"Wildling ist ein Füllhorn von zartem Groove, feinem Geräusch, frei herumgeisternden Melodien. Wildling befreit sich aus jeder Schublade. Wer dann an Krautrock denkt, wird in dieser Nacht von Sauerkraut träumen. Natürlich gibt es bei diesem Wildling Anklänge, aber die sind so feinstofflich, dass sich wie bei Zaubertinte alle klugen Referenzen verflüchtigen, kaum hat man sie aufs Papier gebracht."
Michael Engelbrecht, Deutschlandfunk
"The trio feels like they've reached a new level of creative inspiration matched with immediately inviting sonic textures. Suggestions of the band's inspirations, as on past releases, continue to play a major role in situating their work - the rich guitars, with an almost gently yearning feeling on "Move Right In" call to mind David Gilmour's most serene work for Pink Floyd, while "Spookin' the Horse" is the Lee Hazlewood/Nancy Sinatra number that never was, all dreamily hushed reverb, mysterious whispering, and a sense of drama suggesting lost cowboys caught in red sunsets. But it's key to sense how their nods to styles don't consist of full re-creations or pastiches, but riffs to build their own compositions on -- thus Heike Aumüller's vocal work is suggesting strange, not quite understandable ghosts. (...) The trio has a strong sense of wider cultural marks to aim for, much as their music suggests."
Ned Raggett, allmusic.com
"There’s a varied amount of sound types to be heard, from guitar and brass to accordion and noises produced by ‘mis-playing’ the instruments themselves, among a myriad electronic drones that flow in and out of our melodic consciousness. As the primitive self flourishes and embeds symbols and dreams upon every object seen (with new eyes, a new language bereft of its supposed autonomy), the instruments lose their image, they become part of a scenery of sounds that reside in our bodies; shunning classification and categorization, we let the ‘wild’ take over and find the answers logic fears, the truths that reason laughs at to minimize their power and grandiosity. “There’s a Crack in Everything”, states the second to last piece on the album, and after listening to the music, it’s utterly right. The mechanics of music composition come unmasked by a minimalist frame, the flow of language mapped by a woman’s voice in entranced glossolalia, the continuity of the trip broken by track skipping, possible interventions from outside, glitches in the interface, and simple blinking. To become a Wildling in perennial delirium is to become aware of these cracks and therefore change the manners in which we see and listen to the world around us. This is a step beyond the usual search in psychedelia, rooted upon the last ashen gasps of humanist universalism but growing differently, more openly and profoundly into the domain of individual multiplicity and its ecology, its direct retroactive relation to the world. Perhaps the best work by the Kollektief ever since Absencen vaguely traced these cracks, Wildling does not restrain any metaphorical punches to try and pry open your third eye, to awaken your body to a new transcendence and then set you free to your own surrealist devices. If anything, it is an encouraging work, a very modern piece of art that will surely, at the very least, remain buried within your unconsciousness, generating meanings that seem random, finding the cracks in contexts, highlighting what before seemed trivial as infinitely interesting and sacred."
David Murrieta, junkmedia.com
"Ein wildes Denken, das Calexico-Sonnenuntergänge, den freien Jazz von ganz weit draußen und einen als Minimal Music gespielten Indierock zusammenkriegt in einer Musik, mit der das Kollektief ziemlich einzig nicht nur in Deutschland steht."
Thomas Mauch, taz
"Musik, die auf die Unendlichkeit verweist."
Marcus Golling, Augsburger Allgemeine
"This is cerebral, subtle music. There are few obvious climaxes. The conglomerated style feels balanced, because everyone plays their role sensitively. Double bassist Johannes Frisch provides a rock-solid jazz foundation for the movements, shifting between deep grooves and deft extemporization. Guitarist Thomas Weber provides a lot of the 1970s experimental and cinematic feel, simultaneously handling woozy but hard-flecked guitars and electronic textures. Heike Aumüller provides the personality and humanizing voice, either sitting at her harmonium, or hunkering down on the floor with a flute or synthesizer. Drummer Christopher Brunner is adroit and feather-light. No one ever flies off on their own trip; all play tactfully and with a sense of the overriding structure. The music is mannered, restrained, redolent of 70s exotica; the vocals are cool and remote but essentially passionate. Aumüller coos like an out-music ice-diva amid the slow bluster of "Move Right In" as the guitar bends like cold starlight around the thumping double bass."
