture rather than front the band, while Wren and Strid remain agile but dynamically discreet throughout. Timbre and event-density are more important parameters here than pitch, which, given the similarities that manifest themselves between several tracks, is a little frustrating (especially recalling the thrill of the Dionysian blow-outs on Wren's Emanem albums and Strid and Küchen's Ayler releases), but, as with much contemporary improvised music, "Bulbs" requires active and concentrated attention on the part of the listener to reveal its secrets.

Jazz Weekly Restrained chamber jazz of the highest gauge, this Pan-European effort unveils seven expanded improvisations from the first-ever tour of this Swedish-British trio. A mini-symphony of protracted tones, the sounds are remarkable since each of the players defines himself as one interlocking part of the whole. Thus there's no such thing as a saxophone solo, a bass solo or a drum solo per se. Instead sounds arise which can be ascribed to individual instruments, but which add to the soundscape without bringing undue attention to the player. Historically, this collectivist approach has been a particular British virtue, yet the Swedes outnumber the Brit here two to one. Similarly the Unsolicited Music Ensemble (UME) is notable because it represents three generations of Euro improvisers. British bassist Tony Wren is oldest of the three, with experience that goes back to the band Chamberpot with violinist Phil Wachsmann in the 1970s. Wren has stayed up-to-date and now plays in the improv Quatuor Accord. Percussionist Raymond Strid came to prominence in the 1980s in various bands with fellow Swede saxophonist Mats Gustafsson and since then has worked in groups with American pianist Marilyn Crispell and British bassist Barry Guy. Swedish soprano and baritone saxophonist Martin Küchen is in the band Exploding Customer with AALY trio percussionist Kjell Nordeson and has also played with Strid and Gustafsson. Putting aside the bone fides, it's good that unlike some musicians, Küchen listed exactly which reeds he plays. His technique is such that it's often impossible to assign with certainty a particular tone to a particular instrument. As a matter of fact, there are times when it's not complement transparent whether some sounds originate in Küchen's horn, Strid miscellaneous percussion or Wren's strings. Most of the time UME can be regarded as one six-armed beast. But while the approach is definitely minimalist, it isn't precious. Thus you can hear the saxophonist breath as he applies his lips, throat and lungs to a particular passage and you can perceive when the percussionist sails unselected cymbals across the floor. Occasionally you can also detect the bass line that Wren is distilling. Self-effacing to a fault, unless there's a woody recoil or a buzzing string introduced into the mix, his rhythmic undercurrent is more felt than heard. If necessary, of course, he can bounce the bow off the strings for a particular effect, chop out an arco drone or even strum the bass like a large guitar. In the aural spotlight, the pressure put on his strings makes it sound as if they're made out of heavy gauge steel. Küchen's skills are more obvious. Although there are times BritImprov near- inaudibility overcomes him, most of the time, he can find extended techniques for his purposes. Quick as necessary he can turn from baritone sax drones, sinus-clearing blats and basso bellows and snorts to higher-pitched, duck-like quacks, reed kisses and adenoidal, split-tone obbligatos from the\ soprano. There's even points where his horn work sounds as if it was issuing from a metal harmonica, or when a protracted undertone morphs into a metallic buzz in such a way that it appears as if the mouthpiece is being played without a reed. General utility man Strid often practices percussion interruptus, stressing a resonance for a short time, then cutting it off before it overwhelms the others. Rather than clattering the cymbals he caresses them delicately, making them sound like rolling dice, or he'll produce a vibration that could be the ringing bell of a toy train. He can create a proper bass drum pedal thump and rub sounds from his snare and toms with his fingers, but whether what appears to be sawing wood should be ascribed to him or the saxman is open to question. Recorded in chronological order, the CD's final track shows how these expansive techniques had been redefined as the trio played together even more. Here, at times, it sounds as if Küchen's distinctive tones are being produced underwater; Wren's rhythm-defining low-pitched pizzicato lines arise from only slightly above sea level; with Strid introducing the elevated colors available from bells, triangle and toy xylophone to lighten the mood. By the time the almost-12 minute piece has come to an end though, reverberating snares, staccato reed chirps and hedgehogs scratches has made it come alive. Ignore the band's name, but not its sounds. Once you hear this disc, you'll probably decide that its music is anything but unsolicited. Ken Waxman

