Henry and The Ghosts Songbook

Description

On his new album, Micha Acher has rearranged compositions written by bands such as Tied & Tickled Trio and Ms. John Soda, dating from previous years. None of the fifteen tracks on Henry and the Ghost is really frightening. On the contrary, they all give off a strange sense of familiarity. Like revenants or doubles, which is what they are, after all. They have all already been released, but in a different form, with different lineups. With different musical projects such as Tied & Tickled Trio, The Notwist or Alien Ensemble. With “Songbook,” Micha Acher wanted, as he explains, to explore the sonority of familiar pieces in a chamber music formation. To do so, he brought together Theresa Loibl (bass clarinet, piano), Timm Kornelius (bassoon), Markus Rom (guitar, banjo, electronics) and Simon Popp (drums, percussion) in his living room for a musical creation session during the summer of 2022. This session lasted two days. Afterwards, Markus Rom (Oh No Noh) added mesmerizing electronic ideas. The atmosphere of most of the tracks is melancholic. There are surprising twists and haunting melodies, much like ghost stories. Yet most of the songs exude great lightness, drawing their roots from pop, folk, jazz and classical music. Tracks like “Johanna,” with its panting harmonium and unsettling piano, or the dreamy “Modest Farewell,” however, have a cinematic dimension. Faces and scenes immediately come to mind. But at the beginning, there is “Hamlet.” The track opens with ghostly electronic sounds and melts into a calm, almost classical guitar piece. “Tomorrows” is imbued with cautious optimism. And the final track, “Nordlead,” turns out to be a reinterpretation of the instrumental piece “N.L.” Taken from The Notwist’s legendary album Shrink (1998). In this new version, the track sounds like a distant echo, bearing witness to the evolution of Micha Acher’s music and the new worlds he has explored and created since the 1990s. Yet Acher’s signature is recognizable in every note of this fascinating collection.