Unlimited Streaming
Listen to this album in high quality now on our apps
Start my trial period and start listening to this albumEnjoy this album on Qobuz apps with your subscription
SubscribeEnjoy this album on Qobuz apps with your subscription
Digital Download
Purchase and download this album in a wide variety of formats depending on your needs.
This end-of-the-millennium quartet session probably best defines all the inherent contradictions in who ECM attracts to the label -- what kind of musician records for them -- and what concerns these artists and ECM's chief producer (and creator) Manfred Eicher hold in common. This set, although clearly fronted by Markus Stockhausen and Arild Andersen on brass and bass, respectively, allows space for the entire quartet to inform its direction. Héral and Rypdal are not musicians who can play with just anybody; their distinctive styles and strengths often go against the grain of contemporary European jazz and improvised music. Of the 11 compositions here, four are collectively written, with two each by Andersen and Stockhausen. "Flower of the Now" uses space and texture to create a harmonic architecture, skeletal though it may be. Stockhausen states a theme that acts as the syntax for the painterly drumming of Héral and Rypdal's interlocution between all the drifting parties. "Sway" begins with Héral's trans-African drumming, followed by the fury of Rypdal's own brand of guitar improvisation. He edges through musical frameworks of the past in rock, blues, and jazz, cutting them down in the process of playing knotty arpeggios and deconstructed riffs that rely on harmonic rather than lyrical language. When Stockhausen moves into the fray, it's sparingly in stark contrast to Rypdal's splatter and roll methodology and brings things to a near halt, with only Andersen to slip a groove through the band's abstractions. This is a record of "sonics," an area not unlike the forbidden "Zone" filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky's hero, who guides people through in the film Stalker -- forbidden, wasted, and beautifully desolate. When listeners reach the place in "Auma" where Andersen's bass employs electronic devices to give it an "orchestra" or chamber section quality, they can hear how attentive this crew really is to one another. They move about slowly and purposefully in the musical spheres where sound, language, and harmonic monoliths all give way into something less definite, less shapely or contoured in favor of the unspeakable, the unmentionable, the inarticulate speech of the heart as it enters, through sound's language: one of tension, dynamic, nuance, and texture, the various places where spoken language fails so miserably. In all, Karta is an effort that showcases the very best of its collective: It contains aesthetic grace and elegance as well as great violence and chaos. For all the recordings in "popular" music made at the end of the century, this is the one that sums up best where Western music has traveled these last hundred years, and points to just how far it yet needs to journey in the next thousand. Karta is soulful, tender, and frightening.
© Thom Jurek /TiVo
You are currently listening to samples.
Listen to over 100 million songs with an unlimited streaming plan.
Listen to this playlist and more than 100 million songs with our unlimited streaming plans.
From $10.83/month
Jan Erik Kongshaug, Recording Engineer, StudioPersonnel - Arild Andersen, Composer, Double Bass, MainArtist, AssociatedPerformer - Manfred Eicher, Producer - Terje Rypdal, Electric Guitar, MainArtist, AssociatedPerformer - Markus Stockhausen, Flugelhorn, Trumpet, Piccolo Trumpet, MainArtist, AssociatedPerformer - Patrice Héral, Drums, Percussion, MainArtist, AssociatedPerformer
℗ 2000 ECM Records GmbH, under exclusive license to Universal Music Classics & Jazz - a division of Universal Music GmbH
Jan Erik Kongshaug, Recording Engineer, StudioPersonnel - Arild Andersen, Double Bass, MainArtist, AssociatedPerformer - Manfred Eicher, Producer - Terje Rypdal, Electric Guitar, MainArtist, AssociatedPerformer - Markus Stockhausen, Composer, Flugelhorn, Trumpet, Piccolo Trumpet, MainArtist, AssociatedPerformer - Patrice Héral, Drums, Percussion, MainArtist, AssociatedPerformer
