Intakt CD 125

In the nineties, the quartet Die Enttäuschung [The Disappointment] released their first record solely with pieces by Thelonius Monk. Die Enttäuschung managed the feat of radically remaining faithful to Monk and staying in close touch with the originals, and yet placing them on their heads. The four from Berlin celebrated a great success several years later with the recordings of the entire works of Monk on the 3-CD Intakt box with the pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach. The media has reacted euphorically to “Monk’s Casino” (Intakt 100).
Now Rudi Mahall, Axel Dörner, Jan Roder and Uli Jennessen have released a CD with 17 of their own compositions. “This band knows no borders between yesterday and tomorrow” writes the German magazine Jazzzeitung about the quartet. “Die Enttäuschung is more Berlin than Berlin itself and, moreover, unparalleled in nearly every respect. Collective improvisations beyond convention will drive up your blood pressure and fantastic solos take away your breath.” Or it is, as the music journalist Felix Klopotek (Spex) sees the music from Die Enttäuschung, “concentrated intensity. Exactly that what one wants to hear from jazz today.”


REVIEWS

Downbeat: 4 1/2 stars
What’s the best jazz combo today? An elder statesman’s all-star band? Some recent hotshot concervatory grads? A mid-career hero’s touring group? For my money, none of the above. Instead, an unassuming, mildly self-abnegating foursome from Berlin is the heaviest working band in small-group jazz.
Die Enttäuschung - a name that invites its own comments (and deflates any grand selfassertion like the above), translated as „the disappointment“ - has been around since the end of the `90s. … Playing intimate quartet music firmly rooted in free-bop, with an open sound, melodic improvising and a clear delight in swinging (and interrupting the swing), the group’s frontline is immediately arresting, a gush of musicality. Gangly, towering bass clarinetist Rudi Mahall is a visual mismatch for the diminutive trumpeter Alex Dörner, but when they dart and swoop together, trading ideas, sparring and lifting each other to another level, their compatibility is beyond question.
Mahall is a monster. With Eric Dolphy’s sound (sometimes closer to the master’s gulping bottom end) and Ornette Coleman’s phraseology, he’s a child of the `60s, but he’s also an accomplished free improviser. You can hear how that expand his options. His soloing is irrepressible, and there’s nary a lull in the action across the intire disc.
Dörner, well-known for having overhauled the trumpet vocabulary in improvised music, deftly shows the lyrical side of his playing, infrequently durning to sound-texture, extended tech or unvoiced breath. He can conjure past figures, from Cootie Williams to Tony Fruscella, but his bright, beautiful sound in personal and hi’s intensely inventive on the reduced harmonies.
The tunes have a Monkish angularity, but the sound is uniquely Die Enttäuschung. On „Vorwärts-Rückwärts“ (played twice), the simpatico rhythm section of bassist Jan Roder and drummer Uli Jennessen sped up and slow down with hilarious results. Humor is a key part of the group’s m.o.: take the dopey, near-bossa „Drive It Down On The Piano,“ by Jennessen. Also, any kitsch is burned up in the heat of the improvising, as on the drummer’s equally tropical „Very Goode.“ The tunes aren’t ends in themselves, though. The band takes the good old idea that charts are springboards for playing, for music that is not on the page. There’s an absence of rigidity, serious listening, a playful attitude, humility and muscical ambition, all rolled into one. No disappointment, at any level.
John Corbett, Downbeat September 2008