Limpe Fuchs is a composer of acoustic and visual happenings who creates sound with unusual instruments. Born in 1941, Fuchs came of age in the hedonistic, politically charged sixties. After studying piano and violin in the early sixties at the school of music in Munich, a city full of fertile, counter-culture creativity, near the end of the decade she started „Anima Sound“, a collective name for twenty years of ‘sound research’ with her partner, sculptor Paul Fuchs. Also known as 'Anima Musica', they epitomized the ingenious marginal freak scene of the sixties and seventies and are often cited as a major influence on Krautrock
Anima's anarchic recordings were radical, atonal improvisations with unconventional instruments, unrestrained creativity, and utterly unstructured performances - primal, experimental free-jazz with a touch of prog-rock. In an unlikely array, instruments like drums, bass and cornet were combined with Paul Fuchs' own homemade inventions: the Fuchshorn, Fuchszither, and Fuchsbass; Limpe Fuchs’ wordless vocal yelps and screams; and audio-visual machines: light-ray oscillographs and movement holograms. Fringe community outsiders, the Fuchs took freak-out avant-garde to a new level. In Peterskirchen, near Munich, they built their assortment of instruments and equipment; modified horns, sheet-metal percussion (including the ballast string, an arrangement of wire-strung metal bars suspended from a brass drum and played like a cross between a vibraphone and a gong) and DIY electronics.
Anima-Sound's first album, Stürmischer Himmel, was recorded in a 1,000-year-old cottage and released by Ohr Records in 1971. That year in the summer, they also played the Ossiach, a three-day outdoor festival organized by acclaimed Austrian classical/jazz pianist Friedrich Gulda (unofficially released on the double CD
Ossiach Live) that also included Tangerine Dream and Pink Floyd. From 1971 to 1973, the duo Anima Musica became the trio Anima when Gulda joined them for tours and recording. He appeared on the albums
Anima, released by the Pilz label, and
Musik Für Alle, both of which came out in 1972. The double LP
Der Regt Mich Auf/A Controversy, recorded between 1978 and 1982, included new band member Zoro Fuchs, son of Paul and Limpe, on drums. By 1987' Anima had become Limpe Fuchs' solo project.
She preserves the ‘no formalisms, no explanations’ methodology in her solo work, and continues exploring the outer realms with her characteristic delight in invention. Using piano, violin, Fuchs-instruments and natural objects like stones and wood, and her singularly freeform, flighty vocals, she released three solo albums,
Via in 1987,
Muusiccia, in 1993, and
Nur Mar Mus in 1999. She says of her recent work “ The visual aspect is of the same importance as the acoustic… Life and music alive…”
Fuchs’ is currently active in a trio with Peter Holzapfel and Georg Karger, a duo ‘Maerz’ with Julia Schölzel. She makes frequent live appearances and is involved in theatre-music production;
David und Goliath with Peter Ketturkat, and
animare with Gisela Oberbeck.
> www.limpefuchs.de
> CTM.06
