Slotmachine | Kuhzunft (Achim Zepezauer)

 

Slotmachine | Kuhzunft (Achim Zepezauer)
Gruen 186 | 10“ Vinyl + Digital > [order]
Reviews

 

The „Kuhzunft-slotmachine“ is a website-project, based on a picture of a crayon-painted slot machine. Clicking the start button activates the machine to randomly combine pre-produced recordings (of 45 seconds length) within three slots. Instead of typical fruits in the display, you would see photos attached to the specific sounds by the artists responsible for the content. Even the names of the „songs“ are put together by the single names each artist had chosen for their recordings. The vinyl release on Gruenrekorder documents the project with a selection from 13 artists and 158 recordings, that offered a possibility of 3.944.312 tracks. The online-slotmachine has the ability to continuously grow and contains at the date of the vinyl release (February 1st, 2019) four more artists and a total of 225 recordings, providing some 11.390.625 possible titles. Visit slotmachine.kuhzunft.com to discover the project yourself. You can either simply press START and get surprised or deactivate AUTO PLAY to make a selection.

 

The vinyl features:

 

Jaap Blonk (NL) – Voice
John Chantler (AU) – Modular Synth
Serge Corteyn (DE) – Guitar
Rhodri Davies (GB) – Harp
Gailė Griciūtė (LT) – Prepared Piano
Richard Lerman (US) – Piezzo, Hydrophone
Seán Mac Erlaine (IE) – Woodwinds
Jérôme Noetinger (FR) – Tape Machine
Pablo Paredes (CL) – Keyboards
Michael Vatcher (US) – Drums
Simon Whetham (GB) – Field Recordings
Marta Zapparoli (IT) – Radio Waves
Achim Zepezauer (DE) – Drumcomputer, Electronics, Acoustics

 

The online slotmachine also features:

 

Émilie Girard-Charest (CN) – Cello
Florian Hartlieb (DE) – Computer
Bart Maris (BE) – Trumpet
Carolin Pook (DE/US) – Violin
Achim Zepezauer (DE) – Words

 

Pablo Paredes (CL) – Mastering
Guida Ribeiro (PT) – Website Developing

 


 

Excerpts:

 

Simon Whetham // Achim Zepezauer // Jérôme Noetinger
Cowshed Neck Rupture 00:48
MP3
John Chantler // Richard Lerman // Achim Zepezauer
High Tokyo-Bridge Road 00:47
MP3
Jaap Blonk // Seán Mac Erlaine // Gailė Griciūtė
Oh Melodica Come 00:47
MP3
Simon Whetham // Marta Zapparoli // Pablo Paredes
Rain Pipe Love-Story 00:45
MP3
Michael Vatcher // Rhodri Davies // Gailė Griciūtė
Raw Women Emerge 00:49
MP3
Achim Zepezauer // Serge Corteyn // Simon Whetham
Himmel Cushion Room 00:46
MP3

 

30 Tracks (24′00″)
10“ Vinyl (500 copies)

 


 

The project „slotmachine“ was kindly funded by:

 

Sound Art Series by Gruenrekorder
Germany / 2019 / Gruen 186 / LC 09488 / GEMA / EAN 193483182216

 


 

Reviews

 

Jaap Blonk: „I just listened to it and I really like it. Good job!“
Richard Lerman: „Looks and Sounds Great….And I won 10,000€ !“
Seán Mac Erlaine: „I kept trying but couldn’t find one combination that didn’t work amazingly well!!!“
NM in ElectronicSound: „Visit slotmachine.kuhzunft.com for hours of fun.“

 

— And now to something competely conceptual, a new way of interactive composition technique introduced by Achim Zepezauer and his Kuhzunft project which results in this 10″ to be released on the Gruenrekorder-imprint on February 1st, 2k19. All 30 – sic !!! – under one minute tracks on this one have been composed as a collage using a virtual slotmachine of sorts filled with 158 45 second recordings provided by a set of 13 different artists including the likes of Jaap Blonk, Jérôme Noetinger, John Chantler, Zepezauer himself and many more which are then randomly layered with the program to create a full blown collage of three simultaneously played tunes. The results are, despite way too short to be characterized as tracks, a kind of slightly chaotic set of miniatures, in parts fully experimental and hardly comprehensible, of seemingly electroacoustic nature, resembling bits that could’ve emerged from early experimental music labs like the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, getting into PostRock, Future DarkJazz or pure feedback driven areas or even touch Ambient and Lo(west)-Fi Electronics realms at times, providing a demanding, yet defo fascinating listening experience for die-hard fans of full-on experimentalism and conceptual novelty music. — Baze.DJunkiii for Nitestylez.de

