History
Chris Cutler first met Heiner Goebbels, Alfred Harth and Christoph Anders in 1977 through the So-Called Left-Radical Brass Band. In 1979 Anders and Harth had a punk band in Frankfurt am Main. Leading from this experience, in 1980 Harth produced the LP Es herrscht Uhu im Land on JAPO Records/ECM that included Anders and Goebbels and others with the idea of integrating punk rock, free jazz and classical music. This work triggered the wish within the Duo Goebbels/Harth to form a smaller group with a similar concept. Harth asked Anders and Cutler to join the Duo Goebbels/Harth and gave that new group the name "Kassiber", which was later changed by Anders to "Cassiber". In 1982, Cutler, Goebbels, Harth and Anders met at Etienne Conod's Sunrise Studio in Switzerland to record an album. Their approach was to "improvise 'completed pieces'", that is "to attempt spontaneously to produce already structured and arranged material". [2] The result was a double LP Man or Monkey, which was well received in Germany and led to an invitation to perform at the 1982 Frankfurt Jazz Festival.
For the next ten years Cassiber toured Asia and North America and appeared at almost every major festival in Europe. Their live performances generally consisted of new pieces invented in real time, plus pieces from their albums played spontaneously without having learnt or rehearsed them. In May 1983 Cassiber (minus Anders) joined Duck and Cover, a group that Burkhard Hennen had asked Harth to put together for the Moers Festival as well as a later commission from the Berlin Jazz Festival, for a performance in West Berlin in October 1983, followed by another in February 1984 in East Berlin. [3] In July 1983 Cassiber (again minus Anders) joined half of Italian progressive rock and Rock in Opposition band, Stormy Six to form Cassix (Cassiber/Stormy Six) for a public workshop and recording project in Italy. [4] Harth left Cassiber in 1985 to found the avant-rock groups Gestalt et Jive and Vladimir Estragon; Cassiber continued as a trio. In October 1986 Cassiber performed at the 4th Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville in Victoriaville, Quebec, Canada. [5] In their last year they invited guests to perform with them, including Hannes Bauer and Dietmar Diesner.
As a quartet, Cassiber recorded two albums, Man or Monkey (1982) and Beauty and the Beast (1984). After Harth left they recorded two more albums, Perfect Worlds (1986) and A Face We All Know (1990), the latter dealing with issues surrounding the collapse of the Berlin Wall and incorporating texts from Thomas Pynchon's 1973 novel Gravity's Rainbow . A 1992 concert recorded in Tokyo with guest saxophonist Masami Shinoda was released in 1998 on one disc of a double CD, Live in Tokyo. The other disc comprised 1998 re-workings of the concert material by turntablist Otomo Yoshihide, who had been in the audience for the original concerts. The album recorded Shinoda's last performance (he died soon after Cassiber left Japan) and Cassiber's penultimate performance as a group. The material by Yoshihide was Ground Zero's valedictory project.
Cassiber's last concert was on 13 December 1992 at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon.
Name
According to Chris Cutler, Cassiber took their name from a Slavic slang word for a note or message smuggled out of prison. "Like 'The Beatles', we spelled it differently and it wasn't intended to 'mean' anything." [2]
Heiner Goebbels is a German composer, conductor and professor at Justus-Liebig-University in Gießen and artistic director of the International Festival of the Arts Ruhrtriennale 2012–14. His composition Stifters Dinge (2007) received five votes in a 2017 Classic Voice poll of the greatest works of art music since 2000, and writers for The Guardian ranked his composition Hashirigaki (2000) the ninth greatest classical composition of the same period.
Skeleton Crew was an American experimental rock and jazz group from 1982 to 1986, comprising core members Fred Frith and Tom Cora, with Zeena Parkins joining later. Best known for their live improvisation performances where they played various instruments simultaneously, they also recorded two studio albums Learn to Talk (1984) and The Country of Blinds (1986). The group drew on music and themes from a number of sources, including world music, left-wing politics and pre-recorded tapes.
Art Bears were an English avant-rock group formed during the disassembly of Henry Cow in 1978 by three of its members, Chris Cutler, Fred Frith and Dagmar Krause. The group released three studio albums between 1978 and 1981, and toured Europe in 1979.
Chris Cutler is an English percussionist, composer, lyricist and music theorist. Best known for his work with English avant-rock group Henry Cow, Cutler was also a member and drummer of other bands, including Art Bears, News from Babel, Pere Ubu and (briefly) Gong/Mothergong. He has collaborated with many musicians and groups, including Fred Frith, Lindsay Cooper, Zeena Parkins, Peter Blegvad, Telectu and The Residents, and has appeared on over 100 recordings. Cutler's career spans over four decades and he still performs actively throughout the world.
Ground Zero was a Japanese noise/improvisation band during the 1990s led by the guitarist and "turntablist" Otomo Yoshihide that had a large and rotating group of performers with two other regular performers.