Alan Jones. The Squid’s Ear:

Scandinavia has for decades been one of the more dependable areas to hear solid improvisation. In the 1950s American jazz musicians began marking cities like Stockholm, Copenhagen, Oslo, and Bergen in their standard touring itineraries. Audiences there have always been welcoming to new breeds of music, and it is no wonder - in a place where contemporary classical music has deep roots - that free improvisation would so quickly find a warm bed in northern Europe. Years later, countless American expatriates called these cities their home and, in turn, found soulmates in the local talent. In 2003, Scandinavia arguably has the most exciting indigenous improvisers, though many of the names almost never fall on American ears, strangely and sadly. Two such names are Martin Küchen and Raymond Strid. Strid, best known for his work alongside Sten Sandell and Mats Gustafsson in the Swedish power trio Gush, marks the perfect balance between drummer and percussionist. Incorporating both disciplines into his playing on a standard kit, Strid, like Paul Lytton, is identifiable by the many objects he places upon his skins to obtain a variety of percussive sounds, thus extending the natural range and possibilities in his instrument. Küchen, who is here following up a superb release with Strid in their other performing unit, Exploding Customer, is at once a skilled composer and a brilliant improviser. Gifted on multiple reed instruments, Küchen has a knack for controlling what Paul Dunmall refers to "light and shade" in the discipline of free improvisation and is able to work fluidly between controlled, soft timbres and pressure-heavy harmonic blowing, the foundation to those noise attacks so frequently employed by post-Coltrane saxophonists.

An impromptu duo performance in 2001 between Küchen and British bassist Tony Wren led to the formation of the Unsolicited Music Ensemble, with Strid completing the circle. Bulbs, a recording from an early 2002 Swedish tour, is their first commercial release and it is quite the show. Exploding Customer's Live at Glenn Miller Café (Ayler Records) showed Küchen to be a fine composer, threading catchy melodic heads with hard, groove-based improv. Those of us who enjoyed his turns on the stage for spontaneous expression now get to hear him without a net. This ensemble's game is communication and they excel without checking off any of the obvious bullets expected from that area of the music. Strid's drumming employs equal parts "little sounds" and the suspension of sound altogether. At other times he shifts to full scale assault, strengthened by Wren's attentive bowing and bird-of-prey reflexes: their performance on the record is a model of focus. The music is as organic as any one will find in a recording of such a context. Küchen weaves through the pieces using natural effects, flirting with quarter tones and what could pass for pitch shifting. None of the tracks bear the excessiveness so often found in group improv; of the seven numbers, the longest clocks in at just under twelve minutes. Even still, the music is best heard at intervals, rather than sitting with the disc in full. While the overall attitude of the tracks tends to bleed over, there are plenty of stimulating nuances. The trio shows tremendous range in the comparatively small niche they are striving to develop.

Cadence, May 2003

You’d think that a trio whose members have worked in bands with names as delightful as Exploding Customer, Gush, Chamberpot, Sound of Mucus and Cloudchamber could have come up with something catchier than Unsolicited Music Ensemble. (The only resonance that name has for me is of weeding through emailed spam and bad poetry submissions.) But the disc’s title, Bulbs, is wonderfully apt in its suggestion of subterranean forms, pungent flavours – cf. the track title "Onion Shallot Garlic Chives" – and organic beauty, whether in the form of flowers ("Fjarilsamarylis") or the mathematical models that lie behind natural forms ("Mandelbrot and Julia"). The seven improvisations here derive from what must have been a hectically compressed but productive tour of Sweden – the recordings come from concerts in three different locations on two consecutive days. The February 25^th gig from Stockholmn accounts for most of the album and the band sounds particularly sharp form on this occasion (even on the one-minute "Fjarilsamarylis" which, if I’m not mistaken, was surely the sound check). One’s often reminded of animal and plant life in listening to these improvisations - the barnyard, a marsh, pigs rooting in the soil, insects mating – although them technological and human are audible too (after all, the title also glances towards Edison’s invention): the dining-hall clink of cutlery or computer-room typing. Yet the music is so consistently low in dynamic level it’s as if these sounds, which might at full volume become genuinely alarming, have been abraded or rendered indistinct, leaving a surface that is oddly hypnotic in its tiny fluctuations. "Small Edison Screw" is particularly striking: a mute clamor that sustains a mood of unease whilc suggesting (when Wren briefly interjects the sound of sawing, for instance) some tiny atrocity just outside the range of perception. (Would this be what it sounded like if you could hear a plant scream?

