CD: Sjöström / Hirt / Wachsmann / Lytton:
Especially For You

Harri Sjöström – soprano / sopranino saxophone
Erhard Hirt  – guitar / computer treatment
Philipp Wachsmann – violin / electronics
Paul Lytton – drums / cymbals /misc. objects

Recorded live on 15th October 2022 at MUG, München by Oliver Künzner
Mix/master by Philipp Wachsmann
Cover painting by Paul Lytton
Special thanks for Hannes Schneider and Offene Ohren e.V
Sleeve design by Emil Karlsen
Produced by Emil Karlsen for Bead Records

CD on BEAD

download on Bandcamp

reviews:

Jean-Michel Van Schouwburg (independent) on Especially For you by Harri Sjostrom, Erhard Hirt, Philipp Wachsmann and Paul Lytton

Here is an excellent testimony of an impromptu concert, planned for the second edition of the quartet “Xpact”, recently resurrected around the three survivors of this group from the 80s, the double bassist Hans Schneider, the “electronic” guitarist Erhard Hirt and the percussionist Paul Lytton in homage to its founder, the late Wolfgang Fuchs, an exceptional bass (and double bass) clarinetist and hyper incisive sopranino saxophonist, replaced by saxophonist Stefan Keune. Keune and Schneider had to be absent for health reasons, so it was decided that violinist Phil Wachsmann and soprano and (sopranino) saxophonist Harri Sjöström would do the trick. We were not wrong. Lytton and Wachsmann have often collaborated and recorded as a duo or quartet on several occasions over the decades and Sjöström and Wachsmann were part of the Modern Quintet (with Paul Lovens, Teppo Hauta-Aho and Paul Rutherford) and we find this little world in within the King Übü Örkestrü , also recently revisited in a splendid new album “ROI”.
A long collective improvisation in one piece of 57 minutes digitally separated into 4 sections: For You Part One, For You Part Two, For You Encore & For You Lullaby. Erhard Hirt is credited for both “guitar” and “computer processing” and Phil Wachsmann “violin” and “electronics”. There is therefore an important, subtle and very fine electronic dimension throughout the performance which can blend into near-silence and strange murmurs or burst out over the acoustic sounds of the sax or the violin, the percussionist discreetly waving his sticks, utensils, skins, cymbals and its curious sound objects, with friction, scratching, movements, multi-directional mini-strikes with sounds sense of dynamics and its ability to leave the sound space within the reach of its acolytes. Sharp British-style improvisation with Rhineland style is revealed here in all its splendor. It is in this volatile environment in perpetual metamorphosis that we will find the most radical aspect of the most astonishing convolutions of Harri Sjöström, who was a member of Cecil Taylor’s groups (supporting recordings) and a lyrical duettist with soprano saxophonist Gianni Mimmo. Just hear him converse in almost a duet with the disjointed strikes of Paul Lytton or the windy sonic extrapolations of Erhard Hirt. If you like a Thomas Lehn, you will be able to appreciate Hirt’s oblique and smoking antics. Lytton’s “active” play is reminiscent of a multitude of objects collapsing and ricocheting down the endless staircases of a haunted tower. 
Always hiding his playing well, the violinist Phil Wachsmann has a crazy talent at his fingertips for strange pizzicatos in slow motion, strikes of bow hair which bounce to streak very fine high notes in a flash or suggest melodic fragments coming from an imaginary, slightly smoky Webern score. The collective balance is deliberately mishandled by shifting sound disruptions, the sax maintaining the course by jumping at distended intervals, and the percussionist scattering his playing over the most extreme corners of his kit (“drums”? but also a metal box containing chains, mini-cymbals, rattlesnakes etc.), handling objects on the surface of the skins, the most unpredictable sounds always being welcome. The listener will forget to wonder who plays what in this playful mess, because that’s the goal. The instrumental action of each interpenetrates with that of the three others in an indescribable way creating an infinite network of correspondences, connections and repulsions. The complexity is there with a camouflage trend, by turns noisy, minimalist, electro-acoustic, wild and sophisticated. In this adventure, the individual approach (individualist) and the “style” with its “virtuoso” instrumental exploits are left aside for the collective adventure, the instantaneous imagination, the delirium… There is a plethora of recordings of improvised music these days which nourish a lingua franca that is truly recognisable, logical, readable, recurring… too wise.   With this minimalist, electro-acoustic, wild and sophisticated. In this adventure, the individual approach (individualist) and the “style” with its “virtuoso” instrumental exploits are left aside for the collective adventure, the instantaneous imagination, the delirium… There is a plethora of recordings of improvised music these days which nourish a lingua franca that is truly recognisable, logical, readable, recurring… too wise. . With this Especially For You, we glimpse how and how many old hands in free improvisation manage to escape commonplaces by losing our perception in an inextricable maquis which will tickle our curiosity to the point of putting the work back on the reader.

Andrzej Nowak (Spontaneous Music Tribune) on Especially For You by Harri Sjostrom, Erhard Hirt, Philipp Wachsmann and Paul Lytton.