 

— Achim Zepezauer collects 158 45-second recordings from artists as diverse as Rhodri Davies and Simon Whetham, and runs them through a Slotmachine. This is about as weird as it gets, a further expansion of Gruenrekorder, designed for the disorientation of Las Vegas‘ neon lights. — Richard Allen for A Closer Listen

 

CD TIPP: KUHZUNFT – Slotmachine | radio.friendsofalan.de
30 kurze Stücke und keines länger als 1 Minute. Miniaturen wenn man so will. Da dauert das lesen der Playlist mit den dazugehörigen wechselnden Besetzungen fast länger … Ein sehr kurzweiliges Vergnügen bei dem mir die 30 Minuten immer viel zu schnell vorbei sind. Höchst spannend wird hier in den unterschiedlichsten Besetzungen und Stilen musiziert und das ist ein Grund mehr um auf die Webseite zu gehen und diese Maschine in Gang zu setzen. Viel Vergnügen !
link

 

Duncan Simpson | Musique Machine
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. Improvising harpist Rhodri Davies pops up on several tracks including five in succession on side B and another titled Raw Women Emerge which has his freewheeling harp improvisations duelling with Michael Vatcher’s drums and the prepared piano of Gaile Griciute.

 

In truth there is virtually nothing here that you would say stands out as obviously put together through random processes, or that sounds out of place. It wouldn’t be a surprise to find out the record had been the intentional product of an improvising ensemble – which this group of artists could conceivably be – rather than the combination of numerous disparate fragments. That is undoubtedly due in part to the choice of contributors, all of who have history within the improvising and avant-garde scenes. In which case Zepezauer should be congratulated for in effect piecing together (with a little bit of help from lady indeterminacy) a pretty coherent twenty four minute avant-jazz album.

 

Perhaps a minor criticism would be that it’s not immediately clear who’s contributing to each 45 second combination. The credits are listed by artist and you have to go through them to find the relevant track numbers and piece it together that way. But may be having the sources easily accessible ruins the effect of just listening to each combination as it appears. While Jaap Blonk’s weird vocalisations might be recognisable to those in the know, many of the other contributions are not so apparent.

 

With the number of possible combinations now at over eleven million the website provides enough original composition material for a lifetime. It can be found at http://slotmachine.kuhzunft.com and is well worth a spin.
link

 

Aurelio Cianciotta | Neural
Kuhzunft-slotmachine is the brainchild of Achim Zepezauer, a musician, composer and organiser of events. It originated as a website project, focused on an image of a child-like slot machine, painted with pastel colours. Clicking on the start button elicits combinations of pre-recordings, each one lasting exactly 45 seconds and placed into three distinct slots. Instead of we the usual images of fruits, stars and bells, we have photos of the artists and the titles of tracks. This vinyl document, released by Gruenrekorder, includes only a selection of the possible recordings related to the different artists. In the online project, new contributions are added with some regularity, making a total of 225 recording and 11.390.625 possible configurations (in February 2019). Despite every single proposal being unique, the result is interesting because it brings us to a common free improvisatory approach. A careful listening approach makes it possible to perceive the connection of different elements and free structures within every specific sound particle, deriving from an inspiration oriented by additional crossings and relations. It’s not the first time Achim Zepezauer makes experiments with unconventional formats; for example, in the past he has worked with radio shows using aleatory characteristics and multidisciplinary contents. Thanks also to an artistic study background, this work can be considered versatile, because it shows his many-sided talents, his passion for drawing, his free form music work, his teenage compulsion as a sound collector and his stochastic conceptualism. Due to the large amount of contributions, the range of stylistic influences are very broad, from free jazz to ambient, from spacey electronics to krautrock, to mention only the more recurrent and recognizable approaches. When we look up the list of the artists engaged with the project, we find some well known names: Jaap Blonk, with his inimitable voice; then Simon Whetham, a field recordings specialist; Jérôme Noetinger from Metamkine; the radio waves experimenter Marta Zapparoli; and John Chantler, here with his synths and refined contemporary lyricism. The substance is great and the listening combinations are extremely varied.
link

 

Ed Pinsent | The Sound Projector
Three Bells in a Row
An enjoyable spin is Slotmachine (GRUENREKORDER Gruen 186), a ten-inch vinyl record credited to Kuhzunft who is in fact the multi-media artist Achim Zepezauer. He appears here with a large number of guest musicians, supplying all manner of sound art, noise, electronic interventions and conventional musical accompaniment, in duo or trio combinations; in some cases, Zepezauer doesn’t even appear on the track, but when he does he’s playing electronics and drum computer.