Brian Howe, Pitchfork
"Seit über zehn Jahren arbeitet die Karlsruher Combo daran, Free Jazz, Voodoo Rock und andere Free-Form-Freakout-Stile in den Indie-Zirkus einzuschmuggeln. Mit ihrem neuen Album »Wildling« gelingt ihnen das so traumwandlerisch sicher wie nie zuvor. Ihr Zusammenspiel hat eine Subtilität und Konzentration erreicht, die jedes Klischee vom rohen Free Jazz verblassen lässt. Ihre Klangfarbenmelodien beschwören einen magischen Minimalismus."
Stadtrevue Köln
"Perhaps it's that an acoustic pulse, handed down from Teutonic forebears like Can and Cluster, stewards the fugitive strands of jazz much like a digital beat would. Vocalist Heike Aumueller blurs languages and sometimes abandons them completely in a kind of post-modern scatting, with a delivery that sits somewhere between Nico and Beth Gibbons. Wildling is simultaneously the group's most ambitious and most successful effort to date."
Eric Hill, exclaim.ca
"Ein kühner Entwurf, weit draußen in der siebten Galaxie!"
Christoph Wagner, Schwarzwälder Bote
"Das Trio puzzelt seine Musik (..) nicht nur mit unbändiger Vitalität und schillernder Poesie zusammen, sondern vor allem mit beeindruckender Nervenstärke."
Michael Lutz, Spex
"Dürfte der Rezensent über pure Schönheit in der Musik dozieren, dieses Album käme dem Ideal ausgesprochen nahe. Große Sehnsuchtsmusik aus Karlsruhe, bis dato unerreicht!"
Ulrich Kriest, Pony/Meier
"This gently unfolding, boldly meditative recording by Thomas Weber, Heike Aumuller, and Johannes Frisch manages to harness a quiet power in service of something far much more insinuating than most music that purports to rock. Numbers build with a cunning care that seems designed to explode into some sort of shattered noise free-fall, yet that never quite happens in Kammerflimmer Kollektief’s universe -- and Wildling is all the better for its makers’ lack of artifice."
Kimberly Chun, San Fransisco Bay Guardian
"Diese Intensität! Leichtfüßig lässt sich diese Musik nicht konsumieren, sie taugt nicht für Fahrstühle, Kaffeebars, Hotellounges und ähnliche Orte des Durchgangs."
Tobi Kirsch, satt.org
"Le Kollektief this time sounds like Napalm Death on a mixture of Mandrax & Gin. Get it while you can!"
Wolfgang von Forsbäck, Suck & Run
"Hier finden Jazz und Bollywood, Krautrock und Strenge, Organisation und Liebe zueinander. Ein stoisch-schöner Bass trägt den opener "Move Right In": eine Einladung der man unbedingt folgen sollte!"
Karsten Zimalla, Westzeit
"Alles in Allem klingt Wildling, als hätten sich die Tindersticks, Angelo Badalamenti und Talk Talk zur Aufnahme eines weitgehend elektroniklosen Ambientalbums verabredet."
Thomas Hübener, Spex
"Dem Kammerflimmer Kollektief (ist) etwas gelungen, das auch ganz ohne Vergleiche wie ein Leuchtturm in der Brandung für sich steht und den Weg weist."
Martin Büsser, Intro
"Das Kammerflimmer Kollektief gehört zu den wenigen deutschen Gruppen, die eine ganz eigenständige Musikform gefunden haben. Mit Laptop, Loops, Standbass, Harmonium, Synthie und Gitarren erschaffen die Karlsruher eine wundervolle Melange aus Indie, Elektronik und Jazz. So selbstverloren, so entrückt wie auf "Wildling" aber klangen sie noch nie. (..) Der Gesang von Heike Aumüller ist kaum dechiffrierbar und löst sich im Ambient-Strom dieses magischen Albums auf."
Sven Niechziol, Morgenpost Hamburg
"Perhaps this is the nature of the Kollektief's loosely psychedelic and primativist approach: it will invariably find common ground with some core element of the human experience, and thus it will ingratiate itself with all but the rarest among us. The wildling is a wild creature that has been tamed, transplanted to a cultivated spot from its own habitat. Perhaps this is from whence the familiarity arises: we are all wild at heart, and the band writes to that core being in all of us. The album's name implies feral ferocity dormant within, the constant struggle to be free from the shackles that bind us."
Stephan Sherman, The Silent Ballet
"Morning Maniac Music"
Dr. Jennifer Melfi
"Was ist das? Aum-A-Go-Go-müller!"
Rigobert Dittmann, Bad Alchemy 65