Sack and Blumm Kind Kind

Harald 'Sack' Ziegler and Frank Scheltge Blumm are less a band or a studio project than a rather elaborate pen pal scheme. Since 1999, starting with the Shy Noon album on the Gefriem label, Ziegler and Blumm have been recording in their bedroom studios in Berlin and Cologne and then posting each other the results. While the phrase 'German bedroom musician' almost inevitably conjures up Kraftwerk-like sharpness and hermeticism, in fact there's an organicity and domestic clutter to this album more reminiscent of such very British institutions as the Beta Band or the Bonzo Dog Doodah etc. Which, I suppose, is a way of saying that if you're listening to this, be very careful, because there's a strong chance you'll be hit by a flying kitchen sink or Romanian knee flute. It's a bit like Hecker having his computers stolen and being forced to produce his inimitable sounds using only what he can find in Nigella Lawson's kitchen or Paul Simon's attic.

Thus cassius carrera melds tablas, something that sounds like congas, a Japanese sounding flute, a clarinet reed minus the clarinet - I think - with a childish and primal sense of tune and rhythm that sees music gets stretched to joyously odd extremes. Baby Bass Box offers the alternative soundtrack that Stephen Hawkin would have provided for Monsieur Houlot's Holiday, and sits perversely well against the distorted guitars and echoes of bedroom seven or the school-organist-gone-mad sound of maria mbira. Much of the album seems to be about travel and discovery, as with 'Bass Car, the sound of tango accordion over funky bass and tablas in a track that forces the listener into a curious Stockhausen / Mira Calix game of 'what's that sound?' Similarly, baby bad bug sounds like a brass band in a blender, but is offset by the lullaby vocals of to go to or the very English horns of sleep less ness. Title track and closer kind kind is full of weird loops, infant xylophones, pub guitars and what appears to be the sound of a ratchet spanner. Like much of the album, it is the product of two musical mentalists playing off each other, trumping the other's bravado and vision.

Kind kind is an album of structure and physicality, and album unafraid to get dirty in the kitchen and make a mess in the studio. It is the product of two inquisitive and bright minds. It doesn't always work - at times there's too much going on, too many obscure instruments being thumped or cajoled - but nevertheless, as a mind-expanding excursion into new directions, it's thoroughly worth experimenting.