On stage we find Sjöström’s small saxophone, Hirt’s guitar, Wachsmann’s violin (the last two instruments retrofitted electronically) and Lytton’s drum kit, as usual rich in its own electro-acoustic devices that support his light but very compulsive drumming . The first set lasts a full thirty minutes, and its opening is shrouded in a cloud of filigree acoustics doused in electroacoustic noise. The musicians react not only to each other, but also to the omnipresent silence. The saxophone seems ready to play, while the violin waits, and electronic dust and stylish flying percussion swirl around . The narrative is both gentle and feisty, reminiscent of the good, pioneering years of free improv. The story of the four masters takes on incidental dynamics from time to time, and this usually happens thanks to Lytton’s actions. Hirt and his guitar introduce a lot of ferment here, while Sjöström and Wachsmann rather guard the melodic order, willingly sing and equally willingly groan painfully. A long improvisation has many phases and subsections. Sometimes electronics from almost three sources can show their lion’s claws, sometimes everyone works in a minimalist mode and conducts improvised dialogues in the call & response convention, there are also moments when the narrative plunges into an almost dreamlike darkness. After the twentieth minute, the story takes on a surprisingly post-classical flavor. The musicians almost drown in silence, but the percussion master does not allow much and pulls the quartet to a spectacular elevation. However, the final say belongs to the saxophone and violin.
The second set, almost twenty minutes long, starts quite calmly. A slim saxophone, a hint of analog electronics and prepared guitar phrases. Underneath this sound stream, rustling drumming slips in and once again elevates the narrative to a slight peak. However, the sopranino and violin do not give up and create an impressive lullaby. Lytton does not let up and for a moment the improvisation seems exceptionally noisy. The next phase of the concert is an attempt to combine water and fire – post-baroque chants now flow on the shoulders of percussion brushes working at quite a dynamic range. In the background there lives an emotionally unstable guitar, which again and again provides small counterpoints to the exchange of pleasantries. Emotions run high here, however, and thick silence turns out to be a good comment.
The concert encores last approximately seven minutes in total. The first one is quite lively, initiated collectively. The narrative is even filled with some dancing and focuses on rhythmic games. The guitar phrasing is jazzy, the rest quickly moves into a phase of intriguing preparations. A bit of humor, acoustic grotesque and guitar mute. The second encore, according to the name of the song on the album, is a typical farewell song . Saxophone and violin are again immersed in melodious post-classicism, resonating percussion and gently fermented guitar. Against the distant background, a handful of electroacoustic micro events create an interesting dissonance. After the last sound, there was applause for several dozen seconds. Oh how!

Eyal Hareuveni (www.salt-peanuts.eu)

on Especially For You by Harri Sjostrom, Erhard Hirt, Philipp Wachsmann and Paul Lytton.
Being a free improviser means that you have to exercise unpredictable situations as an existential essence of life. This is how the Especially For You quartet came to life. The original plan was to have a concert of the Quartet XPACT – German guitarist Erhard Hirt, sax player Stefan Keune and double bass player Hans Schneider with British drummer Paul Lytton – for the occasion of the 10th anniversary of Einstein Kultur in Munich, founded by the city of Munich. But Keune and Schneider were indisposed and were replaced, at the last minute by Finnish sax player Harri Sjöström and British violinist Philipp Wachsmann. This live, free-improvised performance at MUG in Munich occurred in October 2022. Lytton did the cover painting for the album documenting this concert.
It was the first time that these four gifted free improvisers played together as a quartet. Sjöström and Wachsmann played in many formats since the 1980’s, most notably in the Quintet Moderne, and Sjöström played with Lytton in the Cecil Taylor Ensemble. Hirt played before with Lytton and Wachsmann in the King Übü Örchestrü, and, obviously, all four musicians are masters of the art of the moment with distinct and highly personal palettes of sounds. Hirt extends his electric guitar with extensive computer treatments and transformations; Wachsmann also adds electronic treatments to his acoustic violin; Lytton employs an array of objects that comprise his unique sound pallet developed over the years and Sjöström has developed unique sonic inventions on the soprano and sopranino saxes.
The recording of this concert highlights the immediate and organic interplay of these experienced improvisers, before an appreciative audience. The music flows naturally and sounds fresh and urgent, and each piece has its own cryptic but poetic inner logic. Repeated listening discovers more and more nuances in the subtle interplay and the clever and endless sonic games of these pioneers of European improvised music. Wachsmann notes that the new quartet, as well as the attentive audience, brought a new thing to the concert, «a new moment ‘in the moment’». And, indeed, the final, playful applause even included a bold listener brandishing his iPhone playing back a short extract from the concert he had only just recorded.


Peter Margasak (independent) on Especially For You by Harri Sjostrom, Erhard Hirt, Philipp Wachsmann and Paul Lytton.

