Nightingale Cities | David Rothenberg
May 9th – Nightingales in Berlin presentation Sammlung Hoffmann Berlin
May 11th – world premiere Nightingales in Berlin film, BUFA Berlin
June 12th – David Rothenberg and Elliott Sharp book presentation, with Christian Marclay, Iklectik Arts, London
many more Berlin events listed on
Review | By Ed Pinsent / The Sound Projector
Voll.Halb.Langsam.Halt | Gregory Büttner
Steam Metal – Hamburg sound artist Gregory Büttner often surfaces on his own 1000Fussler label, but here he is on Gruenrekorder, the home of artistic field recording releases. Voll. Halb. Langsam. Halt. (Gruen 181) was recorded on an old steamboat that was built in the 1930s and happens to be made completely of metal. Using his contact mics, Büttner has created a “metal” record putting him directly in line with Test Dept, Neubaten, and other industrial acts who recycled metal to produce a robust clang. The difference is that Gregory Büttner’s odyssey – he did in fact make a trip on this old ice-breaker steamboat, crossing the Baltic Sea on it – is subdued, restrained, and textural in nature. We get a strong taste of the “grain” of the metal, often conveyed through semi-mechanical puttering sounds, and probably what we’re hearing there is a distant echo of the coal fired steam engine of this beast. […]
Review | By Ed Pinsent / The Sound Projector
Path of the Wind | Eisuke Yanagisawa
Wind Deities – Eisuke Yanagisawa it was who used a bat detector to create an interesting record of bat-frequency sounds around 2011 or 2012. Now this Japanese film-maker and researcher has made Path Of The Wind (GRUENREKORDER GRUEN 182), a lovely record featuring the sounds of the Aeolian harp, also called the wind-harp. Long a favourite with people who love the weather and the environment, these devices (not much more than a resonating box and some strings to be blown by the wind) have a history going back to the 17th century and have even featured in classical composition and poems from the romantic era. […]
2 Reviews | By Łukasz Komła / Nowamuzyka.pl
Z nowym wydawnictwem powraca duet Merzouga i do katalogu niemieckiej oficyny dołącza Achim Zepezauer z projektem Kuhzunft.
Merzouga | De Rerum Natura / Dance of the Elements
Austriacko-niemiecki duet Merzouga – Eva Pöpplein (elektronika) i Janko Hanushevsky (elektronika i gitara basowa) – nie wydaje zbyt często nowych płyt. Poprzedni ich album „52°46’ North 13°29’ East – Music for Wax-Cylinders” ukazał się w 2013 r. Warto wspomnieć, że artyści działają pod tym szyldem od 2002 r. W oryginalny sposób łączą nagrania terenowe z brzmieniem instrumentów i elektroniką. „De Rerum Natura / Dance of the Elements” to prawie czterdziestominutowa kompozycja będącą dźwiękową interpretacją „O naturze rzeczy” autorstwa rzymskiego filozofa i poety Lukrecjusza (ur. ok. 99 p.n.e., zm. ok. 55 p.n.e.). Epikurejska filozofia Lukrecjusza była nieznana przez wiele stuleci i została odkryta dopiero w XV w. […]
Kuhzunft (Achim Zepezauer) | Slotmachine
Achim Zepezauer to niestrudzony eksperymentator oraz wyznawca DIY. Od wielu lat rozsadza swoją twórczością wszelakie ramy gatunkowe, dodatkowo opakowując ją w przygotowaną przez siebie oprawę graficzną itd. Wystarczy przywołać jego wydawnictwo „Cardtalk” (2017) z okolic spoken word, którego można słuchać bez użycia odtwarzacza. Podobnego zabiegu dokonał Paweł Romańczuk jako Małe Instrumenty, ale w oparciu o płytę winylową. Zepezauer jest znany także z improwizowanych występów (splata ze sobą np. sample, taśmy) oraz z tego, że miksuje na żywo koncerty innych artystów. Jego sztuka charakteryzuje się poszukiwaniem dźwięku między tonalnymi i atonalnymi krajobrazami dźwiękowymi. […]
Review | By Denis Boyer / FEARDROP
Voll.Halb.Langsam.Halt | Gregory Büttner
Compositeur expérimental vivant à Hamburg, Gregory Büttner est aussi field recorder. En 2010, il a pu séjourner à bord d’un vieux brise-glace à vapeur lors d’une traversée de la Mer Baltique. Il y a placé des micros-contact et cet album en rapporte les sons remarquables. Il s’agit évidemment d’un geste réfléchi, porté à un environnement riche en particularités sonores. Ce n’est en aucun cas une phonographie aléatoire dans laquelle il faudrait, au petit bonheur, espérer trouver à la battée, une ou deux pépites sans aucune certitude sur leur carat. Gregory Büttner a délibérément élu ce vieux bateau à vapeur pour son potentiel sonore. Le musicien précise qu’il a laissé ses enregistrements intacts, sans autre manipulation que les transitions. […]
Review | By David Murrieta Flores / a closer listen
Merzouga | De Rerum Natura / Dance of the Elements