℗ 2000 ECM Records GmbH, under exclusive license to Universal Music Classics & Jazz - a division of Universal Music GmbH
Jan Erik Kongshaug, Recording Engineer, StudioPersonnel - Arild Andersen, Composer, Double Bass, MainArtist, AssociatedPerformer - Manfred Eicher, Producer - Terje Rypdal, Composer, Electric Guitar, MainArtist, AssociatedPerformer - Markus Stockhausen, Composer, Flugelhorn, Trumpet, Piccolo Trumpet, MainArtist, AssociatedPerformer - Patrice Héral, Composer, Drums, Percussion, MainArtist, AssociatedPerformer
℗ 2000 ECM Records GmbH, under exclusive license to Universal Music Classics & Jazz - a division of Universal Music GmbH
Jan Erik Kongshaug, Recording Engineer, StudioPersonnel - Arild Andersen, Composer, Double Bass, MainArtist, AssociatedPerformer - Manfred Eicher, Producer - Terje Rypdal, Composer, Electric Guitar, MainArtist, AssociatedPerformer - Markus Stockhausen, Composer, Flugelhorn, Trumpet, Piccolo Trumpet, MainArtist, AssociatedPerformer - Patrice Héral, Composer, Drums, Percussion, MainArtist, AssociatedPerformer
℗ 2000 ECM Records GmbH, under exclusive license to Universal Music Classics & Jazz - a division of Universal Music GmbH
Jan Erik Kongshaug, Recording Engineer, StudioPersonnel - Arild Andersen, Composer, Double Bass, MainArtist, AssociatedPerformer - Manfred Eicher, Producer - Terje Rypdal, Composer, Electric Guitar, MainArtist, AssociatedPerformer - Markus Stockhausen, Composer, Flugelhorn, Trumpet, Piccolo Trumpet, MainArtist, AssociatedPerformer - Patrice Héral, Composer, Drums, Percussion, MainArtist, AssociatedPerformer
℗ 2000 ECM Records GmbH, under exclusive license to Universal Music Classics & Jazz - a division of Universal Music GmbH
Jan Erik Kongshaug, Recording Engineer, StudioPersonnel - Arild Andersen, Composer, Double Bass, MainArtist, AssociatedPerformer - Manfred Eicher, Producer - Terje Rypdal, Composer, Electric Guitar, MainArtist, AssociatedPerformer - Markus Stockhausen, Composer, Flugelhorn, Trumpet, Piccolo Trumpet, MainArtist, AssociatedPerformer - Patrice Héral, Composer, Drums, Percussion, MainArtist, AssociatedPerformer
℗ 2000 ECM Records GmbH, under exclusive license to Universal Music Classics & Jazz - a division of Universal Music GmbH
Jan Erik Kongshaug, Recording Engineer, StudioPersonnel - Arild Andersen, Composer, Double Bass, MainArtist, AssociatedPerformer - Manfred Eicher, Producer - Terje Rypdal, Composer, Electric Guitar, MainArtist, AssociatedPerformer - Markus Stockhausen, Composer, Flugelhorn, Trumpet, Piccolo Trumpet, MainArtist, AssociatedPerformer - Patrice Héral, Composer, Drums, Percussion, MainArtist, AssociatedPerformer
℗ 2000 ECM Records GmbH, under exclusive license to Universal Music Classics & Jazz - a division of Universal Music GmbH
Jan Erik Kongshaug, Recording Engineer, StudioPersonnel - Arild Andersen, Composer, Double Bass, MainArtist, AssociatedPerformer - Manfred Eicher, Producer - Terje Rypdal, Composer, Electric Guitar, MainArtist, AssociatedPerformer - Markus Stockhausen, Composer, Flugelhorn, Trumpet, Piccolo Trumpet, MainArtist, AssociatedPerformer - Patrice Héral, Composer, Drums, Percussion, MainArtist, AssociatedPerformer
℗ 2000 ECM Records GmbH, under exclusive license to Universal Music Classics & Jazz - a division of Universal Music GmbH
Jan Erik Kongshaug, Recording Engineer, StudioPersonnel - Arild Andersen, Composer, Double Bass, MainArtist, AssociatedPerformer - Manfred Eicher, Producer - Terje Rypdal, Composer, Electric Guitar, MainArtist, AssociatedPerformer - Markus Stockhausen, Composer, Flugelhorn, Trumpet, Piccolo Trumpet, MainArtist, AssociatedPerformer - Patrice Héral, Composer, Drums, Percussion, MainArtist, AssociatedPerformer
℗ 2000 ECM Records GmbH, under exclusive license to Universal Music Classics & Jazz - a division of Universal Music GmbH
Jan Erik Kongshaug, Recording Engineer, StudioPersonnel - Arild Andersen, Double Bass, MainArtist, AssociatedPerformer - Manfred Eicher, Producer - Terje Rypdal, Electric Guitar, MainArtist, AssociatedPerformer - Markus Stockhausen, Composer, Flugelhorn, Trumpet, Piccolo Trumpet, MainArtist, AssociatedPerformer - Patrice Héral, Drums, Percussion, MainArtist, AssociatedPerformer
