Steamboat Switzerland - Terrifying Sunset (January 28, 2022 trost records)

1. Chimborazo South Face

2. Tiger East Face

Recorded live at Photobastei Club Zurich/Switzerland during five-day residency by Giuliano Sulzberger, September 22-26 2020

Dominik Blum - hammond organ, voice

Marino Pliakas - e-bass

Lucas Niggli - drums

Mixed and Mastered in March 2021 by Martin Siewert

Artworky by Albert Oehlen

PRE ORDER

Charlotte Hug & Lucas Niggli - Fulguratio (FUNDACJA SLUCHAJ November 2018)

Drum and voice – a more archaic pairing could hardly be imagined. Under this motto, in 2016 the festival “Ad libitum” in Warsaw invited Charlotte Hug and Lucas Niggli as an improvisation duo. Although they live in the same city of Zurich, this was a first for both musicians. The electrified audience was just as overwhelmed by this recent discovery as the duo themselves: if they had known that their meeting would release such an exceptional, electrifying energy, this duo would have been born long before that evening. 

Hug and Niggli have a similar archaic approach to their production of sound – but came to it from quite different directions: Hug is a classically trained viola player and a visual artist. At the same time, she is a composer, performer and voice artist. She integrates the various disciplines into her own intermedia art form. Niggli, one of the most versatile drummers of his generation, operates mainly in the field of free jazz and improvisation. What connects the two musicians is their fascination with freedom in music. On this basis their CD “Fulguratio” was created.

From their contrasting positions, using improvisation and with great compositional awareness, in the sense of Instant Composing, the duo explores the potential of their great range: how close and how far can they be and still communicate with one another and even create sparks? Hug and Niggli allow the extremes of tone and energy in their “instruments” – the fragile and the robust – to collide purposefully and release their charge like a flash of lightning. 

The thunder roll which they attract acquires a life of its own. Thus, variants of this discharge of energy – “Fulguratio: sheet lightning” “Obliqua Fulmina: spider lightning” – and other meteorological phenomena – “Virga: drizzle” “Lacunosus: lacunosus cloud” (cloud cover with holes like a loose honeycomb) have become metaphors of their immaterial and at the same time physical music. Just as purposefully, the Duo allow the extreme tonal opposites to come close together, to touch, to rub, to merge into one another – to the point where percussion and voice are barely recognisable as such and are perceived rather as a hybrid “third sound”. Into this hybrid soundscape, Charlotte Hug also integrates the viola. 

The supposed divide between the archaic elementary power of the voice and drum and the cultivated musical art object, which a viola traditionally embodies, brings the Duo/Trio with its shimmering playfulness almost to the point where they disappear entirely: voice and drum are applied for percussive as well as melodic purposes. Where Hug draws out the most original, most physical sounds from her viola, each exclusive artistic characteristic enters the background in its own right. For the Duo therefore this also means freedom: freedom to navigate with archaic power and stylistic flexibility spontaneously and sensitively through the whole spectrum of sound between tonal extremes and hybrids. 

Lucas Niggli - Alchemia Garden (INTAKT RECORDS 2018)

Alchemia Garden: the album’s wonderful title, creates an enchant­ing, ambiguous effect. Lucas Niggli relates the organic, biological and growing, which develops on its own and is cultivated and maintained in the form of the garden, to the metamorphosis of material, the scient­ific search for something unknown which historically has been seen to generate something new.

During his thirty years of playing live Lucas Niggli recorded with many musicians like Aly Keïta, Barry Guy, Sylvie Courvoisier, Luciano Biondini, Michel Godard, Andreas Schaerer, Nils Wogram, Elliott Sharp, Steamboat Switzerland, Erika Stucky. He has occasionally given solo concerts, for example a performance at the big John Cage Festival in Switzerland in the late 1980s at which Cage himself witnessed Niggli’s performance of 27’ 10.554” for a Percussionist. It is time, in the best sense, for Lucas Niggli to release a solo album. What a great way to celebrate one’s own 50th birthday – with this gift to himself and the listener.

New York critic Laurence Donohue-Greene writes in the liner notes: „As a drummer blessed with a percussionist’s intuitive sense and virtuosic capability and range, Niggli’s memorable solo performances here unquestionably add to the tradition of the great solo drummers who preceded him while keeping an eye on the horizon.“.

