Monat: November 2019

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CD TIPP – Label: Gruenrekorder
Musik von David Rothenberg und Gerald Fiebig
Von Henry Kozok

 

Seit 2003 ist das deutsche Label Gruenrekorder zuständig für Fieldrecordings, Sound Art und vieles was nie in gängige Schubladen passt oder in die Kataloge des Online Handels. Wer interessiert sich schon dort für Musik aus dem alten Gasometer in Augsburg, den Gesang der Vögel in den Parks von Berlin und Helsinki? Lasse-Marc Riek und Roland Etzin interessiert es.

 

Aus Richtung Nürnberg mit der Bahn kommend fährt man in Höhe Augsburg-Oberhausen am Gasometer vorbei. Es ist nicht zu übersehen. Ein Zeugnis eines Industriezeitalters das der Vergangenheit angehört. Der Augsburger Gerald Fiebig hat in diesem Gasometer 2013 eine faszinierende Klanginstallation eingerichtet, welche auch die Grundlage der CD ist. Siehe hierzu auch die vielen Reviews dazu.
soundcloud.com/gruenrekorder/gasworks-gerald-fiebig-feat-emerge-christian-z-muller

 

Etwas ganz untypisches für Gruenrekorder wurde mit der Vogelmusik von David Rothenberg veröffentlicht. Was aber auch die ganze Bandbreite dieses Labels ausmacht. Mit dem Gesang der Vögel wurde in den Parks von Berlin und Helsinki musiziert, dort wo die Nachtigall noch singt … Jedenfalls bis 22.00 Uhr, dann muss Schluss sein. Musik nach 22.00 Uhr geht nicht und wenn sie noch so schön ist.
soundcloud.com/gruenrekorder/nightingale-cities-david-rothenberg

 

Für alle die sich einen Überblick über die Klangwelt von Gruenrekorder verschaffen wollen, sei hier die Soundcloud Seite empfohlen und der Text von Holger Adam auf Testcard, der bei fast allen Reviews zu den Gruenrekorder Veröffentlichungen zu finden ist !

 

Genannte Veröffentlichungen:
David Rothenberg: ‘Nightingale Cities’
Gerald Fiebig feat. EMERGE & Christian Z. Müller: ‘Gasworks’

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Review | By Ed Pinsent / The Sound Projector
Merzouga | De Rerum Natura / Dance of the Elements
My Favourite Things – From 8th February 2019 we have the Merzouga team on Gruenrekorder. Eva Popplein and Janko Hanushevsky wowed the crowds with their 2013 release based on wax cylinders found in the Berlin Phonogram Archive, leaving us in no doubt as to their historical sensibilities and their thoroughness in surveying and sampling ethnic music from the early part of the 20th century. For De Rerum Natura / Dance of the Elements (GRUEN 185), they’re drawing inspiration from a work of classical antiquity, Lucretius’ epic “didactic” poem De Rerum Natura (On The Nature Of Things). In this work, the Roman poet Lucretius was attempting to explain to his readers the philosophy of the earlier (Greek) philosopher Epicurus. By modern writers and thinkers, Epicurus is now claimed as a an early “humanist” of sorts – he wanted to banish fear of the supernatural, free mankind from living in fear of the gods and deities that supposedly governed our lives, and to that end he started to explain how the universe came into being. […]

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Review | By Ed Pinsent / The Sound Projector
David Rothenberg | Nightingale Cities
Clarinettist and sound artist David Rothenberg made the Cicada Dream Band record for Gruenrekorder in 2014 (with Pauline Oliveros and Timothy Hill); that record made use of insects and birdsong as part of its conceptual whole. A similar approach is used on Nightingale Cities (GRUENREKORDER Gruen 189), a double CD set of music recorded in Berlin and Helsinki. The nightingale is the key. Rothenberg claims this particular bird has “helped me to find the perfect sound”. He enlisted the help of various musicians and singers, plus field recording technicians, and they went out and played in the raw, creating music right there in the forests along with the song of the nightingales. The sessions have been thoroughly documented in the fat book of notes – photographs and annotations galore, meticulously detailing the circumstances of each separate track. […]

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Gruenrekorder @ The Sound Projector Radio Show
Gerald Fiebig feat. EMERGE & Christian Z. Müller | Gasworks
www.thesoundprojector.com/2019/06/07/powering-up
Kuhzunft (Achim Zepezauer) | Slotmachine
www.thesoundprojector.com/2019/04/12/keep-saying-yes

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Review | By Ed Pinsent / The Sound Projector
Gerald Fiebig feat. EMERGE & Christian Z. Müller | Gasworks
Fossil Fuel Project – Based on very scant clues, I would guess there may be a trend emerging among phonographic types and installation artists to try and document old 20th century buildings and their functions. I only have two recent examples I can call to mind: Aldaris, which Rihards Bražinskis and Raitis Upens made for Unfathomless in 2017, and which used sounds from an old beer brewery; and Optimistic Modernism, which was recorded in a now-closed printing works that had formerly specialised in the old technique of photo-litho. Today though we have Gasworks (GRUENREKORDER Gruen 179), made by Gerald Fiebig with the help of EMERGE and Christian Z. Müller, and it may serve as a tertiary entry in my imagined series. Fiebig has been making sound works out of the old gasworks in Augsburg-Oberhausen for over ten years now. The present CD, released by Gruenrekorder who specialise in this sort of thing and spare no expense in supplementing the record with full colour booklets of notes, compiles examples drawn from many of his major experiments and soundworks in one place. […]

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Review | By Duncan Simpson / Musique Machine
Kuhzunft (Achim Zepezauer) | Slotmachine

This is a really fun little thing Gruenrekorder have put out. It’s ostensibly a project branching out from a website created by Achim Zepezauer which replicates an old One Arm Bandit slot machine, but instead of displaying fruit it plays an overlaid combination of three 45 second audio fragments from artists ranging from Jaap Blonk to John Chantler and Zepezauer himself. This 10″ vinyl release – neatly presented with cute crayon artwork collects 30 of the possible combinations spat out by the slot machine, each with a title constructed in a similarly random way. The opening spin Cowshed Neck Rupture throws out Jerome Noetinger, Simon Whetham and Zepezauer himself, combining with glitchy electonics, field recordings and tape effects. And on the second, Noetinger’s classic concrete tape distortions continue alongside Serge Corteyn free improvising on the guitar and Pablo Paredes‘ piano. And so it goes on, each pull of the machine throwing up unique and often quite natural sounding combinations. […]

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Review | By Robert Barry / The Wire Magazine (The Wire 429)
Silva Datum Musica | PLEIN AIR
The photo on the innersleeve shows the interior of a glass domed building. In the centre sit two young trees in big black plant pots. They are surrounded by equipment stands, wires snaking from the leaves to the ground and up to a chipboard box. A pair of human legs, with what looks like a computer keyboard resting on their lap, extend from beneath the box to the floor. If the image conjures up some bizarre plant-machine-human hybrid straight out of the pages of a Donna Haraway manifesto, the truth is not far off. All the bulbous electronic bloops and clattery percussive slashes on Plein Air are derived from realtime data on the photosynthesis and transpiration rates of different plants. Must be one of the few shows where the band get their instruments from a tree nursery. […]