Press/Reviews

…a monster of a player …a killer tour de force of post everything guitar damage. (Larry Nai, Signal To Noise)

…one of improvised music’s most fascinating proponents. (Marc Medwin, AllAboutJazz)

…an innovative avant-garde guru (Lacob Baekgaard, AllAboutJazz)

By now Hans Tammen’s “endangered guitar” has probably arrived in close proximity of the ultimate frontier which an axe can be pushed to in terms of erratic sonority, something that perhaps not even messieurs Frith, Reichel and Fitzgerald could envisage at the time of their pioneering experiments on the Guitar Solos series. (Massimo Ricci, Bagatellen)

…manipulated his sounds with the skill of a mad scientist. (Bruce Gallanter, Downtown Music Gallery Newsletter)

[Tammen] presents the possibilities of the guitar in present space, including uses that take it beyond the limits of a simple instrument. Yes, there is obviously electronic manipulation, but Tammen, alone expect for perhaps Derek Bailey, makes any alteration of the guitar’s sound seem organic and matter of fact transcendent. (Mike Wood, Foxy Digitalis)

Tammen’s self-described “endangered” guitar style slashes through idiomatic norms, conjuring soundscapes and stabbing intensity. (Sean Fitzell, AllAboutJazz New York).

…fingers stuck in a high-voltage outlet (Touching Extremes, Massimo Ricci)

…clearly one of the best experimental guitarists to come forward during the 1990s. (François Couture, All Music Guide)

Hans Tammen has his own way of playing the guitar… (New York Times)

…one of the most ferociously talented and inventive guitarists to emerge in the last ten years. His technique is noisy and percussive, his energy relentless and unstoppable. (Richard Cochrane, Musings)

White-hot solo guitar work… Recent years have seen a slew of fine free guitarists emerge…, but nothing they’ve done so far packs this kind of punch… (Dan Warburton, Signal to Noise)

Guitarist Hans Tammen, born in Germany and now resident in New York, has over the past few years developed a highly individual and effective method of interfacing his “endangered” guitar with electronics (i.e. a laptop)… (Dan Warburton, ParisTransatlantic)

Tammen, an incredibly confounding and visionary improviser on acoustic and electric guitar… (Steve Brydges, Copperpress)

Now that Hans Tammen is settled in the States, the German experimentalist best known for playing “endangered guitar” is becoming a lightning rod for European improvisers who share his fearlessness. (Time Out New York)

Charlie Christian and Les Paul knew they were on to something, something new and perhaps revolutionary, but they could hardly have imagined the things that Hans Tammen does to guitar, and the sounds he coaxes from it. (Brian Marley, Avant Magazine)

Musique sans concession… la provocante guitare de Hans Tammen. (Luc Bouquet, ImproJazz)

Tammen in particular has a startlingly original command of guitar effects, and, when he references the standard noises, he cracks them open to sift through the sense inside. (Joe Milazzi, One Final Note)

If Tammen had been around in the late 1950s, who would have needed the electric guitar? (Stephen Loewy, SamGoody)

Until the balance of the world´s corrupt zoologists calling themselves guitarists learn how to breed their charges in captivity, Tammen is one of the few gatekeepers we should trust with the keys. (Bananafish)

Since sound explorers like the… German Tammen have decided to devote their careers to… radically detuning and reverse-engineering an electric guitar, they should really be celebrated for the new tones they create. (Ken Waxman, JazzWeekly)

His use of the Ebow redefines the gadget. (François Couture, All Music Guide)

Geräuschhafte Improvisationen, die das Klangspektrum der E-Gitarre auch wirklich erkunden. (Testcard)

Guitarist Tammen is exemplary throughout. (Dan Warburton, Paris Transatlantic)

Wer jetzt noch sagt, Experimente, und besonders die auf der Gitarre, hätten keine Zukunft, der muss “Endangered Guitar” von Hans Tammen hören. Dann lässt sich anderer Schrammeln gnädig ertragen. (Klaus Hübner, Westzeit)