In the spring of 1977 two musicians - Han Bennink and Peter Brötzmann - disappeared into the
depths of a German deity named Dark Forest... - David KeenanSchwarzwaldfahrt 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
