Guitar, Electronics, Styrofoam

Hans Tammen calls his style of performance "Endangered Guitar,"  because of the extreme alterations he enacts upon his instrument's  sound and construction. Originally inspired by Sonny Sharrock’s and  Pete Cosey's fiery and energetic playing, his rapid-fire  juxtapositions of radically contrastive and fascinating sounds  capture the energy and abstract musicality that Coltrane brought to  the saxophone. His music has been described as a journey through the  land of unending sonic operations, his playing as reverse engineering  of the guitar. Signal To Noise called his playing "...a killer tour  de force of post-everything guitar damage".

Pressestimmen:

...a monster of a player ...a killer tour de force of post everything  guitar damage. (Larry Nai, Signal To Noise)

...manipulated his sounds with the skill of a mad scientist. (Bruce  Gallanter, Downtown Music Gallery Newsletter)

Tammen’s self-described “endangered” guitar style slashes through  idiomatic norms, conjuring soundscapes and stabbing intensity. (Sean  Fitzell, AllAboutJazz New York).

...clearly one of the best experimental guitarists to come forward  during the 1990s. (François Couture, All Music Guide)

Hans Tammen has his own way of playing the guitar... (New York Times)

...one of the most ferociously talented and inventive guitarists to emerge in the last ten years. His technique is noisy and percussive,  his energy relentless and unstoppable. (Richard Cochrane, Musings)

White-hot solo guitar work... Recent years have seen a slew of fine  free guitarists emerge..., but nothing they've done so far packs this  kind of punch... (Dan Warburton, Signal to Noise)

Guitarist Hans Tammen, born in Germany and now resident in New York,  has over the past few years developed a highly individual and  effective method of interfacing his "endangered" guitar with  electronics (i.e. a laptop)... (Dan Warburton, ParisTransatlantic)

Tammen, an incredibly confounding and visionary improviser on  acoustic and electric guitar... (Steve Brydges, Copperpress)

Now that Hans Tammen is settled in the States, the German  experimentalist best known for playing "endangered guitar" is  becoming a lightning rod for European improvisers who share his  fearlessness. (Time Out New York)

Charlie Christian and Les Paul knew they were on to something,  something new and perhaps revolutionary, but they could hardly have  imagined the things that Hans Tammen does to guitar, and the sounds  he coaxes from it. (Brian Marley, Avant Magazine)

Hans Tammen
European Free Improvisation
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