Ekkehard Ehlers
A Life Without Fear

THE REVIEW

When that drugged-out ghost of a voice enters amidst the crackles and indolence of the guitar, all the elements are already there, even if you don't realize it yet.
As the sobs of sound fragments push the first track, “Ain’t No Grave”, a cover of a traditional song, towards the exit, you are already inside the abode set up by Mr. Ehlers. You even hear the creaking of the doors. And the echo of something else, perhaps the dregs of old barrels being scraped. If the barrel is the blues, in a “Second Fire”
“Strange Things” are happenin', repeats Charles Haffer Jr, or the rough semblance that has been sent from the past to remind us of something we tend to forget.
Plunged into a haze of frayed, uncertain, and misty sound, his warning is very current. And irredeemably distant. 

The distillation of the empty space between the notes of a torpid, parched blues.
It reminds me of the atmosphere you found in “Deceit” by This Heat. Probably because of the sensation of heat and lethargy, of suspension, which in some ways unite them.
But here, in this impossible dwelling, which closes like a shell or expands like breathing, for example, on the very sparse reiteration of the harmonica (but is it a harmonica or the memory of a ghostly train convoy that continues to glide, very slowly, in a sweaty dream?) of “Die Wieder Schnell Sagen”, there is no hint or temptation of a song.

Then you suddenly find yourself, in “Misorodzi”, outside the abode, in the heart of Africa. Among the sounds now also the balafon, it seems to me. And the Delta could perhaps be the Nile's. No disorientation, though. Because you are exactly at the center of the void, in one place or another.
And in this void, something floats that will remain suspended in the air even after the trumpets have stopped blowing their dusty wind over the notes doled out by the guitars in “Maria & Martha”. Or after that voice, another ghost immersed in the liquid of a murky and smoky sound, has stopped narrating its story in “O Death”.
What remains suspended is a fragment of the soul of the blues. Or what has become entangled in it while crossing time to reach our days. 

Ekkehard Ehlers has recently released this album for Staubgold, after having tampered with, among others, the repertoires of Arnold Schönberg, Cornelius Cardew, and Albert Ayler. I have no idea (but I intend to investigate) what happened to the music of these gentlemen after his manipulations.
On the other hand, I have an idea of what he did with his personal idea of blues, with the fragments he collected and organized in the 45'5'' of “A Life Without Fear”.
It could be the album for the summer.
A summer of still air, of tiny abysses opening up in the buzzing heat, of open-eyed sleepwalking.
A summer of ghosts appearing and disappearing, leaving a mark as indelible as it is intangible. 

But naturally, it's another summer that I wish for you.
Therefore, it might be wise to await the autumn to meet the latest creature of Mr. Ekkehard Ehlers.