"In the spring of 1977 two musicians - Han Bennink and Peter Brötzmann - disappeared into the
depths of a German deity named Dark Forest..." - David Keenan Schwarzwaldfahrt 1977 is a
magical document of a moment out of time a moment when the saxophonist Peter Brötzmann and
percussionist Han Bennink made a series of journeys deep into the heart of the Black Forest
with a bunch of cameras and some early portable recording equipment in order to capture the
sound of the moment. The recordings that they made there were released as the Schwarzwaldfahrt
album by FMP in 1977 and it remains a free music classic recorded completely in the open air
with Bennink and Brö duetting with the birds playing in the water drumming on great natural
xylophones made of logs and catching the sounds of airplanes strafing the skies. It is a music
of eternal expansion of elemental communion. This new book comes with the original
recordings on a CD and is assembled round a treasure trove of newly-discovered photographs
taken during the trip by both Brötzmann and Bennink - photographs of each other of their
lodgings of their ritual communions of their route into and out of the forest. To
contextualize the photos - and the music - the award-winning author David Keenan (This Is
Memorial Device Monument Maker et al) contributes an evocative poetic text that situates the
duo's radical musical action in the context of their work while riffing on the uncanny beauty
and long-ago aura of these evocative photographs photos that seem to echo the very sounds of
the Dark Forest itself. "It's so lonely this music these two friends making music on their
own in all of this space and back of time now too a document of a world that seems less
populated - by people by ideas by demands by the tyranny of modern time itself." - David
Keenan
