This year´s Wels festival (www.servus.at/w8) had probably the most wide spectrum of styles I ever witnessed at one weekend: at one point we heard a very loud and weird performance of Otomo and Eye where Otomo damaged his turntables by feet while Eye screaming in a funnel and these two guys attended a totally silent performance by Radu Malfatti and dieb13 the other afternoon where the only thing I was hearing was the digestion of my neighbour (don´t know what they thought about it). Most interesting for me was the Peter Brötzmann Quintet w/ Mats Gustafsson, Conny Bauer, William Parker and Hamid Drake. With this rhythm section nothing could get wrong! Another highlight was the Dutch-Chicago connection Skins & Strings w/ special guest Ken Vandermark - very intense. Very good sets were made by Lonberg-Holm, Kessler and Zerang and by Courvoisier, Olive and Mori. A bit dissapointing was John Butcher because there were lots of visuals and electronic distortion which diverted from his excellent sax playing. Nice vocals were presented by baskian singer Benat Achiary (very intense!) in a dedication to Peter Kowald (he was originally scheduled to play in duet with him) and Carla Bozulich with the Nels Cline Singers. Dirty hardcore hiphop was heard by the american band Dälek - more than expected! Another impressing concert was made by Markus Hinterhäuser who presented an interesting piece by Morton Feldman: For Bunita Marcus. Unfortunately the Ex Orkest was cancelled due to internal trouble within the Ex with the effect that Luc left the band. Andreas np: Les Diaboliques - Live At The Rhinefalls (Intakt) _________________________________________________________________ Messenger -  Wer in Echtzeit kommunizieren will, lädt den MSN Messenger. Cool, kostenlos und mit 3D Emoticons: http://messenger.msn.de