Hirt is a self-taught musician whose attraction to the blues in the 1970s eventually led him to jazz-rock, and eventually improvised music. Around the time the recordings mentioned above were made he formed the group XPACT with Lytton, reedist Wolfgang Fuchs, and bassist Hans Schneider, and he was an early member of the King Übü Orchestrü. He’s never stopped playing, and his work appears on more than two dozen recordings, including many with a guitar-synthesizer set-up he’s now used for many years, including Especially For You, a new recording with an ad hoc lineup of XPACT where and he Lytton were joined by saxophonist Harri Sjöström and violinist Philipp Wachsmann—the latter two were subbing for Schneider and current reedist Stefan Keune, who were unable to make the gig. The album was recorded in Munich in October of 2022, and released a few weeks ago on Wachsmann’s long-running Bead label. While Lytton and Wachsmann continue to use electronics to expand and warp their output, Hirt used a computer to reimagine his guitar sounds, creating something that churns, glides, gargles, and spasms, leaving it difficult to tell where one source ends and where another begins, and how each musician’s contribution impacts the others. The quartet proceeds in potent fits and starts, incorporating plenty of space only to unleash the occasional torrent of jarring noise. You can get a strong sense of these elusive machinations below, with “For You Part Two.”

Ettore Garzia: Un quartetto di veterani al decimo anniversario dell’Einstein Kultur 2022 in "Percorsi Musicali“ (Dec. 30th. 2023)

It is not a simple problem to attribute an artistic explanation to what one wants to represent theoretically as 'fragmentation' or 'segmentation'. When Deleuze and Guattari arrived in philosophy, it was clear that the finite body of the work no longer had any reason to exist, but that attention had to be paid to the vibrations or modulations of it: it is in the search for forces, polarities, empathies or illusions that value is understood.
The processes of musical fragmentation or segmentation are at the basis of Especially For You, a CD for Bead Records that accommodates a concert of pure improvisation that took place in October 2022 in Munich to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Einstein Kultur cultural centre, a concert given by the XPACT Quartet in a reworked version: originally consisting of guitarist Erhard Hirt, saxophonist Stefan Keune, double bassist Hans Schneider and percussionist Paul Lytton, that evening the audience saw a different version due to the unavailability of Keune and Schneider, with the two musicians being replaced at the last minute by Harri Sjöström on soprano and sopranino sax and Philipp Wachsmann on violin and electronics.
In a performance of about an hour, the renewed quartet presented itself to an audience prepared and eager to participate in an experience that only free improvisation can offer: going 'against the grain', towards acoustic constraints and devilish waves of singular and unintelligible sounds, the quartet offered a beautiful proof of how one can reconcile a lot of abstract art on a mental level, taking advantage of sounds that are not normally desired by musicians but that can tell something.
Some information already comes from the cover, which bears a painting by Lytton. The English percussionist, a historical signature of British and world improvisation, is also a very good painter, with his own style and his own logic of intervention, the same one that presides when he plays his percussive set: although I did not find in the internal notes the name given to the painting, I realise that it is in Lytton's orientations, i.e. abstract thickenings that need a lot of observation and detail to impose themselves; the aim is to let the viewer derive their own image from the painting's apparent state of confusion, for by using colouristic techniques in a certain way and begging on the details created, the painting is able at some point to give explanations that lead back to real-world attitudes. In the viscous torpor of the colours and images, we can think about the facets of our character, being cautious or impatient, provoking reflection or leaning in for a warning: it is something that is also conveyed in the music and is also the common heritage of the other three musicians, who work on the rubbing, hissing or simmering of events in a unique way, precise to the situation of the place and the interaction of the moment as in the best tradition of free improvisation.
Especially in the two long parts of For You, the 'greatness' of the coordination and direction of the music is evident, becoming a drive in the best Deleuzian style: destabilising the normality of the parameters is not a method for its own sake but an opportunity to offer other terms of comparison of expression; interconnection is fundamental in this task and this is immediately verified through listening as one perceives a maturity both in terms of the acoustic performance and the perfect relationship between the musicians. The extensive techniques on the instruments determine the result in Especially For You but they are not everything, there is a further sum that the musicians provide in knowing how to 'feel' each other, in keeping the pulse of the situation at all times and capturing the judgement of the audience present.
It is difficult to express in exact words what happens in Especially For You, just as it is difficult to give an immediate opinion on Lytton's paintings... I challenge anyone to do so in a short time; but at the same time my ears sense that we are faced with an area of expression that has yet to be discovered. If Sjöström and Lytton produce themselves in their aesthetic inventions, with semantic combinations of which they know all the predictive value, Hirt and Wachsmann often accentuate their improvisational stance with little electronic treatments, suggesting that it is also on this point that expression is at stake.
The titling of the pieces, which indistinctly addresses a receiving entity, smacks very much of modern poetics: that non-rhetoric is often an observation of deformed zones, of thoughts that can create tension and perspiration at the same time, but it is matter that nonetheless offers itself to the interpretation of the listener. There is no doubt that on that evening in Munich, there was a need for a happy image of the free as well as a strong dose of empathy towards the audience, something that Wachsmann defined it as a new moment 'in the moment', referring to the attention devoted to the performance: one of those present had filmed the quartet's concert with his mobile phone and during the final applause made partial use of it, sending a small extract back into the ether. To tell the truth, I cannot perceive this 'referral' of the final part of the CD, however I trust one fact, namely that that concert succeeded in satisfying a need, bringing together the 'illusions' of those present for an hour. (translation Deepl)