It's a real rarity. It's hard to get it. An album by ECM Records, which unfortunately stopped manufacturing it more than 10 years ago. So this is a reportage from the past, also because its really special atmosphere.
Rainer Brüninghaus is a German pianist/keyboardist whose name could be familiar by some ECM albums, for example his other album, Freigeweht, or Eberhard Weber - Silent feet / Little movements / Yellow fields or Jan Garbarek - Visible word / I took up the runes, etc.
Then, in the September of 1983 with trumpeter Markus Stockhausen they created something which became an unknown value of art. His piano melodies and Stockhausen's trumpet voice suit to each other well, and make an airy distant sound. The album was recorded by the trio, but often it's only Rainer and Markus, and Rainer don't play just on piano, he uses other synthetizers, for example pads, too. A real unique piece, and just because of this, it's hard to describe it... you know, there are a few albums which we know and can't describe, because its oddities. Maybe you have to look at the cover: the distant city lights, vivid movements in the night, flowing into rays, meandering ahead in time and space, to reach the unknown future, with its uncertainity and doubtfulness. As I was listening to this album last night in the silence of my room, I imagined a view like the cover which can be seen from my window, from a high skyscraper at night. There's a huge silence around me, I can't hear the distant, low noise from outside, but I can see the slowly moving lights. As I look down in fiction and listen to the music, I also get touched by the past, and the future. The past by its real passed-by fact and faintly depressing nostalgia, and the future by those mentioned things before. One of my dreams is a view like that image. So I don't wait for longer, I send you the second track on the album, Stille, which means silence. In the first half, listening to the contemplative and strange piano sounds, the cover is getting more and more alive in my mind. Later, as the whole trio forms, they can pick us out from time and space, and take us to... the continuum.
Stille:
One of the best albums I have ever heard. I recorded it on tape from the radio 20 years ago or so, and then I listened it over and over again, it was a compelling experience. Now, I found the track Stille again on youtube... a piece of 'faintly depressing nostalgia' :)
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