Gunda Gottschalk/Peter Jacquemyn/Ute Volker - baggerboot (Henceforth Records 102) Featuring Gunda Gottschalk on violin & viola, Ute Volker on accordion (both from Wuppertal, Germany) and Peter Jacquemyn on contrabass (from Brakel, Belgium). We know the gifted improviser Gunda Gottschalk from her work with Peter Kowald, as well as her duo with Xu Feng Xia, both from performances at previous Vision festivals. She once played a fine solo set here at DMG. Contrabass explorer, Peter Jacquemyn, also played a great duo set here at DMG with vocalist Anna Homler a few months back and has an incredible, bizarre solo bass disc out that I reviewed right after his in-store performance. Ute Volker has a trio disc out with John Russell on Emanem, but I can't say that I was familiar with her before this date. Both Gunda and Ute are members of a group called Partita Radicale.

This acoustic trio sound completely unique, a very strange blend of two strings and accordion. Both string players are masters of extended technique(s) and highly unusual sounds. They twist, bend and manipulate those strings in all sorts of bizarre ways. Ute also gets her accordion to wheeze and twist notes inside out. This trio is often dense, frantic, spirited, fractured and occasionally over-the-top, yet they know when to lighten up and deal with less intense textures. It often takes some work and concentration in order to hear how it fits together, although there is joy in the way that you do hear that cosmic thread when you open yourself up to it. An extraordinary and quite challenging trio, well worth your discriminating listening abilities.