Wolf Kampmann
indepenent journalist & writer

(translated)

Here we go!!

Communication is like a round of ping-pong; be it in music or in the daily interaction of people.

Music is fundamentally nothing other than a form of human interaction if, that is, the music is played with honesty and integrity. And so, one is completely capable of understanding the innocent klacking of the ping-pong ball, at the beginning of HEELIUM's CD "Goddammitdave!" as a testimony to human interaction. When one is familiar with the game of ping-pong one is familiar with the tense excitement reached when that ball is hit in an unpredictable way, and then successfully rebounded and countered.

HEELIUM's music is exactly this: Heavy Jazz and dragging march music, elegant klezmer and dark blues, menacing trash and claustrophobic spoken word performance, daunting polka and broken up reggae, expressionistic bar-room-tinkling and impressionistic horn-playing, imaginary folklore and narrative tone poems - clustering to combine avante garde and tradition in such an evocative manner that is breaks the confinements of that what is logical. It does so in such a way that no one and nothing could expect or foresee it: A morbid invitation to dance with the unknown, stretching across all 12 tracks of the album.

HEELIUM sets the swamps of the Mississippi Delta against the scenery of the European big city. Enticingly tender, joyous, and nonchalant is its beginning, as we see the musical creatures grow into a great Golem, reaching deep into our souls. It gives us a sound track for the loneliness of the individual amidst the millions, finding its way back to the primal nurturing warmth.

The music is sophisticated, sly and often naively childlike to the point of poignant innocence. The distance of the individual to the group describes the communication within the band, and the juxtapositional switching of roles between the players is to synchronise gravity and centrifugal force.

If the horns come together to take a certain path, the piano, bass and drums contradict in yet new directions, or vice verse. The fractures and coalitions are constantly in a state of change. Nothing is constant for more time than is utterly necessary for playing havoc with 99 percent of all ones musical indulgencies. This gives even the darkest musical passages of HEELIUM a characteristic note of malicious cheerfulness.

HEELIUM is the Art Ensemble of Chicago for present day German jazz; building on an enormous conglomerate of tradition which they master, creating a new music which holds no boundaries, except that of their own immediate creativity.

Since 1996, John R Carlson on the keys, Oliver Sonntag on drums, saxophonist and clarinetist Penrose Feast, on bass Sabine Worthmann and the trumpeter Stephan Meinberg, have brought their varied experiences and differing constellations together as a singular entity.

The five cohorts of HEELIUM demonstrate palpable virtuosity on their main instruments, as on the other miscellaneous sound devices they each employ. They instigate their fantasy, their joy of music, and their extreme willingness to take risks through a collision of forces, and with an expression of collages, which have yet to be seen in life itself.

Wolf Kampmann: 2003