Search - Bohren & der Club of Gore :: Geisterfaust

The Hand of the Ghost

Barry Dejasu | Rehoboth, Massachusetts | 06/01/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"An album composed of five instrumental pieces, each representing each of the five fingers of the hand. Not to mention the title of the album translates literally to "ghost fist." And this is more than appropriate - _Geisterfaust_ is that mysterious brushing of invisible fingertips along your neck as you enter an apparently empty room, chilling you into recoil, and yet haunting enough to make you explore further.



Very long, VERY slow, often repetitive, mostly driven by Christoph Closer's spacey keyboard notes. Occasionally a drum beat will vaguely suggest a rhythm is at work, and scattered bass notes from Morten Gass bring the jazz more up-front. But again, this album is SLOW - so slow, in fact, I'd warn that this album is definitely not something for impatient people, or for fans of Bohren & Der Club of Gore's "faster" stuff - which is usually very slow anyway, but nowhere near as studied and deliberate as this.



Even I was turned off by its supernaturally dragging slowness at first, but then one day I gave it another spin, and by the middle of the first (and longest) track, "Zeigefinger," I was won over completely.



This isn't a good album to start getting into Der Club. For that I'd recommend _Sunset Mission_ or _Black Earth_. But once you're ready for it, a good hour of your time, a bit of attention, and a little patience may be all it takes for your mind to drift into the seductive spirits of _Geisterfaust_."

Excessive lack of excess

IRate | 01/25/2009

(3 out of 5 stars)

"About as minimal as jazz, or any other genre for that matter gets, the beautifully bleak trio's concept disc stretches the notoriously slow group's lurching ambiguity even thinner. A majority of time almost feels like darkened tone poems instead of bona fide compositions, making the first and last tracks more memorable in between one heck of a hazy center. The sustained tension wears a little thin when there is hardly anything to support actual tension, but, especially a whole, the album still does not disappoint."

Finding the ghost

Noel Pratt | Washington, D.C., and better places | 09/14/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Here we have an album that causes one to wonder, "Why have I never heard this kind of music before?" And it seems the usefulness of this music will last me the rest of my life. Bohren plays with space, but moreso with attention. Listening to any of these five pieces is to have your attention stretched as if it were taffy. Take the bass notes and percussive whispers the reviewer below speaks of: between these notes, these sounds, you do not get lost. You do not "fall asleep." It's more as if you are slowly waking up. The attention is held...held...until the next soul-softening note. The band is patient with you, rewarding you doubly for any attention you give it. And why is this special? Perhaps because during the stretches there is no *expectation* to ruin the experience. It is that slow -- and yet something is happening nonetheless! Listen to it, you'll see. Also seek out their earlier album MIDNIGHT RADIO. Some think of Bohren & the Club as dark music. Well, it really isn't. It is infinitely soothing, instead. To call forth descriptors such as "death-lounge" or "dark jazz" (although they leave out any sax here except for a brief part at the end) is more a defilement. So I tried to summon an image, and what I came up with was that of soft, ashen snow, driven by no wind. Many people want to get lost in music, or in a soundscape. A valid desire. For that, one can indulge the fiery frenetics of John Coltrane's DEAR OLD STOCKHOLM or a hundred other works. But in this troubled world, FINDING oneself in the midst of the gentle, infinite equanimity that is GEISTERFAUST is something for which to be grateful. For "when the music's [almost] over," what is there is you."