Die Knödel

The folk music of my home region Bavaria is widely known as the source of lots of slippery musicians who pretend to be 'folk musicians'. Music such as this has also become popular outside of Germany over the years, effectively ruining the reputation of the traditional Bavarian folk culture.




The true Bavarian folk music is of a very different kind. It seemingly doesn't have the broad and sophisticated scope of balladry which the British/Celtic/Irish folklore has, but in fact it's very different to what most people believe it to be.


Die Knödel, a 1990s band from Tyrol, presented a very special adaptation of Bavarian folk music which still remains unique until today. While the instrumentation and also the form/structure of many pieces are derived from the traditional material, the arrangements and melodies draw heavily from RIO, ambient, Henry-Cow-style avantgarde and postclassicism. Actually, this music lacks the 'rock' component to be suitable for this homepage, but I was quite surprised to see that they are(!!!) already present in the ProgArchives. Still, there's no thread to appreciate them, and they don't have a lot more than 1-2 ratings per album, so I thought that a thread would be a good idea to cast some light on their music.


Here's one example of the more quiet and pastoral range of styles...



... and an example of the rhythmically complicated material. In fact, strange rhythms such as these already appeared in the aulde traditional dances, challenging the folk dancers to invent some complicated dancing patterns to suit the music. (Also note the witty self-ironic band name which means 'The Dumplings' in English - one of their albums is logically called 'The Noodle', featuring a track called 'The Sausage'.)





No matter if you have a certain relation to the Alpine culture, if you are interested in the traditional music of different cultures, or if you enjoy the avantgardistic/classicistic elements of Egg/Henry Cow/Samla -   take a change and listen a bit into these recordings.



Edited by Einsetumadur - August 11 2013 at 08:27

By the way -  some of their albums are out of print, but may be purchased for some euros via Amazon MP3 download. Not the best way to ensure a sufficient payment for the band, but it's still better than nothing!