3. Datenverarbeiter Vs. Jaki LiebezeitGivt Return
Datenverarbeiter, which means people who work with data… data workers. I just came across this, actually on Spotify, by chance, and I haven’t had a chance to get either the record or to meet Jaki and ask him about it. I was just amazed by it. Jaki has been doing things with other musicians. He did quite a lot of work with Burnt Friedman, that he called Secret Rhythms, but the Datenverarbeiter, this piece is much more complex sound-wise. There is still this incredible, strange thing, what he calls secret rhythms: you cannot really figure out immediately, it’s so poly-rhythmic and it seems so simple, but if you listen more deeply into it, the more mysterious it becomes and the more complex, and it really sounds great. I’m still a very big fan of our drummer. There’s hardly another musician I learned so much from, he’s one of my masters. He is totally original; his playing has nothing anymore to do with normal drum work. It’s something that is based on all kinds of traditions, jazz also, and yet it also sounds ancient, very mysterious. It’s most astonishing looking at him, how elegantly, effortlessly he plays, and yet the sound that comes out is enormous. He always insists on hitting the drum and tuning it right, hitting it in exactly the right place. He plays melodies on it and that’s the mystery.
