Aparis - Despite The Fire-Fighters' Efforts... (1993)

The Stockhausens and their percussive accomplice returned to ECM the summer of 1992 to record this sequel to Aparis.  Now using the debut album title as a group moniker, they gave this one (sadly their last together) an album title that appeared to be pulled from a news report - probably one from late November 1992, when Windsor Castle caught fire; I'm almost certain that's what's pictured on the cover.

Musically, the trio expanded and refined the palette of their debut, with 13-minute opener Sunrice starting out in ambient mode before picking up pace towards an increasingly free ending.  Jo Thönes' muscular acoustic drumming is particularly noteworthy.  The next epic, Welcome, follows a similar structure, and in between them the liquid atmosphere of Waveterms is punctuated with what sounds like zither swishes, and percussive sections that introduce sampled speech and singing from unspecified locations.

The album's second half travels from its most upbeat and jazzy (Fire) to its most fully-realised electronic and dark-atmospheric in Green Piece and Orange, with the anthemic Hannibal the perfect closer.  The keyboard work is still a bit of its time, but sits much better within the overall production (handled by the trio themselves, in one of a small number of ECM releases where Manfred Eicher isn't credited with overall control).  I'm not sure if I'd go as far though as to say that this album is preferable to the first; better perhaps to think of Markus, Simon & Jo's ECM output as two hours of fascinating, original music that leaves you wishing there'd been more, to see what other developments arose.

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