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CD Feature/ 17 Pictures aka Wechsel Garland

  Tobias

Nobody likes to be treated like a child. You’ll go through years of “How much you’ve grown!” with a bitter smile and the faint hope of outgrowing cuteness and finally reaching maturity and the height assigned to you by nature. Likewhise, artists working on their “magnum opus” or stretching their compositions over the hour-mark have a clear critical advantage over those operating with minutes and seconds. If it’s big, it’s art, if it’s short, it’s entertainment, the motto goes (forgetting Cage and Stockhausen piano miniatures for a second). With 19 pieces between 48 seconds and barely four minutes, the case should thus be clear for this album.

And maybe it is. Jörg Follert has been active under various pseudonyms and as a remixer for acts ranging from surreal roots rock (Calexico) to neo-electro (Anthony Rother) and in his work organic structures have always had the upper hand over calculated concepts, warm harmony has hailed victorious over intellectual dissonance and he has preferred the coziness of an open fire over the modern-day comfort of electrical heating systems. Electronics have played a role in his music and they still do, but they are more of the glue, which hold the fragile constructs of acoustic guitars, brushed drums, banjo picking, hummed vocals and major sept chords played over happily babbling marimba patterns, together. In a word: If “art” derives from “artificial”, then “17 Picturs” has no ambition to end up in a museum. Timeless in its demurely shimmering sonic texture, delicately melancholic in its mood, seemless in its transitions, in how everything connects despite several stylistic switches and in the way the theme cocooned in the opening track paints blossoming flowers on the lonely walls of the ensuing pieces. This music could have been composed anytime over the last twenty years and this is in fact the second time it is released (with the ahornfelder connection and the sparse, but absolutely perfect packaging making for an ideal fit). The multitude of personal influences, which have manifested themselves in his remix orders, shine through in the genre-hopping of the later stages of the album, which breaks up the somber broodings and prevents the record from becoming solipsistic: Follert is a romantic, not a daydreamer and full of energy and aspirations – which may explain the occasional jazzy and cinematographic outbursts.

Of course, one could argue that these 19 tracks actually add up to one larger piece and that we are thus dealing with a “big” work here. But that would be besides the point. We have all discovered on many occasionas that the really great experiences of our lives can be encapsulated in seemingly insignificant moments and that it is not a cliche but quite possibly a worthwhile goal to strive for the unihibted state of our childhood. This album wants to be small, it does not want to grow up and it refuses to hide behind the so-called vices of the rational world. And that exactly what gives it a special and unique appeal.

By Tobias Fischer

Homepage: 17 Pictures/Wechsel Garland/Jörg Follert
Homepage: Ahornfelder