The last three tracks – one more from the 25^th February Stockholm gig, and one apiece from Uppsala, 25^th February and Stockholm again, 26^th February – generally work in a vein closer to conventional free-improv chittering, with a lot of detail, a brighter feel and greater forward momentum. It’s still very quiet and oblique, though, as if one were listening to a spectral x-ray of You Forget to Answer (a fine 1990s disc by the Gustafsson/Guy/Strid trio). All in all, Bulbs is a first-rate disc, and highly recommended to improv fans.

Nate Dorward Cadence, May 2003, pp 129-130

All about jazz, Oct. 2003

L´improvvisazione totale continua ad affascinare pubblico e musicisti, un genere in cui le note - e i rumori, così cari al futurismo - generano tensioni interminabili all´interno del processo creativo sonoro senza doversi curare della tonalità e dell´armonia. In assolo o in orchestra, niente spaventa la creatività dei personaggi coinvolti in questo genere mentre cercano di definire una nuova grammatica espressiva. L´intensità sonora, l´accenno alla tonalità, la disintegrazione del modo classico di suonare gli strumenti sono tutte possibilità che il trio di cui ci accingiamo a scrivere esplora all´interno dei limiti temporali imposti dal CD. Ognuno dei partecipanti a questo progetto approfitta della libertà a disposizione per definire la propria individualità e il proprio modo di strutturare il caos di suoni e note, se vogliamo definirlo così, tratto dal vuoto che è costituito dal silenzio iniziale. La libertà totale dalle convenzioni connesse alla tecnica tradizionale permette ai musicisti di sfuggire al rischio del già ascoltato e di definire modi sempre nuovi di porsi a confronto con gli ascoltatori cercando di sorprenderli e reggere l´impatto con le novità proposte. L´inglese Tony Wren al contrabbasso e gli svedesi Martin Küchen al sassofono baritono e soprano e Raymond Strid alle percussioni rappresentano tre diverse generazioni di artisti che si incontrano per dedicarsi ad un´improvvisazione radicale che ha le proprie radici nell´Inghilterra della fine degli anni `60. Tony Wren - fondatore, fra l´altro, della Bead Records, una delle prime etichette a produrre musica improvvisata - è uno dei pionieri di questo genere. La sua collaborazione con Phil Wachsmann negli anni `70 ha affascinato gli ascoltatori, britannici e non. Raymond Strid è noto per il suo lavoro con improvvisatori come Axel Dörner e Marilyn Crispell. Il più giovane dei tre è Martin Küchen, sassofonista di solito dedito alle forme del free jazz classico degli anni `60 con il quartetto Exploding Customers. La musica dell'Unsolicited Music Ensemble si sviluppa lenta, raccogliendo durante il suo svolgimento tensioni che vengono generate all´interno di grovigli di note, quasi macchie sonore sparse su un´ipotetica tela e che si raggrumano attratte dalla forza di gravità. Ognuno dei tre musicisti rinuncia al ruolo classico di accompagnatore o solista e gli strumenti sono reinventati nella loro funzione. Una comprensione telepatica fra i tre permette alla musica di svilupparsi senza inibizioni di sorta, un esperimento alchemico che prende forma o si dissolve e il cui risultato è al di fuori delle forme conosciute, ma comunque in possesso di un proprio fascino.  Vittorio lo Conte