Fabiana Striffler - Archiotíc (2021) Hi Res

About three years ago Fabiana Striffler stunned audiences and media with her album Sweet And So Solitary. The Jazzpodium dedicated a double page to the violinist and composer from Berlin and called her music a “fascinating cosmos of sound”, which Deutschlandfunk summed up: “Fabiana Striffler's entire album is stubborn, sometimes demanding and stubborn.” Concerto magazine found, “Such songs If Gustav Mahler were to compose, a time machine would have catapulted him into the early 21st century: mysteriously radiant, touching and full of unheard-of sounds. ”Striffler even met with a response in England, for example in Hifi Critic:“ It takes great skill to make something sound so profound and so grotesque at the same time. "

The current work partly builds on its predecessor, but in many respects Fabiana Striffler also goes other ways. She crosses stylistic boundaries more consistently than ever, allowing virtuosity and humor to dance around each other in a seldom heard way in composition and execution. The newly formed band of top-class and extremely agile musicians makes a substantial contribution to this. Striffler's multifaceted violin playing and the no less free-spirited cellist Julia Biłat (Stegreif Orchester et al.), With whom Striffler has been working since 2017, suggest isolated references to modernists of European classical music (Stravinsky, Bartók). The keyboardist Jörg Hochapfel has been providing strange surprises with unconventional humor in the genre-breaking Andromeda Mega Express Orchestra for years, and he is also considered an extremely sensitive companion - he also shows both talents in Striffler's band. Max Andrzejewski and Paul Santner are among the prominent personalities of contemporary jazz, open in many directions, for which the Berlin scene is known throughout Europe. After all, Striffler's long-term partner Greg Cohen (Tom Waits, John Zorn and others) left a significant mark on the album, especially as a producer.

There is a clear stance in Striffler's compositions, one could also say a philosophical message. “I want to create something that opens people. In Corona times, the phenomenon that people avoid each other has increased even more. Existing fears, for example of confrontation and loss, of the unknown and other thoughts, were intensified by the real risk of infection. I try to create a platform with my music on which you can let go. And I would like to counter the trend towards alienation and anonymization with something personal. "

Fabiana Striffler did not initially plan that Archiotíc - unlike in the past - would not be sung. But then an instrumental concept turned out to be much more coherent. “It seems to me that the purely instrumental album fits better in these times of information overload. I wanted to create something that leaves more space to spin your own thoughts. "

The wealth of timbres is enormous even without voices, as is the range and suggestive power of Striffler's pieces. The sweet lead story of the album, Maraschino Cherries, seems to balance melodically between circus and Italo-Pop (Striffler spent her childhood in Italy) and brings together jazz bass grooves, bizarre synth chirping and violin pizzicati with a charming smile. The following Chant Of The Earth also attracts with a catchy leitmotif, but clearly tends towards Anglo-American folk traditions. The deliberate stringing together of repetitions of the topic criticizes repetitions from advertising and radio and reverses their intention. “Repetition can also mean getting totally involved and focused. Chant Of The Earth should be a call to listen to the earth, "explains Striffler," that's why there are both reprises. The first tells by means of an unusual double bass guitar what it looked like on the planet before our existence. And the second is the impact people have on the world: beauty and scrap metal ”.

The baroque chest organ sounding at the end of Chant Of The Earth also plays a role in the key work of the album, Invitation To Sin, which follows immediately. “This is my version of Genesis. The piece describes the moment when people ate from the tree of knowledge, learned to reflect and were thrown back on themselves in their nakedness, ”explains Striffler. The voices of violin, cello and organ stand for Eve, Adam and the snake, the somewhat wandering piano for the disorientation after the fall and expulsion. “When composing, I broke away from traditional harmony theory and instead oriented myself towards the incorruptibility of intuition and twelve-tone music. Sometimes the piece is even atonal, but it doesn't sound dissonant. ”At the end of the album, Memorandum Of Sin picks up the thread again.