Bohren & der Club of Gore

In the organizer's words:

Routines against the routine(s). When Bohren calls, it has happened again. Even if two soccer World Cups and two Olympics have passed in the meantime. In other words: when Bohren calls, it's time to wrap a new album in something flanking, something informative. And because Bohren are Bohren, about half of the rhetorical material developed for such writing occasions ("reinventing themselves", "this was not to be expected", "unheard-of career move") simply falls by the wayside. No, this is not about: when nothing else works, the only thing that helps is repetition. In the case of Bohren, the squaring of the circle reads like this: what do you do if you have developed a truly unmistakable and distinctive signature sound as a band, want to maintain the level you have achieved but don't want to repeat yourself? The solution is attitude and it means work. Work in the studio. Persistence. Discarding. Working on subtleties. Precision. Careful arranging. Experimental orchestration with limited instruments. Maybe some vocals? Perhaps a version of a Warlock song sung by Mike Patton? A radical change of style is not possible with Bohren - shall we say: fortunately? - is not possible. What is finally released must seem compelling to the trio in the highly sensitive area. So "Bohren goes Country" or "Bohren plays 20 Jazz-Funk-Greats" are not to be expected.
Let's take a look! A little more than five years after "Piano Nights" and a little more than 11 years after "Dolores", Bohren & Der Club of Gore are now releasing their eighth studio album. It bears the ambivalent and seductive title "Patchouli Blue" and contains an unusually large number of tracks for the band, namely 11. The playing time of these 11 tracks, however, remains within the usual framework of a good hour, which of course also implies that the specific drilling vibe of a tasting of sublime slowness has to be established within a shorter time in order to unfold its full beauty. So is it business as usual? Rather the continuation of the level of commitment developed over decades, which knows how to make nuances productive. In linguistics, there is the concept of minimal pairs, in which one letter makes the difference. The album's opener "Total falsch" is an almost ideal prelude and to a certain extent the exact opposite of what the title promises. Classic drilling. Depending on the listener's temperament, it may take two times four notes or perhaps two and a half minutes to signalize: You're in Bohren territory, expect anything from now on! But the use of the organ is enough to make you go weak at the knees, and the saxophone then steers the carefully developed tension into a landscape in which you can no longer rule out an encounter with Jan Garbarek.
More and more surprises follow. For example, a genuine hit such as "Deine Kusine", which is positively radiant with light, is not to be expected. Or, immediately afterwards, "Vergessen und vorbei", which sounds like the soundtrack to the John Carpenter film that he forgot to make, with its rhythm machine and analog synthesizer. Or the ironic and unironic jazz references in "Let everyone know". Or the precisely draped melancholy of "Tief gesunken". If you ask the band, "Patchouli Blue" has the right mix: four parts "classic drill", three parts "strange" and four parts "jazz sneak". Incidentally, the sequence of tracks from "Totally Wrong" to "My World is Beautiful", which is perhaps best imagined articulated somewhat defiantly with an emphasis on "my" and/or "beautiful", is also compelling. As a bonus, the tracks in sequencing order also sketch out the shadow of a story that you can make up for yourself depending on your temperament. Mine, for example, would be a bit sleazy and a bit Fassbinder. It's also great to imagine the album as a pop record in terms of the titles. One half "ideal world", the other half "abyss". You can't have one without the other. And in between, the title track "Patchouli Blue". Bohren has never had a title track before! And it takes us back to the Indian stores of the 1970s with their heavy fragrances. All the Moog synths fit in quite well, sometimes in the background, sometimes in the foreground. "Forgotten & over"? No way!

As you can see, the 11 sound sculptures that Bohren have painstakingly freed from any superfluous dross in hard and disciplined work offer plenty of material for acoustic journeys of discovery. Now it's time to rehearse the pieces for upcoming live performances so that they also have the density, intensity and compelling quality in the club that was wrested from them in the studio. Because one thing is clear, "horror jazz" or not, Bohren is alien to the muckraking jazz attitude of "today like this, tomorrow like this". The rule here is: THIS IS HOW IT HAS TO BE. As melancholy as Bohren sound, the attitude behind them can certainly be described as combative.

Ulrich Kriest, November 2019

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