℗ 2000 ECM Records GmbH, under exclusive license to Universal Music Classics & Jazz - a division of Universal Music GmbH
Jan Erik Kongshaug, Recording Engineer, StudioPersonnel - Arild Andersen, Composer, Double Bass, MainArtist, AssociatedPerformer - Manfred Eicher, Producer - Terje Rypdal, Electric Guitar, MainArtist, AssociatedPerformer - Markus Stockhausen, Flugelhorn, Trumpet, Piccolo Trumpet, MainArtist, AssociatedPerformer - Patrice Héral, Drums, Percussion, MainArtist, AssociatedPerformer
℗ 2000 ECM Records GmbH, under exclusive license to Universal Music Classics & Jazz - a division of Universal Music GmbH
Album review
This end-of-the-millennium quartet session probably best defines all the inherent contradictions in who ECM attracts to the label -- what kind of musician records for them -- and what concerns these artists and ECM's chief producer (and creator) Manfred Eicher hold in common. This set, although clearly fronted by Markus Stockhausen and Arild Andersen on brass and bass, respectively, allows space for the entire quartet to inform its direction. Héral and Rypdal are not musicians who can play with just anybody; their distinctive styles and strengths often go against the grain of contemporary European jazz and improvised music. Of the 11 compositions here, four are collectively written, with two each by Andersen and Stockhausen. "Flower of the Now" uses space and texture to create a harmonic architecture, skeletal though it may be. Stockhausen states a theme that acts as the syntax for the painterly drumming of Héral and Rypdal's interlocution between all the drifting parties. "Sway" begins with Héral's trans-African drumming, followed by the fury of Rypdal's own brand of guitar improvisation. He edges through musical frameworks of the past in rock, blues, and jazz, cutting them down in the process of playing knotty arpeggios and deconstructed riffs that rely on harmonic rather than lyrical language. When Stockhausen moves into the fray, it's sparingly in stark contrast to Rypdal's splatter and roll methodology and brings things to a near halt, with only Andersen to slip a groove through the band's abstractions. This is a record of "sonics," an area not unlike the forbidden "Zone" filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky's hero, who guides people through in the film Stalker -- forbidden, wasted, and beautifully desolate. When listeners reach the place in "Auma" where Andersen's bass employs electronic devices to give it an "orchestra" or chamber section quality, they can hear how attentive this crew really is to one another. They move about slowly and purposefully in the musical spheres where sound, language, and harmonic monoliths all give way into something less definite, less shapely or contoured in favor of the unspeakable, the unmentionable, the inarticulate speech of the heart as it enters, through sound's language: one of tension, dynamic, nuance, and texture, the various places where spoken language fails so miserably. In all, Karta is an effort that showcases the very best of its collective: It contains aesthetic grace and elegance as well as great violence and chaos. For all the recordings in "popular" music made at the end of the century, this is the one that sums up best where Western music has traveled these last hundred years, and points to just how far it yet needs to journey in the next thousand. Karta is soulful, tender, and frightening.
© Thom Jurek /TiVo
About the album
- 1 disc(s) - 11 track(s)
- Total length: 01:03:58
- Main artists: Markus Stockhausen
- Composer: Various Composers
- Label: ECM Records
- Genre: Jazz
© 2000 ECM Records GmbH ℗ 2000 ECM Records GmbH
Improve album informationWhy buy on Qobuz?
-
Stream or download your music
Buy an album or an individual track. Or listen to our entire catalog with our high-quality unlimited streaming subscriptions.
-
Zero DRM
The downloaded files belong to you, without any usage limit. You can download them as many times as you like.
-
Choose the format best suited for you
Download your purchases in a wide variety of formats (FLAC, ALAC, WAV, AIFF...) depending on your needs.
-
Listen to your purchases on our apps
Download the Qobuz apps for smartphones, tablets, and computers, and listen to your purchases wherever you go.