The first time I saw Helmut Hattler was back in 1974;
that was when he still spelt his first name with one "L". It was
the time of the big student parties. I was fresh from a village in the isolated
Eifel region, stranded in what was still at that time the island capital of
Berlin, and it was at a party in the venerable building which housed the Technical
University at the Ernst-Reuther square that I felt at home in this city for
the first time: KRAAN were on stage, playing the strange mixture of rock and
jazz with ethno elements and long improvisations which had been turning unremittingly
on my Philips tape recorder at home for the last few months. The smell of
cannabis pervaded the air, parkas and long hair prevailed, and the mood was
good.
I last saw Hellmut (now with two "L"s) in the "Lagerhalle",
an upmarket club in Osnabruck. not a whiff of cannabis in the air, no parkas
and hardly any long hair to be seen, but the man on stage, now the linchpin
of the group HATTLER, was still playing in his characteristic bouncy bass
style, with the band in turn producing a highly individual sound which defies
any accurate description in words. And the mood was good!
These two events span some 28 years, a period which has seen both Hattler and myself playing at and going to hundreds of major and smaller concerts. "Has he changed in any way at all?", I hear myself asking. "No, he hasn't changed, but he has developed. He has remained true to himself", the same voice told me that had asked the question.
No matter whether it was with KRAAN, TAB TWO or HATTLER,
Hellmut Hattler's music has always been moving for the body, the mind and
the soul, because it is original, intense, generally somehow melancholic,
and yet at the same time you can invariably dance to it. It still can't be
put in any of the usual categories, continually makes use of liberal helpings
of a wide range of styles and develops a tastefully assorted and sophisticated
blend of soul, funk, jazz and dance floor. Is this "avant-garde pop"?
Or "hip jazz pop"? What about "jop"? Pity that "soul"
is already taken. So anyone who wants to can go ahead and create their own
category, but one thing I'm sure of is that once they've heard the next HATTLER
track they'll quietly forget about any such category. (Just as I daren't say
that HATTLER's music reminds me of - probably as the only one in the whole
world -Steely Dan, of all bands....).
Nevertheless, that's exactly what will happen when the new "Mallberry
Moon" starts spinning up in the digital devices and our analytically
trained brain goes into operating mode and tries to tell us that we should
first of all categorise what our gut instinct and our heart started sensing
a long time ago. But we are constantly working on the correct sequence, and
"Mallberry Moon", HATTLER's second album, can help us. They say
a band's second album is always the most difficult, especially if the first
one has been as successful as "No Eats Yes". But Hellmut Hattler
remains true to his motto "always nice and laid-back". So much has
happened as a result of and since "No Eats Yes" that "Mallberry
Moon" also creates the same tension and excitement as the first CD. Not
only has "No Eats Yes" walked off with the coveted "ECHO"
award for the best jazz production, but HATTLER, originally envisaged just
as a pure project to allow the then TAB-TWO-free bass player new room for
manoeuvre, has matured into a proper band. So success is also a unifying force
and HATTLER now seem to be ready to - and to want to - write history themselves.
Just as KRAAN and TAB TWO have left their own unforgettable mark on the German
music scene.
If "No Eats Yes" was the introduction, "Mallberry
Moon" is now the first chapter of the new book which we may now read,
and which could be called "Always Nice and Laid-Back" if it wasn't
too trite a title. This new album features the same ambivalence and the resultant
tension and excitement which have always been the hallmarks of Hellmut Hattler's
music. You get what you expect and at the same time are caught unawares by
musical facets you simply hadn't expected. The exceptional band featuring
the two singers Sandie Wollasch and Nkechi Mbakwe, who sound as different
as their names are spelt, form together with Hellmut HATTLER, and it was Hellmut
who as usual wrote all the numbers himself and who with the help of some old
friends (including ex-KRAAN musicians Jan Fride and Ingo Bischof, but also
the guitarist extraordinaire Torsten De Winkel) and creative studio and programming
experts (Uwe Jahnke, Tonio Neuhaus, Christian Lohr) has now brought out an
album which does indeed present itself as a seductive, ripe fruit among the
mundane miscellaneous mixture of CDs coming on to the market every day. Sweet,
exotic, enigmatic and equally familiar and intimate: "Mallberry Moon"
simply tastes good; and right at this very moment I find it a great pity that
CDs don't have any smell, because this one would really smell good! And: "Mallberry
Moon" opens up the way forward. Reminiscing about bygone days, projects,
people and different types of music are no longer necessary when you've got
musicians like Hellmut Hattler, bands like HATTLER and albums like this "Mallberry
Moon". "Mallberry Moon" is positive and puts me in a good mood.
So you can indeed "always remain nice and laid-back".
Heinz Rebellius (musician, music journalist, author, sound-therapist)
german
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