Johannes Schulz plays all instruments on this psychedelic / krautrock project and by the look of his Bandcamp page has been pretty prolific about it recently, but it’s his latest recordings, Tee Sessions, that he’s emailed me about. Now, as a committed non tea drinker, would these recordings be my, err, glass of coke, I wondered? (‘Not my cup of tea’, you see what I did there? No, you’re right, I’ll never make anything of myself in comedy).
Actually, I spent quite a pleasant half an hour on a Sunday afternoon listening to Johannes’s music, drawn in by the bright and engaging ‘Hagebutten Tee (Am laufenden Band...)’’, which Google Translate advises me as ‘Rosehip Tea (Churning)’, a bubbly six minute piece that sounds like Ozrics Tentacles taking time out and relaxing with a cuppa, though with some background vocals slipped into the mix. ‘Weißer Tee (Maakute a Shaakalaka...)’, which apparently is ‘White Tea’, is a different texture, quite dark and brooding while the thirteen minute ‘Green Tea’ (‘Grüner Tee (Laufen ohne Schnaufen...)’) has a squelchy keyboard arrangement that when it really gets started – and when I say ‘gets started’ I mean a back-beat kicks in but gently - it reminds me just a little of what Pete, Glenda and co of Sendelica are sometimes doing with their more ambient krautrock pieces.
‘Gelber Tee (Nachricht an mich...)’, otherwise ‘Yellow Tea (Message to me..)’, is a an abbreviated piece, less than a minute and a half in length, and as such as just something of Eno’s ‘Another Green World’ about it, lovely and understated, making you wish there were more of it but actually perfectly judge in content, so it absolutely works on that level. Finally, ‘Schwarzer Tee (Gans allein...)’, ‘Black Tea’, rounds this EP out with seventeen minutes of droning sounds and intoning vocals that feels oppressive and perhaps tells us that from the bright opener to the denser closing piece, there’s a journey laid out and undertaken. I liked these recordings and definitely would investigate further.
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