Exit Eden, feat. Phil Minton
Hannes Loeschel Songs of Innocence

“Pipe me a song about a lamb” – that is the introduction in William Blake’s “Songs of Innocence”. From a cloud a child wishes for this song. The avant-gardist legend Phil Minton sings these lines in baritone and creates an atmosphere of beguiling enchantment – lines and sounds that seem to come from deep within the unconscious. Clayton Thomas’ bass starts this piece, after which Hannes Loeschel comes in on piano and Matthias Koch’s drums conjure a percussion landscape. It is a simple melody, seemingly harmless lyrics, but bit by bit something eerie, obscure and musically fascinating takes place. In Hannes Loeschel’s compositions “Songs of Innocence”, darkness becomes tangible albeit mostly hidden within the classical forms of the songs which he uses – be they rock music, folk, country, ballade, doom metal or ambient played in the manner of Bohren or the Club of Gore. Loeschel, who again and again moves on the interfaces between new music, jazz and popular song forms, masters all these genres; he creates totally new sounding pieces from the traditional ones. And he turns William Blake upside down.