De Rerum Natura / Dance of the Elements begins with glissando bass tones and an electronic field of a thousand little raw, swarming blips and noises, creating what is simultaneously a vast and dense soundscape. Based upon the first-century BC poem by Lucretius, the album attempts to translate the text into an aural experience, with the Roman poet’s innovative style, which turned common words into philosophical concepts or plainly invented new ones when none would suffice, aptly reflected by the mixture of field recordings, spoken word, and electronic collage. The sound of the waves crashing upon the beach is not just the sound of the sea, it is also a sign of a magnificence that has no need for gods, only a nature of which we are but an extension. […]
New Releases:
David Rothenberg: ‘Nightingale Cities’
Gruen 189/19 – Double CD
24 Tracks (141:00)
run: 500 copies
Gerald Fiebig feat. EMERGE & Christian Z. Müller: ‘Gasworks’
Gruen 179/19 – CD
5 Tracks (68:18)
run: 500 copies
framework radio | #671
phonography / field recording; contextual and decontextualized sound activity
presented by patrick mcginley
Merzouga | De Rerum Natura / Dance of the Elements
Review | By Aurelio Cianciotta / Neural
Sounds of the Projection Box | Michael Lightborne
With reference to retrofuture aesthetics, we need to mention Sounds of the Projection Box, an act of reverence to the vintage technology from Michael Lightborne, an artist and Associate Professor in the Department of Film and Television Studies, at the University of Warwick (UK), where he works focusing on the relationships between cinema, sound and architecture, documentarism and field recordings. The album’s opening track, “The Thing”, also a special event from Mediafest 2018, starts with owls standing out as fragments from cine-phonographic recordings, and immediately makes clear that the operational choice is firstly sentimental and is made following a poetics typical of the art forms the artist is familiar with. But this method at the same time can be used also to analyse other fields and activities. […]
Review | By Duncan Simpson / Musique Machine
Path of the Wind | Eisuke Yanagisawa
The Aeolian harp is a stringed instrument – usually hand crafted – which produces a range of harmonic tones when wind passes across it. It has a long history – imbued with romanticism and mysticism – stretching back to antiquity, from where it derives its name from Aeolus, the Greek God of the wind. For Path of the Wind – Eisuke Yanagisawa’s third record for Gruenrekorder – the Japanese film maker and field recordist constructed his own Aeolian harp, mounting two microphones into its sounding board. He then recorded the tones produced at a variety of locations across Japan. […]
Review | By Uwe Bräutigam / nrwjazz
Merzouga | De Rerum Natura / Dance of the Elements
Dance of the Elements ist elektronische Musik mit tiefsinnigem Hintergrund vom Duo Merzouga. Das antike philosophische Großgedicht De Rerum Natura (Über die Dinge der Natur) des römischen Dichters Lukrez (95-55 v. Chr.) ist die Inspirationsquelle von Merzouga. Das Duo besteht aus der in Köln lebenden Elektronikmusikerin und Tonmeisterin Eva Pöpplein und dem Jazzbassisten und Komponisten Janko Hanushevsky. Die beiden sind durch ihre mit vielen Preisen ausgezeichneten Hörspiele und Soundcollagen bekannt. Sie arbeiten in unterschiedlichen Bands und Projekten mit Jens Düppe, Annette Maye, Udo Moll, Lucas Niggli und anderen Musikern zusammen. […]
Review | By Frans de Waard / VITAL WEEKLY
Kuhzunft (Achim Zepezauer) | Slotmachine
The word Kuhzunft doesn’t exist in German; it is the word Zukunft (‚future‘) pronounced in a silly way. This is the project of Achim Zepezauer, who gets credit for electronics, acoustics, drum computer, realization, drawing an idea. I’d say the idea is the most important thing here. „This 10“ vinyl record documents the website project of musician/artist Achim Zepezauer. It mixes up recordings of 45 seconds long in a slot machine. Online the user can combine three tracks by 13 different artists with different instrumentations, either hand sorted or completely randomized from the 158 recordings. […]
Review | By Frans de Waard / VITAL WEEKLY
Merzouga | De Rerum Natura / Dance of the Elements
This is already the fourth release by Merzouga (Vital Weekly 812, 912 and 922), the duo of Eva Pöpplein (computer) and Janko Hanushevsky (prepared bass guitar) and the third one for Gruenrekorder. They are a duo of improvising with electronics and so far I wasn’t blown away by their music, even when the last one seemed to be the best of the lot. Here they take a poem by Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius as their starting point. In this poem, he presents „an entire cosmology: based on the principles of atomism {…} explains the nature of the mind and sound and the development of the world. […]