I told you about John Jasnoch last month. Let me tell you now about Helmut Lemke. In the late '90s he was living in Sheffield and appeared quite frequently at improv gigs, either solo or in duets (mostly with Jasnoch, I think).
He was very distinctive. Tall and German through and through, he strapped himself into a harness, and, when it came to his time to perform he connected to the harness to two very long cables that were attached to the far end of the room, stretched taut over the audience's heads, as though he were about to attempt to abseil following the mother of all stage dives. These cables — which, in case you hadn't already spotted it, constitute the 'Long' in the Long and Short — were quite hard to twang like a guitar string, but Helmut had a whole kitbag of rings, pegs and other paraphernalia that he would throw along the cables and then 'play' as gravity brought them back to him. Meanwhile John Jasnoch would continue playing his assortment of banjo, mandolin and various guitars, more or less independently.
To be honest, the theatre of this performance was possibly the best part of it. I saw them play upstairs in the (legendary) Grapes and also at the Lantern Theatre (which was only about 50 yards from the flat on Thornsett Road where I was living at the time). Indeed there's at least a 50/50 chance that I was present at the Lantern theatre for the recording of Track 3 on this album. The Lantern is a tiny theatre: about 100 seats, and the rows very tightly packed, making it an act of masochism for anyone over six foot tall to try and get into or out of a seat. As a consequence, everything that happens on the stage seems larger than life. I once saw Forced Entertainment deconstruct King Lear there — but that's another story.
On recording the theatrical elements of the performance are lost and can't even be guessed at when you've seen them. I pretty much agree with the Jazz Weekly review that the best piece is the one melded out of two 'field recordings' where you can hear the wind whistling through the long and short strings. The two relatively verité concert recordings are OK, but may require closer attention than I had to spare this evening to get much out of them.
| Buy this CD via Nur/Nicht/Nur | Peter Stubley's entry for this album |
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