Bohren & der Club of Gore Live Recordings, Sessions and Late Nights

Live recordings can go one of two ways; either the ethereal, floating, feedback-laced beauty of the recording suits the tone and mood of the music perfectly and the live rendition delivers the material under a newer light with a renewed sense of strength and worth, or the cackle and humdrum of a band caught on a lazy night destroys any pretense or cherished position the band held in your heart. To a larger extent it is dependent on the style, aesthetics and purpose of the musical outfit to determine the outcome of any live recording, and Bohren, it will be argued, are superb musicians at getting their idea’s across in a live atmosphere.

Bohren und der Club of Gore play funeral jazz. Dark brooding deliverance from the turmoil of the day. Hulking great bass plods continuously along under overtly emotive saxophones, guitars and pianos that wail and sing harmony and tragedy. The slow dull mass of the earth realised as one through the opaque texture of night, the counterpoint to man’s emotive consciousness, so I find the bass as to the saxophone. Thus I am reminded of Schopenhauer: ‘I recognize in the deepest tones of harmony, in the ground-bass, the lowest grades of the will’s objectification, inorganic nature, the mass of the planet. For us the ground bass is in harmony what inorganic nature, the crudest mass on which everything rests and from which everything originates and develops, is in the world….In the melody, in the high, singing, principal voice, leading the whole and progressing with unrestrained freedom, in the uninterrupted significant connexion of one thought from beginning to end, I recognise the highest grade of the will’s objectification, the intellectual life and endeavour of man.’ (S52, World as Will and Representation Vol. 1).

Bohren has always had a tendency to hit home with an incredibly precise force. Regardless of whether this reflects something as simple as a juxtaposition between bass and melody (Schopenhaurian intuition included), the live recordings below do a great job at delivering this intangible sense of serenity and peace. Empyreal and tantalisingly dreamlike, the live recording captures a sensitivity and humanistic impression on the instruments that the studio efforts largely misconvey (not wanting in anyway to belittle the significance of Bohren’s magnificient back catalogue), and remains an experience any Bohren believer should not miss out on. Now, just to get them to the UK.

Live in Frankfurt, Germany (10.11.2002) (320kbps)

Live in Paris, France (18.10.2008) (FLAC)

Live in Hamburg, Germany (22.10.2008) Part 1 / Part 2 (FLAC)

Live in Moscow, Russian (31.03.2010) (Torrent) (FLAC)
(-Apologies for the indirect link to a torrent, this file being too large to make available through Mediafire. Features one long, 99 minute track including material from Dolores at a show played less than one month ago.)

You'll find me in the vast wilderness of British Columbia, talking metal at LURKER, or working in publishing and front-end web/eBook development.

Be first to comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.