Concert Offer: DAS KAPITAL plays Hanns Eisler

DAS KAPITAL

NEW CD & Program: „conflicts & conclusions“

Das Kapital Records

Video: Wonderland & Hotel room 1942

Soundcloud: Das Wunderland   Auferstanden aus Ruinen    Friedenslied

Edward Perraud – Drums

Daniel Erdmann – Tenor Sax

Hasse Poulsen – Guitar

Concerts always on request

Two years ago, Das Kapital – saxophonist Daniel Erdmann, guitarist Hasse Poulsen, and drummer Edward Perraud – released their debut album, “Ballads and Barricades”, that traced European jazz back to that mash of passion and awkwardness that this music once managed to unite in the late sixties and early seventies, before coming apart in more recent times. It was not about cleverly played platitudes, rather about dismay, rage, bewilderment, and a measure of undisguised emotion. For the album, Das Kapital translated the music of the German composer Hanns Eisler into the 21st century. Eisler had been a belligerent spirit who admitted no one-dimensional classification, and instead always navigated the difficult path between assimilation and revolution. And like Eisler, Erdmann, Poulsen, and Perraud did not offer simple solutions to the explosive questions of our time. They rather sought to articulate through their instruments the kinds of sentiments nobody trusts themselves to express anymore. Wherever they performed, the three musicians entertained and electrified.

Now the second album from this German-Danish-French trio is here. Once again, it’s about Eisler. And again a bold probing of boundaries. For example, when they play the national anthem of the GDR, “Auferstanden aus Ruinen”. Is that an acknowledgement of Stalinism? Rather the opposite. Stealing from the ideological hardliners, they rip a wonderful piece of music and place it once again at the disposal of musical discourse. This approach also provokes the question of why the GDR leadership suppressed the text of this song and only let the melody be played. Twenty two years after the fall of the wall, Das Kapital provide an elementary contribution to German and European unity. Their version of this piece is unselfconscious, yet anything but naïve. […]

Daniel Erdmann, Hasse Poulsen, and Edward Perraud prove themselves once more to be three unreconstructed idealists who do not want to resort to the global uniformity of present-day small-town jazz sentiments. This music is not for breakfast cocktail parties, perfume ads, or corporate gigs. It’s the soundtrack of the post atomic energy era, of train strikes, of lecture theatre sit-ins, but also of overcrowded suburban trains and computer crashes. And for those not convinced, just put the power anthem “Friedenslied” (Peace Song) on repeat mode.

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