Label: ADN

素晴らしい内容!!バンドの絶頂期である80年代後半のギグを鮮やかに捉えた2CD!!60年代末にジャーマン即興グループ"Just Music"を立ち上げECMから音源をリリース、その後もCassiber、大友良英氏のプロジェクトを始め様々なグループに関わり活動を展開したAlfred Harth。氏が中心となり80年に結成、即興的作曲という独自のヴィジョンを掲げ、パンク、ジャズ、そして現代音楽を融合させることで、極めて斬新な音楽を創り出したバンドGestalt Et Jiveの重要な86年 & 87年のライブ・セット音源集。初期にはSteve Beresford、Anton Fierが在籍、その経験より磨かれた長尺の演奏の中でリズムや音色を爆発的な変化で展開、単なる録音というよりジャンルを突き破るアナーキーな気配に満ちた傑作記録。

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Live in Rhein-Main by Gestalt et Jive documents the group’s most audacious mutations through two pivotal live sets, revealing an intricate interplay of improvisation and postmodern eclecticism. The album’s raw edges and unpredictable transitions expose the band’s commitment to redefining avant-rock’s boundaries, blending kinetic jazz idioms, punk dissonance, and European experimental traditions into a deeply engaging experience.
With Live in Rhein-Main, Gestalt et Jive’s archival horizons expand, pushing their legacy even deeper into the terrain of European musical radicalism. The recordings, culled from performances in Wiesbaden and elsewhere in the historic Rhein-Main area, vividly encapsulate the group’s late-1980s peak, where members Alfred 23 Harth, Ferdinand Richard, and Peter Hollinger exercised a singular vision of spontaneous composition, blending punk, jazz, and Neue Musik into something defiantly new. Far from nostalgic retrospection, the album surges with forward momentum, exposing structural tension and a commitment to unmediated improvisation. This is a band that was unafraid to leave screws loose, reveling in collective undulation rather than the safety of genre orthodoxy.

The immersion begins with fragmentary motifs and instrumental interplay that treat the boundaries between jazz and rock as permeable; brass and woodwinds coil around angular guitar figures and frenetic percussion. The group’s multinational lineage is palpable and crucial, with their shared language of sonic risk-taking suspended between Germanic avant-garde rigor and Mediterranean lyricism. The chemistry among Harth, Richard, and Hollinger—deepened by the friction of their collaborations with Steve Beresford and Anton Fier—is never static, unspooling across extended jams punctuated by explosive shifts in rhythm and timbre. The recordings feel less like documentation and more like invitations to witness the act of genre defiance as it unfolds, dripping with immediacy and never far from anarchy. Throughout the album, Gestalt et Jive abandon the notion of the song as a fixed statement, instead embracing it as a vehicle for constant negotiation and reintegration. The set progresses like a living organism, devouring and reconstructing itself through cycles of tension and release, a hallmark of the group’s improvisatory ethos. It is impossible to ignore the impact of the era’s broader artistic ferment—Gestalt et Jive, contemporaneous with groups such as Cassiber and Etron Fou Leloublan, situate themselves as itinerant theorists, always more interested in questions than answers.

Live in Rhein-Main is not merely a historical artifact, but a living, breathing touchstone for anyone interested in how music can be wrested from the grip of predictability. There are moments when the tumult settles into fleeting hypnotic patterns, only to erupt again in splintered cascades of sound, reminiscent of European festivals where the group was frequently seen. For aficionados of progressive music, the album offers a dense, often unruly celebration of encounter, transformation, and the perpetual possibility of surprise. At a time when the relentless archiving of the avant-garde threatens to fossilize its impact, Live in Rhein-Main instead insists on the urgency and pleasure of unstable forms. Gestalt et Jive’s interrogative spirit remains undimmed, their music an enduring argument for friction over polish, and for the vitality to be found in perpetual motion.