 

The next thing to note is that each track is timed at less than a minute, generally aiming I think for the 45-second mark; there are 30 tracks on this 10-inch LP, and in terms of durational minimalism this one ups the ante on The Residents Commercial Album, still for me the benchmark of this sort of exercise with its precisely-configured 60-second tracks. The guest musicians include a lot of our friends and favourites, such as Simon Whetham, John Chantler, Jerome Noetinger, and even Rhodri Davies, the Welsh emperor of post-modern harp improvisation. There are also numerous turns by Jaap Blonk, that zany Dutch vocalist, lending his penchant for absurdity to the high-jinks captured on vinyl. I should say there is evidently a large “fun” aspect to Slotmachine, as evidenced by the Dadaist titles such as ‘Weird PTK Machines’, ‘Ghostly Fireworks Scratch’, or ‘Long Hoghorn Commercials’ – these titles are typically three-word salads, and they echo the wacky aliases chosen by the guest musicians for these let-your-hair-down styled contributions.

 

Even this isn’t the whole picture, though. If you want to get the full-on random experience of Slotmachine, you need to spend some time on Kuhzunft’s interactive website, where you can create your own three-track combinations from the base resource of 158 separate recordings, and generate your own bag of pick-and-mix sweeties for 45 seconds of playful fun. To put it another way, this LP release sets in stone just 30 possible combinations out of a possible one billion. Zepezauer has a fascinating CV in fine art activities which includes film-making, paintings, a radio show, as well as his own electronic music performances; and he seems to have been preoccupied with vinyl records from an early age, hence this “virtual jukebox” high-concept idea. Even more intriguing is his “Cardtalk” project, a record player made of cardboard (???) which can play CDs with sounds carved into them. From 18th December 2018.
link

 

MOS2000 | hifi-forum.de
Jetzt wird es etwas komplizierter – das hier ist keine einfache 10″-Vinyl – es ist Teil eines Kunstprojektes, bei dem man durch die Kombination von jeweils 3 „Musik-/Geräuschfetzen“ jeweils einen Track erzeugt. Auf der 10″ finden sich 30 Tracks aus dieser „Slotmachine“, welche seitdem noch gewachsen ist und inzwischen 225 Tracks enthält und damit eine theoretische Kombination von > 11 Millionen Varianten zuläßt. Die Scheibe selbst ist eine kleine „Dokumentation“ aus der Gesamtmenge. Der Typ selbst macht jede Menge kranken Sch**ß mit Audio-Artefakten und Installationen die irgendwie was zum klingen bringen – sowas muss man unterstützen – mal bei den Links unten reinklicken, diese „cardtalk“ Sache ist echt crazy. Kreativ…
www.slotmachine.kuhzunft.com
www.kuhzunft.com
www.kuhzunft.com/cardtalk.html
www.discogs.com/Achim-Zepezauer-Slotmachine

 

baze.djunkiii | nitestylez.de
And now to something completely conceptual, a new way of interactive composition technique introduced by Achim Zepezauer and his Kuhzunft project which results in this 10″ to be released on the Gruenrekorder-imprint on February 1st, 2k19. All 30 – sic !!! – under one minute tracks on this one have been composed as a collage using a virtual slotmachine of sorts filled with 158 45 second recordings provided by a set of 13 different artists including the likes of Jaap Blonk, Jerome Noetinger, John Chantler, Zepezauer himself and many more which are then randomly layered with the program to create a full blown collage of three simultaneously played tunes. The results are, despite way too short to be characterized as tracks, a kind of slightly chaotic set of miniatures, in parts fully experimental and hardly comprehensible, of seemingly electroacoustic nature, resembling bits that could’ve emerged from early experimental music labs like the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, getting into PostRock, Future DarkJazz or pure feedback driven areas or even touch Ambient and Lo(west)-Fi Electronica realms at times, providing a demanding, yet defo fascinating listening experience for die-hard fans of full-on experimentalism and conceptual novelty music.
link

 

Stuart Bruce | Chain D.L.K.
Thirty tracks on a 24-minute, 10” release is not a misprint- although in principle it’s 90 tracks, in a way. Thirteen different artists have collectively offered up 90 sonic ideas, all given single-word names and all but one of them between 45 and 50 seconds long, and Achim Zepezauer as Kuhzunft has grouped them together into packages of three layers that are run concurrently, each package forming one of the 30 named tracks. It’s claimed that this is completely random- hence the slot machine theme- but at times you do suspect that a bit of curation or pre-planning has taken place, on the grounds that some of the tracks work very well together.

