2 Reviews | By textura
Two wildly contrasting releases accentuate the huge range of Gruenrekorder’s discography. On the one hand we have a single-track, thirty-eight-minute sound composition by Merzouga that merges philosophical musings by the Roman poet Titus Lucretius Caro (c. 99-55 BCE) with field recordings and instrumental sound treatments, on the other a wacky ten-inch by Kuhzunft (Dortmund-based dadaist Achim Zepezauer) featuring thirty forty-five-second tracks and based on the concept of an interactive slot machine.

Merzouga | De Rerum Natura / Dance of the Elements
Available in digital and CD (500 copies) formats, De Rerum Natura / Dance of the Elements is a recent creation by sound artists Eva Pöpplein and Janko Hanushevsky, who’ve operated as a duo since 2002. While their material slots itself comfortably enough within the electro-acoustic soundscaping genre, they bring an unusual slant to it in blending field recordings with Pöpplein’s electronics and Hanushevsky’s prepared electric bass. Certainly this recent single-movement soundscape, originally created as a commissioned radio piece inspired by Lucretius’s poem De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things), is as unusual. The text shows him to be a kindred spirit to Presocratics Leucippus and Democtrius, atomists who contend that while forms themselves have a finite lifespan, the tiny elements from which they’re created are eternal; according to atomism, those micro-units collide to produce forms but then come apart and reassemble into others. Woven into the sound design are passages spoken in English and Latin by Stefko Hanushevsky taken from six Lucretius books. […]

Kuhzunft (Achim Zepezauer) | Slotmachine
Though Kuhzunft’s Slotmachine release has been issued in digital and ten-inch vinyl formats (500 copies), the project’s interactive concept is best served by its web-based presentation. In that format, the user’s able to combine pre-produced recordings displayed in three slots, just as fruits and other elements are on a standard casino machine. Whereas the vinyl release features thirty miniatures involving contributions from thirteen artists, the online version obviously has the potential to offer many more variations. On the ten-inch, Zepezauer, credited with electronics, acoustics, and drumcomputer, is joined by a long list of provocateurs, among them Jaap Blonk (voice), John Chantler (modular synth), Rhodri Davies (harp), Gaile Griciute (prepared piano), Jérôme Noetinger (tape machine), Michael Vatcher (drums), and Simon Whetham (field recordings). […]