Christian Wolfarth percussion

Jason Kahn - voice, lap slide resonator guitar
Christian Wolfarth - percussion

'For a long time now we find Jason Kahn in these pages. Sometimes quite regularly, and sometimes the intervals are longer. He's been around playing the drums, analogue synthesizer and these days guitar and voice. With some people has an ongoing relationship, and one such musician is Christian Wolfarth, the percussionist from Switzerland. First, they were in a trio with Günter Müller, but since 2016 as a duo. First as a voice/drum duo, but after Wolfarth heard Kahn's playing of a lap slide resonator guitar, he suggested to have that part of it as well. Kahn plays the guitar lap steel style and Wolfarth has a reduced set-up that includes "an antique marching snare, one Chinese cymbal and some small objects on tour". The record is a studio recording in which various microphones were used and Kahn mixed them. There has been no editing in the sense of cutting and pasting or additional layers. Kahn's singing, so I noticed before, has not so much to do with sound poetry, but seems to be more reduced and with a title such as 'Spirits', I found it hard not think to this of spirituals or rituals. Especially on the first side, I thought that was the case. This is a chant, perhaps, but an abstract one at that. The playing is very free and there is some distance to the music. None of the instruments is recorded in very close proximity. With this distance they create space between them and us, I think. We are observers of a ritual, perhaps, between two musicians, who are heavily concentrated on playing their music. The second side seems to work out a bit differently for me, with more activity (even more, I should say), while it still has all the control in their playing. This is certainly not easy music. Much like a ritual that you can observe, but may not understand or which takes time to enjoy, before you realize what's going on. That is something that I think is also with this music. It takes time to enjoy it; maybe I will never understand it, but there is something quite captivating going on here.'

Frans de Waard, (vital weekly 1237, June 2020)