Monat: Januar 2021

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Review | By Guillermo Escudero / Loop
Resonant Dowland | Matthias Engelke
This is a new release in the Sound Art Series on the German label Gruenrekorder. This is a work of German composer and sound artist, Matthias Engelke, who performs the songs of Renaissance composer John Dowland. Engelke composes music for theater with analog electronic devices where music, sound, dance and movement interact. Tenor singer hold the romantic Renaissance charm and brooding character of Dowland’s songs. As the electronic arrangements flow and weave a perfect symbiosis between two different worlds and different times. And here we can see how complementary they can be. For example, the rhythmic beats in “White as lilies was her face” perfectly match his playful nature. On „The lowest trees have tops“ the string arrangements give a ceremonial aura to a nostalgic song. „Lady if you so spite me“ at times approaches the IDM genre with its emerging beats, while the singer coexists in a different space, as if he were in a parallel dimension. […]

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Review | By Richard Allen / a closer listen
Shizugawa | Andrew Littlejohn
This resonant recording scores the aftermath of one disaster, but by extension speaks to those caught in the midst of another. Recorded in the flattened town of Shizugawa following the devastating tsunami of March 2011, Andrew Littlejohn‘s study traces what was lost, and what arrived in its place. The survivors dig through the rubble, unearthing recent artifacts of suddenly vanished lives. They no longer hear pedestrians, commerce, children at play. The wildlife seems louder, as its competition is gone. The wind and waves are now a constant part of the audible soundscape, no longer soothing but lurking; what once seemed benign became a bearer of death. According to Littlejohn, “two Shizugawas overlapped: one of memory and one emerging.” The only constant, present before and after the tsunami, is the quartet of locally-composed songs on the emergency broadcast system, sounding at 6, 12, 5 and 9, and all heard on this recording. Endō Miki died sending a final warning, as did Satō Yoshio, the composer of the noon song. […]

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Review | By textura
SOUNDS LIKE…VIENNA | Julia Bünnagel
As ever, appearances deceive. A photo on the back cover of Sounds Like…Vienna shows Julia Bünnagel standing behind a DJ-like setup at an outdoors city space, an image that suggests the twelve-inch release could possibly be a dance-related release from Gruenrekorder. But anyone familiar with the experimental imprint knows it would never do something so, well, normal, and sure enough closer inspection reveals that the release is consistent with its other products. Bünnagel, you see, has created a recording that doesn’t merely simulate the sound of the city, it is the city—or at least one representative part of it. For this project, she’s created a record using slabs produced from molds of the city’s sidewalk and streets; consequently, the sounds generated when the turntable’s needle rides the disc’s surface derive, literally, from Vienna’s physical surfaces. […]

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Review | By textura
The Nomadic Listener | Budhaditya Chattopadhyay
The Nomadic Listener is a field recordings release with a difference. Rather than being a pure audio document of international locales, it’s an augmented book project by Budhaditya Chattopadhyay that ties sixty written reflections and abstract images to unedited field recordings, with audio details accessed from a QR code included inside the handsome volume (the digital component is available from Gruenrekorder, the book from Errant Bodies Press in Berlin). In another iteration the work might have been titled The Nomadic Listener, Viewer, and Thinker, so inextricably bound are the text and visuals to the sound dimension. Here’s a project that fully engages the senses and mind, so much so it renders the possibility of distraction moot. As one absorbs the text and image for each part as the field recording plays, one naturally considers the connections between them and reflects upon Chattopadhyay’s own musings. […]

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Reviews | By Rigobert Dittmann / Bad Alchemy Magazin (109)
Resonant Dowland | Matthias Engelke
Ach, semper Dowland, semper dolens. MATTHIAS ENGELKE, manchen vielleicht bekannt als Hauskomponist der Choreographin Irina Pauls, vergegenwärtigt auf Resonant Dowland (Gruen 197 w/Booklet) den elisabethanischen Lautenisten und Songwriter John Dowland auf gleich mehreren Ebenen: Bildlich mit der Fotoserie ‚Licht/Light‘ von Gustav Franz, textlich mit dem Essay ‚Palimpsest‘ von Christian Lemmerich und den von Sadness, Sweetness, Darkness erfüllten Lyrics der einst in London oder für den King of Denmark angestimmten Songs, die, anders als ich sie etwa durch Deller Consort kenne, nun ‚for Tenor and Electronics‘ erklingen. Was immer tiefer in der Zeit versinkt und als Geschichte verkrustet, zoomt Engelke heran, ungeachtet dessen, dass von Love, Pleasure und Melancholia, wie sie die Lovers & Ladies um 1600 bewegten, nur der schöne Schall nachhallt, ob in ‚historisch informiertem‘ Retro als Countertenor-Kitzel, ob in der Aboutness Benjamin Brittens oder Stings. […]

 