 

The sonic packages include some more traditional instrumentation- piano, harp, guitar, keyboard, and so on- and some truly leftfield elements involving warped found sounds, electronics and post-processing.

 

Notable results include the nicely mellow and buddly “Pearleaf Ploff Colorida”, the slightly Planet Mu-ish “Loving Coffee-Chirps Invasion” and the dark prog-rock-ish “Cry Come-out Flying”. “Lucky Godly Mantra” certainly sounds like an avantgarde trio that were performing in the same room, though I can believe (just about) that it wasn’t.

 

Others, like “Rain Pipe Love-Story” with its harsh piano and glitch-meets-rain sounds or “Deadline Planing Port”, are more abrasive clashes of ideas where the less-than-a-minute running time is probably a form of mercy.

 

It’s a quirky concept that seems to put both some of the fun and some of the genuine experimenting back into experimental music, and yields an interesting and frequently but not wholly successful set of results.

 

The idea of mashing together three words also brings to mind the what3words navigation concept, leaving me wondering whether any of these three sets of titles might accidentally (or perhaps deliberately!) point to a specific area on the surface of our planet. Later, if I get time, I’ll check…

 

UPDATE: After posting this review I was contacted by the artist, who pointed out that while the 10″ release is not random, there is a website where several hundred of these short sonic layers have been collected, and you get the chance to listen to genuinely random overlapping elements over there, with many thousands of possible combinations. The 10″ documents the website, I’m told, and not the other way around.
link

 

Brian Morton | The Wire Magazine (The Wire 421)
Achim Zepezauer is a relatively recent member of German ensemble The Dorf, the most interesting big band in Europe. His electronics are always vividly detailed and atmospheric, but their most striking characteristic is how neatly and they fit into the band’s sprawlingly exuberant aesthetic.
The is something different, a programme of 30 collaborative pieces, all of them approximately three quarters of a minute in length, programmed into an online ’slot machine‘ that allows the user to play simultaneous combinations of three. It’s compelling stuff and could become a dangerous habit. Zepezauer has assembled a network of collaborators, including sound poet Jaap Blonk, woodwind master Seán Mac Erlaine, harpist Rhodri Davies and drummer Michael Vatcher (just the best known of the dozen participants) to create the basic sounds and textures. Track titles are derived from the musicians’ own labelling: hence „Chicago Glysophat Cheeks“ which sounds like the reviving of a dysfunctional garage band, „Raw Women Emerge“ which is plinky strings and drum rolls, and „Wheezychords Instead Trioledad“, a minxy backbeat over what sounds like cracklebox and organ.
The sound library effect is sometimes mitigated by something that sounds like it might be fighting its way towards a song, like „Hoppla Drum Schlepp“, but it doesn’t make more than fleeting sense to think of these tracks in isolation. It’s when the barrels start to spin and they come together in ever more exotic combinations that the project begins to fly. Zepezauer has a great sense of humour. His various Knu! projects, including 2015’s brilliant My Horse Doesn’t Give A Shit (which is like a punk Brötzmann trio or Mats Gustafsson at his most unhinged) always leave a smile on the face, and not just because of the funny titles and covers. Zepezauer takes a palpable exuberance to his manipulations. They may not make a damned bit of musical sense, but they’re endlessly – in this case literally endlessly – entertaining.
link

 

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. […]

 

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).

 

Randomly combining three separately recorded tracks naturally produces wild and sometimes chaotic results, and the album’s twenty-four minutes go by fast. Imagine experimental vignettes whirring, snuffling, and convulsing with electronics, drums, mangled vocal effects, and acoustic string instruments and sporting titles such as “Cowshed Neck Rupture,” “Ghostly Fireworks Scratch,” “Rain Pipe Love-Story,” and “Pearleaf Ploff Colorida” and you’ll have a fairly good idea of what you’re in for. Predictably, the results are more defensible on conceptual than musical grounds, but Zepezauer’s irreverent project does possess some weird kind of charm and is, at the very least, an amusing diversion. For the maximum slotmachine experience, go with the online option, as it puts the user fully in the driver’s seat in allowing the different recorded snippets to be scrolled through and a seemingly unending series of trio combinations generated.
link

 

Robert Barry | The Wire Magazine (The Wire 420)
Article – Kuhzunft (Achim Zepezauer)

 

SLOTMACHINE special track bei the WIRE
Hear an exclusive mix from Achim Zepezauer’s Slotmachine

 

Łukasz Komła | Nowamuzyka.pl
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.

