Christoph Schiller, Birgit Ulher

Kolk (Another Timbre) offers a rare encounter between Hamburg trumpeter Birgit Ulher and Swiss spinet innovator Christoph Schiller. Recorded in Hamburg in 2010, these five improvisations draw on the duo’s deep engagement with non-idiomatic sound: Ulher works with her trumpet as a physical resonator, channeling air, static, speaker hum, radio noise, and objects, while Schiller’s prepared spinet spills out fleeting melodic cells, clicks, muted thuds, and spectral overtone clouds. Their collaboration eschews traditional narrative in favor of proximity - every sound is rendered close-up, tactile, and understated.

Across the album, the musicians test the porous boundaries between acoustic instrument, found object, and live electronics. Each track - titled with geological metaphors like “Auflast,” “Sediment,” “Geröll,” “Bult,” and “Kolk” - evokes shifting fields, pressure, and slow-motion transformation. Together, they build a world of accumulated residue, continual motion, and barely perceptible transformation: what we hear isn’t about gesture but about space, timing, and the afterlife of the smallest event.

Kolk rewards deep, patient listening: in this music, the boundary between chamber tradition and sound-art practice dissolves. Schiller and Ulher’s approach is at once modest and radical: improvisation as geological process, sound as sediment and surface, each sonic gesture the result of complex layers and quiet resistances.