Foto: Frank Schindelbeck

Press
September 2010 by Ariane Martin - RP review
ATOPIA "Sex with the Double Bass"

... and they all looked with amazement as Sebastian Gramss worked over his double bass using all the rules of his art. "Atopia" is what his program is called, which means something like, in the broadest sense, "placelessness" or the "undescribable."

What the virtuous jazz musician made audible this evening was different, disturbing, demanding, incredibly virtuous and with a will bordering on the anarchic, to turn outwards the entire potential residing in the resonating body.

This devilish bassist is able to get everything that can be retrieved from the instrument: every part of the instrument's well formed body was caressed, rapped, hit, hugged and made vibrate.

Gramss and the bass: in an intimate hug they lay occasionally, and during particularly quiet sounds, one could hear the guttural, the musician's breath streaming from the deepest depths. So it was no surprise that a woman in the first row sighed longingly: "If one could only be a double bass."
The term "atopia" hits the spot exactly since "experimental music" would hit the mark of this wide sound as little as "avantgarde."
When someone masters his instrument as Gramms does, it is obvious that he wants to find out at which position of the instrument the same tone can be produced, as absurd as this may sound. Kind of like when a master chef rushes into the laboratory at some point with meat and fish to penetrate into biochemical and physical-chemical processes, then returns to daylight with a world's first – "molecular gastronomy" – in a very delicious version. This is how it is with Gramss, his genre is the molecular music on the double bass with a vision of cell division.

A sensational evening in every sense!

http://www.myspace.com/sebastiangramss
http://www.myspace.com/fossile3
http://www.myspace.com/oirtrio
http://www.myspace.com/fareastsuite
http://www.myspace.com/underkarl