One nice innocent day…

Michael Feller was watching his boom box to stumble over some guy talking about the international music scene. Suddenly the name of the guy was inserted on the TV screen: "John Weinzierl, Amon Düül II" – and Michael freaked out: This was the same guy he had spent years with in the Hohenschwangau boarding school. This was the guy he had played with in those days in their first band called The Mersey Gents. This was the guy he actually believed to be dead, cause someone sadly had told him so. What a surprise!  

Michael also remembered the time in 1973 when he played keyboards for Amon Düül II for a while, cause John had asked him to join the group. Lots of memories! Touring Europe! And now – years later – this guy wiseacers on TV. So he must be alive? Not very much later Michael called John and they agreed to meet again. Michael had a fine studio called Plan Blue Studio and it was clear: They would play and record some music in there. But of course not just any music, because they didn't wanna play what they had played for too long already. It had to be something special, something real.

John says: "Sometimes you're on stage, or in a studio playing your guts off and it just doesn't work like you want it to work. But sometimes it suddenly is like standing besides me, watching me play, and playing things, that I can't actually play! I call this: It is playing. Some higher spirit is playing through me. Then you get extraordinary results." This was exactly what they wanted to achieve.

At that time, Michael had played with Howel Roberts, not only a brilliant flute maker, but also a great drummer, born in Liverpool. Howel decided to join in and this was the birth of JHM.

A multitrack studiotape lasts for about two hours, so they usually played until the tape stopped them. Then they fell into some nearby pub in Munich Gärtnerplatz, drinking Bavarian wheat beer, to return after this resurrection to the studio, playing more music onto more tape and it was great fun. They never had to talk about what key or tempo they would use, what idea could bring them to the next musical galaxy, they just let "it" play. They had hardly stopped playing one number, when they fell into the next tune, like some force was pushing them ahead. It was like a giant big "séance" going on every time they met, and obviously they were really enjoying themselves at the same time.

Between December 1999 and April 2005 JHM recorded 43 sessions of 4 hours improvised music. Out of more than 600 pieces of music Michael selected and mixed about 220 – a cornucopia of treasures to be lifted in the future

John Weinzierl: "I've played these recordings on festivals in between live acts, or before we went on stage, and it worked really well, the audience started to form up circles, dancing to it, realizing the spiritual quality in it."

You can find a first selection of this music on two albums called Pure Spirit and Wounded. This is not music to be merely consumed. It is something you listen to, to watch musicians having fun together. You can hear how they communicate with each other only with their instruments – no overdubs, no corrections of "guest notes", just the plain music as it was played live. Played to chill out or to spend inspiration.

In July 2000 JHM invited Armin Schüler, a gifted singer and friend, to join them with improvised singing and lyrics. Although this is not a typical JHM instrumental trio session, luckily it was filmed by Thomas Koller. Of course this documentary was a spontaneous shooting with (mostly) one analog VHS video — very low quality compared to todays possibilities. Michael combined the poor camera sound with mixes from the original 24-Track DTRS recordings to create a good impression of the spirit and atmosphere of JHM Sessions.

Enjoy the spiritual power of improvisation!