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© Claudia Schmacke
Tim
Hodgkinson [London] • lap steel guitar, electronics, clainet
Roger
Turner [London] • drumset & percussion
Thomas Lehn [Cologne] • analogue synthesizer
The group met at Szünetjel Festival in Budapest 1997.
Tours in Italy and Netherlands followed. KONK PACK did a live broadcast
for BBC Mixing It and began to tour regularly, recorded three albums for
the Cologne-based GROB label, and played a sold-out concert in London
with Derek Bailey. Most recent, KONK PACK created the multi media performance
STATE OF PLAY at the Musique
Action Festival 2007 in collaboration with Romanian video artist Ramona
Poenaru and Swiss vocalist Dorothea
Schürch.
CD RELEASES:
Dec. 1999, Big Deep [GROB.102]
Oct. 2001, Warp Out [GROB.323]
Oct. 2004, off leash [GROB.654]
Dec. 2010, the black hills [GROB.962]
all released on GROB
www.grobcologne.de
FESTIVAL APPEARANCES
Victoriaville, FIMAV 2000
Vandoeuvre-les-Nancy/F, Musique Action 2000
Mhere/F, Fruits de Mhere 2000
Wels/A, Music Unlimited 2000
Bourges/F, Synthese Festival 2001
Nickelsdorf/A, Konfrontationen 2001
Prague, Alternativa Festival 2001
Bratislava/SK, Next Music Festival 2001
Utrecht/Rotterdam, Rumor Festival 2001
Belgrade, ring ring festival 2002
Mulhouse, Jazz a Mulhouse 2002
Mhere/F, Fruits de Mhere 2003
Vancouver, Dangerous Currents Festival 2003
Nottingham, Now 2006
Barcelona, LEM 2006
Vandoeuvre-les-Nancy/F, Musique Action 2007
Frankfurt, ROT Festival 2009
^
TOURS
1998: Italy
1999: The Netherlands
2000: UK, Germany and France
2001: UK, Germany, Slovenia, Croatia, Austria, The Netherlands, Czech
Republic
2002: UK, Germany, Austria
2003: UK, Italy, Canada, France
2004: UK, France, Germany, Austria
2005: UK
2006: UK
2009: Sweden, Germany
Wed. October 15, Tilburg @ Paradox
Thu. October 16, Amsterdam @ OT301
Fri. October 17, Wuppertal @ unerhört
Sat. October 18, Weikersheim @ Club W71
Sun. October 19, Cologne @ Studio 672 > reconstructing song
with Swiss vocalist Dorothea Schürch
Wed. October 22, Hannover @ Atelier Grammophon (tbc)
Thu. October 23, Sicily (tba)
Fri. October 24, Palermo @ Sala Wenders/Goethe Institute Palermo / Curva Minore
Sat. October 25, Forli @ area sismica
"Heading towards their 15th anniversary in
2012, the German-British trio Konk Pack continues to be the gold
standard against which any band of electro-acoustic improvisers must be
measured."
Ken Waxman | Jazzword | Toronto | 2010
"I've caught Konk Pack live a half dozen times through the years and
have been knocked out on each & every occasion. What makes this
trio special is that their music is so focused and intense, that you
often feel exhilarated by listening. You can't do anything else or
have any distractions while listening since you will be swept away."
Bruce Gallanter | Onsen | August 2010
"Konk Pack boasts a line-up that springs from diverse quarters,
combining to make a gloriously intuitive barrage of sounds, both soft
and savage. They've been together for 13 years, facilitating empathy
without banishing unpredictability. To witness both of these gigs was
to marvel at a band revealing completely different aspects of their
ongoing vocabulary."
Martin Longley | All About Jazz | April 2010
"The free improvisation of the trio Konk Pack is like a blast of
science — a kind of controlled chaos in the hands of experts. Being
musically proficient is not enough for Konk Pack; the players feed off
the collective energy and have an uncanny ability to collectively shape
their abstract constructions with a keen understanding of the power of
varied dynamics."
Ernie Paik | The Pulse | Chattanooga | April 2010
"I can't think of an improvising group more explosive than this
European trio - percussionist Roger Turner, guitarist Tim Hodgkinson,
and synth maestro Thomas Lehn bite down hard on whatever they play,
confronting even delicate passages with taut intensity. …I've seen so
much free improv that some of it feels as predictable as 'Chopsticks',
but these guys keep me pinned to the wall, happily anticipating the
next shock."
Peter Margasak | Chicago Reader | October 18th, 2007
"Grob label artists Konk Pack are utterly awesome. Featuring Thomas
Lehn on the craziest old EMS synthi A, Tim Hodgkinson on flat guitar and
Roger Turner on percussion, the show is awkwardly brilliant and defiant.
With startling combinations of punkish nuisance, ingenious change-ups,
and rolling, stumbling, tripping and flipping sound inventions, Konk Pack
are one of the most exciting Improv groups in the world."
Lee Henderson reviewing Vancouver Electric City in The
Wire, Dec 2003
"Heralded by a release on the Grob label - Big Deep, recorded in
Rome, Tilburg and Brussels - Konk Pack's appearance at a central London
venue attracted a sell-out crowd. The accelerated,interactive electronica
of Roger Turner (percussion), Tim Hodgkinson (deconstructed tabletop guitar)
and Thomas Lehn (analogue synth) arises from a scintillating heap of sonic
detritus the way an artificial intelligence manifests itself in a Manga
movie: a writhing mass of automobiles, arcade consoles, street furniture
and mobile phones. Hodgkinson attacks his amplified strings with plectrum
and bow, his specs glinting as he waits for the right awkward moment to
kloodge a sonic shard on the side of one of Turner's amazingly vocalised
motifs (at times you swear you hear collaborator Phil Minton's mucal snorts).
Lehn restricts his pianism on analogue synth to pinched blurts, but still
manages to resemble a switched-on Liszt. Although we itched to interrupt
with applause, Konk Pack played an unbroken 45 minute set: fun debris,
rollicking freakouts ... and one magical section of scrape and pling where
the music seemed to play itself."
Ben Watson The Wire,
April 2001
"Collectively improvised music comes in many forms, with as many
degrees of success. Only some genuinely presses the envelope, pushing
into a terrain where the unknown can happen and where even the best players
encounter risk. On that transcendent scale, the trio Konk Pack - Tim Hodgkinson
on table-top guitar and clarinet, Thomas Lehn on synthesizer, and the
wondrous Roger Turner on percussion - fared best among the groups at this
festival [Festival International Musique Actuelle Victoriaville, May 2000],
creating music in which a barrage of discreet particles bounced around,
colliding in a universe in which chance and interactivity blurred into
one another. Playing at one o'clock on Saturday afternoon in the festival's
smallest venue, Konk Pack established a benchmark by which other improvisers'
performances would inevitably be judged."
Bill Smith, Coda Magazine, June 2000
"As for pure total improvisation, the verdict on german-english trio
Konk Pack was unanimous. Even listeners unreceptive to improvised noise
(bending frequencies and sound-textures via an analog synth, manipulation
of a guitar on a table, free percussion, etc) were won over by these subtle
sonorities superbly segued, magnificent interplay."
Alain Brunet, La Presse, Montreal, 23 May 2000