Anima Sound - Baummusik (LP)

Furthering their explorations to the astoundingly singular creative sound world of Anima - the duo of Limpe and Paul Fuchs - Alga Marghen returns with “Anima Trip: Baummusik”, a never before released body of archival recordings made by the pair in the municipal gallery in the Bavarian city of Rosenheim. Joining a body of work that comprises some of the most incredible creations to emerge from Germany between the late 1960 and the 1980s, this much needed addition to Anima’s catalog is a rigorous and visionary real time exploration marked by restraint, ambience, deep resonances and mutual intervention, threaded by tension and explosive energy, that has to be heard to be believed.

** Edition of 300. ** Over their decades of activity, the Italian imprint, Alga Marghen, has illuminated a near countless number of historical artefacts within the field of experimental sound. During the years, often working closely with the artists at hand, they’ve helped entirely reconfiguring our understandings of the occurrences of radical sound over time. Far ahead of the curve, way back in 1999 - casting their gaze toward a fascinating juncture between the krautrock scene, free jazz, and experimental music - Alga Marghen reissued “Musik für Alle”, the seminal 1971 full length by - the duo of Limpe and Paul Fuchs working under Anima-Sound. Laying the groundwork of an important relationship with Limpe Fuchs, in 2022 they bore further fruit with the release of Anima’s “Underground Altena”, drawing on a previously unreleased body of recordings by the project. Now, three more years down the road, they return once again to the singular sound universe of Anima with “Anima Trip: Baummusik”, a truly stunning LP, comprising newly unearthed archival recordings made by Limpe and Paul Fuchs in the municipal gallery in the Bavarian city of Rosenheim. Tense and revelatory, offering crucial access to the project’s experimental explorations at the height of their powers - radically pursuing freedom with every texture, tone, and beat - this LP, issued in a beautiful limited edition, further breaks down the perceived boundaries between sound art, sculpture, and the German sonic avant-garde.

Founded at the periphery of the kraut / kosmische scene by then husband and wife team, Limpe and Paul Fuchs, during the late 1960s, Anima was easily one of the most singular and unique projects to have ever emerged from the European sonic counterculture. At the time of its inception, Paul was an avant-garde sculptor, while Limpe was a conservatory trained percussionist, violist, and vocalist. In addition to emboding a radical form of free living, and farming in the small Bavarian village where they lived, their collaboration centered upon a meeting of their respective creative worlds; Paul’s work and understanding of objects, and Limpe’s extensive musical knowledge.

Anima’s distinct sound was largely the result of the pair’s invention, building, and playing of unique instruments, notably the Fuchshorn, Fuchszither, Fuchsbass, and a ‘pendulum string’ based on a Pythagorean monochord, alongside regular instruments and vocals, within a radical approach toward the achievement of freedom through creativity. The result, which appeared across eight full lengths documenting their activities until they disbanded during the 1980s, as well as a handful of more recent archival releases, are some of the most remarkably experimental and sought after releases to have emerged from Germany during those years. Recalling that period’s activities, Limpe states: “In the Anima duo with Paul Fuchs beside the drum set I used iron tools and metal sheets from the workshop. Instead of the hi hat cymbals I had a metal ring with five strings and plucked them by foot with a plectrum. Paul had built the Fuchsharp with two pickups and glided up and down the scale.”

Paul and Limpe Fuchs describe their “Anima Musica” as “finding authentic sound combinations together”, attempting to get closer to reality”. It is this rough, exploratory proximity that unfurls across the two sides of “Anima Trip: Baummusik”. While most probably predominately improvised, utilising only a rough plan of approach, for more than three quarters of an hour the duo maintains an absolutely consuming impression of rigorous focus, harmony, and structure, tightly interweaving their response to the interventions of one with the next.

Defined by a deeply resonant sense of space and ambience within which percussive punctuations rise, rattle and fall against the dynamic rings of metal objects, “Anima Trip: Baummusik” balances tension and restraint to the heights of its potential effect, producing a wild form of minimalism from the tonal and atonal byproducts of the sound sculptures at their disposal, occasional soaring vocals by Limpe, and howling utterances of “fox horns”, - wind instruments that resemble the shape of prehistoric animal horns, “tube drums”, and other idiosyncratic percussion instruments, that push the gentler, spacious moments of ambient calm into wild explosions at the boundaries of free jazz.

Entirely singular within the history of music, with “Anima Trip: Baummusik” we catch yet another crucial glimpse into Anima’s absolutely stunning universe of sound, presenting a visionary and radical image of freedom with each acoustic intervention unfurling across the two sides of this beautiful produced, limited edition vinyl LP. When it comes to the German intersection at the boundaries of art and sound, it really doesn’t get any better than this!