SOMMER / JOST - DuOh! "DIE DUNKLE WOLKE" (FISH MUSIC, 1987)

Update: Recently I've re-listened to this album. And I enjoyed it even more than a few years ago.
IMO it's a minor classic -

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A meeting between the eastern and the western part of Germany. It was not the first one.
Already before 1973 Jost Gebers fom FMP brought musicians from West-Berlin to the City's eastern part. These meetings/concerts between musicians from the DDR and the "West" were at the beginning illegal.
A concert by the Irène Schweizer Quartet on October 1973 marked the beginning of official encounters. The relationship to the DDR administration remained somewhat fragile and demanded creative input especially from Jost Gebers.
It is safe to say that the reunion was already on it's way before anyone even imagined the german reunification.

This recording - made two years before the wall came down - is a superb example of this notion.
But luckily the music does offer a much broader view of sound - humour included.

It's not necessary to introduce Günter "Baby" Sommer. Ekkehard Jost is mostly known as the author of seminal books about European Jazz (among others).
By no means only a theoretician he is also an accomplished reedist with a preference for the low tones. An original musician who deserves a wider recognition.

His own label Fish Music has up to date 14 releases from which only the first three LPs are deleted.
The CDs are still available from himself.

His examination of folk music is singular insofar as the original feeling remains intact even when the music becomes "abstract". Clear structures but still some sense of wonder.




Günter Sommer, drums, percussion
Ekkehard Jost, sopranino, baritone & bass saxophone, bass & contrabass clarinet

01. Il passo pesante (Sommer) 2:21
02. Oh Lützellinden (Jost) 4:55
03. Nou? (Sommer) 4:13
04. Ich bin ein freier Bauernknecht (trad./Jost/Sommer) 2:21
05. Schnatter Jump (Jost) 1:41
06. One-Two-Tre (Sommer) 5:29
07. Fahr wohl, lieber Klaus (Jost) 3:43
08. Ingelheimer Fernsicht (Jost) 2:41
09. Jamais de Schlappland in my casa grande (Jost) 5:33
10. So long Karl May (Sommer) 4:05
11. Es geht eine dunkle Wolke herein (trad./Jost/Sommer) 2:12

Theme from tr.4 is a peasant song from the 17th century.
Theme from tr.11 is from Johann Werlins manuscript compilation (1646).

Amman Boutz Studios, Gießen, Germany on 2nd November 1987

Fish Music FM 001

(vinyl rip)

Enjoy.