 

„Slotmachine” od początku jest projektem bazującym na świetnie pomyślanej stronie internetowej: www.slotmachine.kuhzunft.com, która przypomina automat do gry, gdzie zamiast układania owoców w jednej linii, układamy fragmenty różnych utworów przygotowanych przez rozmaitych muzyków. Koniecznie odwiedźcie tę stronę.

 

W tym toku przedsięwzięcie Zepezauera nabrało fizycznej mocy i wyszło na 10-calowym winylu. Na płycie mamy nagrania trzynastu artystów takich jak Jaap Blonk, John Chantler, Serge Corteyn, Rhodri Davies, Gailė Griciūtė, Richard Lerman, Seán Mac Erlaine, Jérôme Noetinger, Pablo Paredes, Michael Vatcher, Simon Whetham, Marta Zapparoli, Achim Zepezauer, Émilie Girard-Charest, Florian Hartlieb, Bart Maris i Carolin Pook. W wersji online „Slotmachine” cały czas się rozwija, złącza tej maszyny nie rdzewieją, wręcz przeciwnie – powiększa się zakres wygenerowanych kombinacji. Na dzień premiery albumu, czyli 1 lutego 2019 r., dostępna ilość tytułów do uzyskania na stronie internetowej projektu, wynosiła: 11.390.625.

 

„Slotmachine” od strony muzycznej to niczym nieskrępowany kolaż fundujący naszej wyobraźni podróż po chromatycznej krainie zgiełku, ciszy i abstrakcji.
link

 

Frans de Waard | VITAL WEEKLY
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. Every artist provides at least ten tracks to generate from, which leads to the theoretical possibility of 1 billion different combinations. Even the names of the songs are put together by the single names the artists had chosen for their recordings.“ Yes, that idea is a great one; I mean such a website. I checked it out in Chrome but got no sound and in Safari it didn’t load very well. I was going to write something along the lines whether it was really necessary to document such a thing (other than the hipness of doing it on vinyl), but it seems it is necessary. The record has quite some random approaches but it works out quite well. Seeing many familiar names from the world of improvisation this is of course nothing weird (Jaap Blonk, John Chantler, Jerome Noetinger, Michael Vatcher, Simon Whetham) and there is a nice anything goes (times a billion apparently) attitude in these pieces, but I remain a bit sceptical about the whole necessity of documenting website onto vinyl. If you like to be lazy and like a bit of free improvisation, noise, spoken word in short fragments of thirty/forty-five minutes than this surely is the thing you want.
link

 

Kuhzunft (Achim Zepezauer) | Slotmachine @ Radio Panik – Indiedrome
& Daniel Blumin: www.wfmu.org/playlists/shows/83968
& Andrew Backhouse: The Parish News – One-Hundred and Twenty-Eighth Edition

 