1. Alchemia Garden 6:12

2. Flora Glow 3:35

3. Bakossi Dew 2:26

4. Go Goblin 2:38

5. Tuned Arrow 3:51

6. Seeds ’n’ Roots 5:13

7. Ooze 2:10

8. Mimosa 3:21

9. Pulsatilla 0:57

10. Booloobali 2:59

11. Ohia Lehua 2:22

12. Nelumbo Nero 1:33

13. Villa Caroba 2:11

14. Welwitschia 2:44

15. Hydnora 4:27

Lucas Niggli: Drums, Percussion

All music composed by Lucas Niggli (SUISA). 

Recorded September 5 – 8, 2017, by Jeroen Visser at Villa Am Aabach, Uster, Switzerland. 

Mixed and mastered by Martin Ruch at Control Room Berlin, November 8, 9, 2017.

Liner notes by Bert Noglik and Laurence Donohue-Greene. 

Cover art: Gerda Steiner & Jörg Lenzlinger. Szenografie: Elisa Allessi. 

Graphic design: Jonas Schoder. Photos: Michelle Ettlin. 

Produced by Lucas Niggli and Intakt Records, Patrik Landolt.

Soundsamples of this CD

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Jurg Wickihalder / Barry Guy / Lucas Niggli - Beyond (INTAKT RECORDS April 21, 2017)

A meeting of three European musicians from different generations each with his own musical background: three sound artists, three virtuosic instrumentalists, three breath-taking improvisers. BEYOND with Jürg Wickihalder, Barry Guy and Lucas Niggl means strong melodies, a deeply affecting and sensuous lyricism, moments of exciting groove and a rare and fascinating textural density.

This trio’s mutual understanding as they interact, which even in complex sections sounds fleet of foot and completely organic, is based upon a common way of working together. For the past couple of years, the Beyond trio has given several concerts. Then, in November 2016, they took themselves off for two days and evenings to Loft Cologne in Germany to record the album. It would be impossible not to notice both their evident desire to play and their joy in working together. For the listener, to hear them heading out from their starting point and into the unforeseen without ever losing their sense of forward motion is a pure pleasure.

BEYOND mit Jürg Wickihalder, Barry Guy und Lucas Niggli: starke Melodien, tiefgehende, sinnliche Lyrik, rasant groovende Augenblicke und eine Dichte, wie sie selten zu hören ist. Im Trio Beyond treffen sich drei europäische Musiker verschiedener Generationen mit ihren je eigenen musikalischen Biografien: drei Klangkünstler, drei virtuose Instrumentalisten, drei atembraubende Improvisatoren.

Das gegenseitige Verständnis im Interplay, das selbst in komplexen Themen völlig organisch und leichtfüssig wirkt, basiert auf einem gemeinsamen Weg, der Wickihalder-Guy-Niggli zusammenwachsen liess: Das Trio Beyond hat in den beiden letzten Jahren zahlreiche Konzert gespielt, bevor im November 2016 an zwei Tagen und Abenden im Kölner Loft aufgenommen wurde. Die Spiellust der drei, ihre Freude am gemeinsamen Spiel, das von der Idee ins Unvorhersehbare führt ohne aus den Fugen zu geraten, ist unüberhörbar – sehr zu unserem Vergnügen.

1. A New One (J. Wickihalder) 5:02

2. Relaxing in The Forest (J. Wickihalder) 7:57

3. The Valley (J. Wickihalder) 8:18

4. Return of Ulysses (B. Guy) 5:57

5. Arts and Crafts (J. Wickihalder) 6:27

6. Süssholz (M. Griener) 3:33

7. Dipper (J. Wickihalder) 4:44

8. Sing! (J. Wickihalder) 5:01

9. The Last Breath (J. Wickihalder) 6:19

Jürg Wickihalder: Soprano, Alto and Tenor Saxophone

Barry Guy: Bass

Lucas Niggli: Drums

MAILORDER-PRICE:

Schweiz: 30 SFr. plus 3 SFr. Porto

Deutschland/Österreich: 18 Euro plus 3 Euro Porto/Versand

International: VISA / MASTER: 30 SFr. plus 5 SFr. Postage

Order adress:Intakt Records, Postfach 468, 8024 Zürich, intakt@intaktrec.ch Fax: 0041-44-383 82 33

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