Lindsay Cooper was an English bassoon and oboe player and composer. Best known for her work with the band Henry Cow, she was also a member of Comus, National Health, News from Babel and David Thomas and the Pedestrians. She collaborated with a number of musicians, including Chris Cutler and Sally Potter, and co-founded the Feminist Improvising Group. She wrote scores for film and TV and a song cycle Oh Moscow which was performed live around the world in 1987. She also recorded a number of solo albums, including Rags (1980), The Gold Diggers (1983), and Music For Other Occasions (1986).
Alfred Harth, now known as Alfred 23 Harth or A23H, is a German multimedia artist, band leader, multi-instrumentalist musician, and composer who creatively mixes genres.
Speechless is a 1981 solo album by English guitarist, composer and improviser Fred Frith of the group Henry Cow. It was Frith's third solo album, and was originally released in the United States on LP record on the Residents' Ralph record label. It was the second of three solo albums Frith made for the label.
Jean Derome is a French Canadian avant-garde saxophonist, flautist, and composer. A prominent figure in the Montreal musique actuelle scene, Derome has been a member of experimental, jazz, and rock groups, and has appeared on over 30 albums, including seven solo albums. He has written scores for over 30 films and co-founded Ambiances Magnétiques, a Canadian musical collective and independent record label.
The Science Group were an avant-rock group founded in France in 1997 by English drummer Chris Cutler from Henry Cow and Yugoslav contemporary classical composer and keyboardist Stevan Tickmayer. They released A Mere Coincidence, an album of songs on science related topics in 1999, and an instrumental album, Spoors in 2003.
Duck and Cover were a multinational avant-rock septet founded in West Germany in 1983, comprising Chris Cutler (UK), Heiner Goebbels (GER), and Alfred Harth (GER) from Cassiber; Tom Cora (US) and Fred Frith (UK) from Skeleton Crew; Dagmar Krause (GER) from Art Bears; and George Lewis (US) from the ICP Orchestra. The ensemble was initially commissioned for the 1983 Moers Festival at the request of festival director Burkhard Hennen to Alfred Harth.
Stormy Six were an Italian progressive and folk rock band founded in Milan in 1966. They performed and recorded until 1983, mostly as a sextet but occasionally as a quartet, a quintet and a septet. Although their line-up changed considerably over the years, founding member Franco Fabbri remained with the group for its entire duration. In May 1993 they performed at a re-union concert in Milan, which was recorded and released on a CD, Un Concerto (1995).
Hervé Richard, better known as Ferdinand Richard, is a French avant-rock bass guitarist and composer.
Nous Autres is a live album by Fred Frith and René Lussier recorded in October 1986 at the 4th Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville in Victoriaville, Quebec, Canada. The live mixes were later enhanced with additional material recorded by Frith and Lussier in December 1986 at a studio in Montreal, Quebec, and the resulting album was released on LP in 1987. The album was released on CD in 1992 with four additional studio tracks recorded by Frith and Lussier in January 1992 in New York City.
Lutz Glandien is a German avant garde composer and musician based in Berlin. He has composed a number of classical and electroacoustic pieces, released four solo albums, and collaborated with English percussionist Chris Cutler to record two acclaimed avant-rock albums, Domestic Stories (1992) and p53 (1996).
Gestalt et Jive were a multinational avant-rock group founded in West Germany in 1984 by multi-instrumentalist Alfred Harth, comprising Steve Beresford (UK), Anton Fier (US), Alfred Harth (FRG), Peter Hollinger (FRG), Ferdinand Richard (F) and Uwe Schmitt (FRG).
The Duo Goebbels/Harth (1975–1988), combining German composer, music-theatre director and keyboardist Heiner Goebbels and German composer, multi-media artist and saxophonist Alfred 23 Harth became famous for its adaptation of and departure from European composers, especially Hanns Eisler, implemented in a provocatively fresh manner into structured free improvisations and deploying content from areas beyond music. The duo was nicknamed the “Eisler brothers” by music critic W.Liefland. They later also experimented with different genres and sound collages, including electronic devices. The duo played in many international festivals and concerts in cities as diverse as Tel Aviv, Zagreb, West and East Berlin and South America.
Les 4 Guitaristes de l'Apocalypso-Bar, also known as Les Quatre Guitaristes de l'Apocalypso-Bar was an electric guitar quartet founded by André Duchesne in Montreal, Quebec, Canada in 1986. It was one of the first electric guitar quartets and was billed as a band from post-apocalypse Canada "inspired by the ghost of Jimi Hendrix".
Oh Moscow is a 1991 live album by English experimental musician and composer Lindsay Cooper. It is a recording of a song cycle of the same name performed at the 7th Victoriaville Festival in Quebec, Canada on 8 October 1989. The work was composed in 1987 by Cooper with lyrics written by English film director and screenwriter Sally Potter. The song cycle reflects on the Cold War that divided Europe at the time.
1982–1992 is a 2013 box set compilation album on Recommended Records commemorating the German new wave group Cassiber founded by Heiner Goebbels, Alfred Harth, Christoph Anders and Chris Cutler.
