The “Eiskeller” (German for ice cellar) is a tranquil area in Berlin’s
Hakenfelde district (which is part of the Spandau borough), and it’s
considered the coldest place in the city. Due to its special valley location
in the Spandau Forest, cold air masses accumulate there, leading to
extremely low temperatures in winter. The name comes from its former use as
a natural ice storage facility. During the days of the Berlin Wall, the
three farmsteads in Eiskeller, surrounded by GDR territory, were connected
to West Berlin only by a four-meter-wide and 800-meter-long corridor. The
place was almost isolated.
Olaf Rupp’s new album Berlin Eiskeller is also about isolation, albeit not
geographical but musical. “When recording, I wanted to listen deeply to the
modulations created by saturation effects in the amplifier itself: octaves,
difference tones, ring modulator effects, and all that purring, creaking,
and gurgling that is always smiled at a little arrogantly in the genteel
world of musical aristocracy,” says the guitarist. The result is music that
defies categorization – there are no rock patterns, it lacks even the
slightest hint of “jazz“, and the occasional sprinkling of melodies and
flageolets makes it too accessible for brutal noise music. Even new
classical music doesn’t fit into any pigeonhole. That’s why his music is
also somehow isolated.
But Rupp isn’t interested in pigeonholing anyway. He studied linguistics
(English and Spanish) and is a certified translator. Currently, he’s reading
Marcel Proust. If you string together the titles of the first seven pieces,
they form a sentence from “À la recherche du temps perdu” (In Search of Lost
Time):
les murs, aussi bien/ ceux du salon / de la salle à manger / de la
cuisine que / celui de la cage de l’escalier /embrassaient la pièce / la
séparaient du / reste du monde
, which in English means “The walls, both those of the living room, dining
room, and kitchen, as well as those of the stairwell, embraced the room and
separated it from the rest of the world.” It’s plain to see that the
isolation topic is picked up here as well. “The way the adjoining rooms
‘embrace’ your own always carries with it the threatening idea of walls
closing in on you, leaving you unable to breathe.” But the music is not
claustrophobic; on the contrary, it has something liberating about it.
Rupp’s style consists of many nimble notes in atonal runs, and the clusters
he plays are more reminiscent of the style of Cecil Taylor. As with the
great pianist, Rupp also seems to have harmonic core elements, basic chords
and arpeggios, groups of notes that form horizontal and vertical axes, each
characterized by stark extremes in pitch, as in the first track, “Les murs,
aussi bien”. These modules and interval relationships, the aforementioned
octaves and difference tones, merge with structural formations to create
cells and characteristic motifs: Rupp can break down and reassemble these
basic building blocks, creating great tension and density, not James Joyce’s
stream-of-consciousness-technique.
But that’s not all. In the title track, which closes the album, all these
elements are given plenty of time and space. The ring modulator effects and
flageolets complement each other and float feather-light through the room.
Rupp shifts from almost gently dabbed open chords and harmonics to bizarre
little flourishes. The effect is that the brittleness of the music has toned
down in favor of a pointillistic, psychedelic touch – as if Jimi Hendrix
were floating through space and experimenting with electronics. Being highly
abstract and demanding music (but by no means off-putting) Rupp’s playing is
utterly captivating.
Berlin Eiskeller develops a strange, magical pull, giving us 72
wonderful minutes to revel in sound.
The album is available as a download. You can buy and listen to it on the
scatterArchive website.