Bohren Und Der Club Of Gore* – Bohren For Beginners

Since 1992, BOHREN UND DER CLUB OF GORE have produced their own brand of shimmering, obscured, and decadent instrumental noir-post-jazz music taking inspirations from various musical styles and bringing them together into one cohesive whole.

Released in 2016 by PIAS Records, double-disc compilation “Bohren For Beginners” is not the best-of album but carefully self-selected introduction into the Bohren’s musical universe. It consists of 17 non-consecutive tracks: 1 from “Gore Motel” (1995), 1 from “Midnight Radio” (1997), 2 from “Sunset Mission” (2000), 2 from “Black Earth” (2002), 2 from “Geisterfaust” (2005), 3 from “Dolores” (2008), 1 from “Mitleid Lady” (2009), 2 from “Beileid” (2011), and 2 from “Piano Nights” (2014). The album also features 1 previously unreleased track, “Der Angler” from 2016. The whole stuff is organized into two separate acts: “Bohren for Beginners” (Disc1: 10 tracks, 61 min.) and “Bohren for Advanced” (Disc2: 7 tracks, 65 min.). With their slow rhythmic paces, repetitive lounge harmonics, and funeral atmospheric ambiances, it’s sometimes difficult to comprehend where one composition ends and another begins. But as individual tunes develop, the mind gradually opens to seductively articulated modal ideas and then gets bound by the beauty of aural darkness, loneliness, isolation, and stillness. Whatever the authors had in mind, they managed to compile a splendid program that literally exudes specific lyricism, elegance, charm, and mystery of Bohren’s musical art. In addition to providing another exercise in total submission to the world of shadows, “Bohren For Beginners” is also a sort of ceremonial wrapping-up document stating the end of a quartet’s era for the band. The drummer left Bohren a trio; and from here on, the remaining three members will alternately fill both in the studio and on the stage the percussion vacancy.

Resume: highly recommended album for both unexperienced and advanced fans.