„Stadt (Land Fluss)“ | Daniel Kötter & Hannes Seidl
Allein hat der Filme- & Musiktheatermacher DANIEL KÖTTER das Mittelmeer KATALOisiert (2013), für ‚Hashti Tehran‘, ‚Desert View‘ & ‚Rift Finfinnee‘ (2017-20) hat er die Kamera auf Teheran, Cairo und Addis Abeba gerichtet. Zusammen mit dem Komponisten HANNES SEIDL realisierte er den Multi-Channel-Triptychon ‚Arbeit und Freizeit‘ (2009-11) und die musiktheatralische Trilogie ‚Falsche Arbeit, Falsche Freizeit‘, dessen dritter Part Stadt [Land Fluss] (Gruen 199 w/Booklet) nun mit dem Akzent auf Stadt als Hörspiel erklingt. Unter Einschluss von Sounds von Christina Kubisch und Musiken von Sebastian Berweck, Martin Lorenz und Andrea Neumann, zu eigenen Texten und Zitaten des neomarxistischen Humangeographen & Sozialtheoretikers David Harvey. Am Beispiel der Hafencity Hamburg wird nach der DNA einer Stadt gefragt: Who produces…, who reproduces the city? Die zahlungskräftige HafenCity-Klientel? Elphi-Touristen? Stadtentwicklung als Kopfgeburt am Reißbrett und auf dem Immobilienmarkt erweist sich als highly destructive für das Wesen von Urbanität. […]

 

Circles and cycles | Kg Augenstern
KG AUGENSTERN? Das sind doch die mit den „Tentacles“ (Gruen 170) und der Flussfahrt mit ihrem MS Anuschka von Berlin nach Paris, auf der sie unterwegs mit ihren Tentakeln, ihren Fühlern, an sämlichen Brücken kratzten. Circles and Cycles (Gruen 202 w/Book) zeigt Christiane Prehn and Wolfgang Meyer auf einer anderen Mission: Archimedes, Kierkegaard, nein, Tentacles in Sicily – Scratching the Surface . Als doppelköpfiger Herakles lösten sie nicht zwölf, aber doch zehn Aufgaben und alle wieder nur mit ihren Tentakeln. Sie scratchten und kraulten 1. ‚a Lido‘ (die in den 60ern erbaute Feriensiedlung Lido Las Vegas), 2. ‚a Mountain Village‘ (das Bergdorf Cunziria, wo Gerberei betrieben wurde), 3. ‚a Commercial Area‘ (ein in den 90ern entstandenes Gewerbegebiet südlich von Catania), 4. ‚a Castle‘ (das 1930 errichtete Castello del Duca di Misterbianco), 5. ‚a Furniture Store‘ (das Ende der 70er eröffnete brutalistische Möbelhaus Sicilmobile) […]

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Reviews | By Frans de Waard / VITAL WEEKLY
Circles and cycles | Kg Augenstern
First, let me say something about the package. I know I usually don’t, but in this case: great stuff. The first comes with a square 18×18 cm book with lots of photos and the other on a sturdy piece of carton and separate leaflet. Both packages detailing what we hear. KG Augenstern is not the name of one person. It is a duo from Berlin, Christiane Prehn and Wolfgang Meyer and explores sites with what they call “Tentacles“, „extendable fibreglass canes that allow them to touch and extract the sounds of the places they are travelling through“. I’d say, watch a YouTube from them and things will become clearer. In the autumn of 2019, they went to abandoned places in Sicily and explored these. […]

 

„Stadt (Land Fluss)“ | Daniel Kötter & Hannes Seidl
The other release is a radio play by composer Hannes Seidl and media artist Daniel Kötter and it’s about ‚the city‘, „What does, what could the city of the future sound like?“ To that end, there are texts, music, interviews and an installation/music theatre piece. Some text is in German and some in English, but much just went by me (me and texts; that’s common to happen). The text is also available in an English translation in the booklet. The music is by Sebastian Berweck, Martin Lorenz, and Andrea Neumann, while Christina Kubisch provided electromagnetic sounds. If I’m honest (and I should be) I quite enjoyed this what it is probably not; or, perhaps, not intended as such, and that is a piece of music. […]

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Gruenrekorder @ Bepi Crespan Presents
CITR’s 24 Hours of Radio Art in a snack sized format.
Dark Ambient. Drone. Field Recordings. Noise. Sound Art. Or something.
https://www.citr.ca/episode/20201130
https://www.citr.ca/episode/20201204-1
https://www.citr.ca/episode/20201205
https://www.citr.ca/episode/20201207

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Review | By Roger Batty / Musique Machine
Michael Lightborne | Ring Road Ring
Ring Road Ring is a twelve-inch vinyl release that brings together around half-an-hours worth of road field recordings captured by contact microphones attached to the concrete pylons around the Ring Road, which loops around the city of Coventry in the West Midlands. The recordings here go from untreated & lightly manipulated/ arranged- with the sonic pallet moving from melancholically droning, muffled almost beat like texturing, and churning industrial-like sonic constructions. The release appeared this year on highly respected German field recording/ sound art label Gruenrekorder. […]

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Gruenrekorder @ Bepi Crespan Presents
CITR’s 24 Hours of Radio Art in a snack sized format.
Dark Ambient. Drone. Field Recordings. Noise. Sound Art. Or something.
The Nomadic Listener | Budhaditya Chattopadhyay

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New Release:

 

 

Field Notes #4: 20/21
is a free bi-lingual magazine published by the German label Gruenrekorder, edited by Daniel Knef and Lasse-Marc Riek. Generally speaking our magazine is concerned with the phenomenon of sound from the most varied perspectives: artists, musicians, journalists and scientists add to Field Notes with their essays, interviews, travelogues, anecdotes, notes and picture series.