Live At The Church

Anyone who knows Dinosaur Jr. knows J Mascis, the guitarist and mastermind of the cult American band that has helped shape the sound of indie and alternative rock since the eighties. His playing combines melody and volume, tenderness and ruthlessness in a way that hardly anyone else can manage. That he is contributing his talents for an evening to the Berlin based Krautfuzz universe is the logical collision of two worlds that have more in common than one might initially think.

With Live At The Church is a document of an intense, entirely improv based live session that captures the band in their most elemental state. Raw, open and completely within the moment.

Here, Krautfuzz move at the intersection of Krautrock, psychedelic rock and free collective improvisation. The recording unfolds as a continuous arc of tension in which rhythmic motorics, trance-like repetitions and eruptive outbursts interlock.

The album gains particular weight through the guest appearance of J Mascis, whose signature guitar work further intensifies the second half of the recording, leading into occasionally drastically distorted, almost noise-like soundscapes. It is precisely here that the sound increasingly shifts into a raw, unfiltered energy that oscillates between psychedelic expansion and controlled chaos.

The music unfolds organically over long periods, carried by a hypnotic foundation of bass and drums, above which guitar lines freely develop, shift and thicken. Instead of classic song structures, a continuous live flow emerges, shaped as much by the Krautrock tradition as by contemporary noise and psych aesthetics.

Live At The Church is therefore less of a live album in the conventional sense and more of a documented state. A snapshot of collective intensity in which space, volume and energy themselves become the actual material.

Recorded live on June 25, 2024 at the Genezareth Evangelical Church, Berlin.

It is worth taking a look at the CD version too. it features a significantly longer version of the jam from side B, which further extends the improvisational arc and reveals additional facets of the performance.

LP on 180-gram black recycled vinyl made in Germany and limited to 500 copies!

Krautfuzz are
Dirk Dresselhaus – guitar, vocals
Derek Shirley – bass
Imari Kokubo – drums
J Mascis – guitar (Side B)