Kaputt

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“Zimmermann / Lienhard are a finely tuned team. Since 2018, they regularly perform and improvise together in various constellations and contexts.
“kaputt” is the debut album of the duo. It captivates through its singular combination of instruments and the virtuosity with which the acoustic and electronically created sounds have been combined and blended. The result is a challenging and at the same time very beautiful music, which can only just be situated somewhere between Ambient, Drone, Noise, and contemporary music.

„Doomsday. Gloom. Smouldering piles of scrap, here and there a burning stack of tires. Among all this a half-wrecked machine giant, about to explode, limping through the desolate landscape. This is the mental image conjured up by “kaputt”: At first, we hear a technoid droning, whistling, crashing – from which eerily familiar and still strange accordion sounds suddenly emerge.

“kaputt” (meaning “broken”) is an expressive album title. The sounds make a broken impression, and the musical conventions of consonance and meter are also broken, a result of the search upon which Zimmermann / Lienhard have embarked: the search for the broken sound.

Pablo Lienhard’s no-input mixing proves to be extremely versatile: his acoustic spectrum ranges from pneumatic drill to grinding hammer drill to a base-heavy droning didgeridoo and twittering birds.

Tizia Zimmermann coaxes sometimes delicate, then again almost violent seeming tones from her accordion, which she skilfully interweaves with Lienhard’s electronic tapestry. Her bellows blow a last breath into the machine giant, and the keys rattle along – just as befits a broken lung.

With their project, Zimmermann / Lienhard impressively demonstrate how much choreographic fine-tuning must surely provide the basis for such a deliberately “broken” sound. Coincidence, it appears, is a crucial element here, and yet, the field is at most only partially left to chance.

Perhaps “kaputt” is itself also a machine. It draws us in as we listen and twists us – at times impaled by a piercing tinnitus – through the wringer. That one emerges from all this feeling slightly shattered, should definitely be considered part of the program: an intensely exciting acoustic experience.”

Simon Leuthold (translation by Rhea Blem)