DESCRIPTION:
Christof Kurzmann's incredible blend of poetry, electronics, songs and improvised noise. Based mostly on Alejandra Pizarnik's poems andfeaturing the unmistakeable talents of Eva Reiter, Martin Brandlmayr, Clayton Thomas and mighty Ken Vandermark, this combo is always on the surprising side of the fence. From press release:

El Infierno Musical as a quintet started back in 2008 thanks to a wild card given to Kurzmann as a birthday present by the organizers of Music Unlimited festival in Wels, Austria, which hosted its official premiere.
When Kurzmann was looking for musicians to join his project, the first invited was Martin Brandlmayr, an unmistakeable drummer and percussionist, based in Vienna.
The next member is saxophonist, clarinettist and composer Ken Vandermark, markedly renowned especially in free jazz circles. He is one of the most active free jazz and free impro players today.
Each year brings additional new projects and collaborations, which expand the range of his work of which El Infierno Musical is an outstanding example.
Eva Reiter is without doubt one of the most active and diverse interpreters in Austria. The recorder and viola da gamba player is also very active as a composer, focusing especially on the field of contemporary music. Characteristic for Eva Reiter's compositional work of recent years is the exploration of the fine line between acoustic and electronic music.
Inspired by the sound, velocity and social movements of jazz, Clayton Thomas has dedicated his musical life to finding a personal truth that links his own cultural life as a white Australian, with the radical, far reaching pursuits found within the creative music. What he can't find as a bass player, he searches for in the organisation of unreasonably large ensembles as the berlin verion of the 24 bodied Splitter Orchester. Thoughtful and virtuosic prepared double bass playing has taken Europe by storm since moving there from Sydney in 2007 -- part groove cannon, part kinetic sculpture. Clayton Thomas plays key role in many other projects like power trio Ames Room or Anthony Pateras's quintet Thymolphtalein.
Christof Kurzmann is a musician and composer who expresses himself mainly with a laptop, clarinet and voice, subtly outspread between electro pop and improvisation.

The album brings a clear structure filled with improvised parts, masterly played by perfectly coordinated musicians, who take advantage of their miscellaneous musical histories and styles. Were we to analyse the whole in bits and pieces, we would find a variety of genres, but all has been put together in a close dramaturgy that makes the songs cyclical and indescribable in terms of genre. Not only the musical idea evolves here, it is also subject to metamorphoses in several blocks, often counterpoint, which bring about its final appearance in its pure form again. A good example of this process is Diana's Tree, which has a dramatic peak in free jazz performance, but evolves from lyrical tonal melodies played by clarinet over elliptic recurrent drum figure, followed by a sudden cut and a country music allusion, then free jazz and then back, again and again in blocks. Cold in Hand Blues can serve as another example, beginning with a dialogue of drums and double bass, used percussively, joined by saxophone and voices after a while. Voices, male and female, interact and create a dramatic effect. Sudden entry of the dan bao (an Vietnamese single-stringed violin) in rock dynamics brings a palpable relieving that refers to the function of genre shifts within the compositions. Voice (from singing, declamation to plain speaking) as a crucial formational element with a dramatic potential comes forth especially in the last track, Ashes II, when the imaginary stage is entered by the dead poet herself: recording of her voice is subsequently „commented" by Kurzmann.