Holger Adam | testcard
Draußen vor der Tür: Field-Recordings und Sound-Art von Gruenrekorder
Gruen, gruen, gruen sind alle meine Farben – bereits zum dritten Mal in Folge eine Gruenrekorder-Kolumne in testcard. Wie immer kommt man aus dem Staunen nicht heraus, wenn man sich die Veröffentlichungen des Frankfurter Labels anhört. Unerschrocken und ohne mit der Wimper zu zucken haben sie die Geräusche von laufenden Filmprojektoren auf Vinyl gepresst: Sounds Of The Projection Box heißt das Album von MICHAEL LIGHTBORNE und es dokumentiert das Rattern der Maschinen, deren Geräusche üblicherweise nicht aus der Kabine von Filmvorführern hinaus dringen. Geräusche, die vom Aussterben bedroht sind, weil Filme ja mehr und mehr digital an Lichtspielhäuser übermittelt und dort abgespielt werden. Insofern wird hier akustisches Kulturerbe archiviert, und wer die Platte auflegt, kann sich bei geschlossenen Augen in die Rolle des Filmvorführers imaginieren und zusätzlich versuchen, den Tonspuren bzw. -fetzen der ablaufenden Filme ein zusätzliches Narrativ abzuringen. Ähnlich abenteuerlich auch die Aufnahmen von GREGORY BÜTTNER, der für Voll.Halb.Langsam.Halt die Fahrt eines alten Dampfschiffes, eines Eisbrechers dokumentierte, bearbeitete und sein Vorgehen sowie das Ergebnis wie folgt kommentiert: „I had the chance to take a trip on the ship from Rostock to Rügen over the Baltic Sea in 2010. The body of the ship is completely built from metal, so it is a big resonant room which sounds very different on each spot which I put my contact mics on (I used two contact mics, so I could record in stereo). I walked around the ship, placing my mics on different areas of the ship and also directly on parts of the steam engine, which is still fired by coal. For the composition I only used the pure recordings without additional sound manipulations, only juxtapositions, transitions and cuts.” Alles klar? Der Kahn bzw. das, was Büttner aus seinen Geräuschen macht, kann locker mit Merzbow mithalten. Harter Stoff. Metallisch kühl, aber weniger krachend klingt auch Gasworks von GERALD FIEBIG feat. EMERGE & CHRISTIAN Z. MÜLLER. Der Ort als Resonanzkörper für Geräusche bildet das Ausgangsmaterial für diese CD. Entsprechend räumlich ist in der Tat viel von dem, was es zu hören gibt, organisiert: Echo und Hall spielen eine große Rolle im Klangbild – aber auch eine dialekt-gefärbte Stimme, die von der industriellen Nutzung des Gebäudes erzählt, kommt, ergänzt um Geräusche, zu Wort. So entsteht für das Gaswerk von Augsburg-Oberhausen ein Denkmal. Der gleichermaßen verspielte und dokumentarische Charakter der musikalischen Arbeiten verwandelt den frühindustriellen Arbeitsalltag in eine geisterhafte Klangreise: „Des gibt’s heut‘ nimmer.“ Bemerkenswert. Maschinenmusik ist auch auf der Slotmachine-10“ versammelt, einem Projekt von ACHIM ZEPEZAUER, der von unterschiedlichen Musiker*innen jeweils 45 Sekunden lange Klangskizzen anfertigen ließ, die in der Logik eines Spielautomaten und nach Zufallsprinzip geleichzeitig aufgerufen werden können. Realisiert ist das im Rahmen einer Online-Anwendung, die das Bedienen eines virtuellen Spielautomaten zur Erzeugung der Zufalls-Kompositionen zugänglich macht, hier: http://slotmachine.kuhzunft.com. Viel Spaß! (Die 10“ dokumentiert nur einen kleinen Teil der gewissermaßen unendlichen Kombinationsmöglichkeiten.) Auch KATHARINA KLEMENT liefert mit Peripheries, einem akustischen Portrait der Stadt Belgrad, eine quirlig-nervöse und herausfordernde Arbeit ab. Unter Zuhilfenahme des Stadtplans erstellte Klement eine kartographisch inspirierte Partitur. Verschiedene Lokalitäten in der Stadt wurden aufgezeichnet und ineinander gemischt. So entsteht ein wahres Klang-Gewimmel, das beizeiten wirklich anstrengend sein kann. Ich empfehle nach Selbstversuch folgendes: Die Aufnahmen auf dem Balkon abspielen und die Balkontüre offenlassen, während man im Zimmer bleibt. So entsteht der Eindruck, draußen sei Belgrad! Bei der Gelegenheit gebe ich gerne zu, dass mir im Zweifel die eher ruhigen Aufnahmen aus tropischen Gefilden lieber sind. F. Guyana von MARC NAMBLARD hilft sich vom Stress in Belgrad zu erholen. Allerlei hypnotisches Summen, Surren und Dröhnen der Flora und Fauna von der Nordküste Südamerikas! Auch DAVID ROTHENBERG hat wieder mit allerlei Vögeln Musik gemacht und sich für Nightingale Cities auch zusätzliche menschliche Instrumentalist*innen dazu geholt. Die in Berlin und Helsinki angefertigten Aufnahmen gehören sicherlich zum zugänglichsten Material in dieser Kolumne, die Vögel sind freundliche Wesen, die Musik ist es auch. Wer noch nie eine Gruenrekorder-Produktion gehört hat, kann vielleicht auf diesem Weg einen sanften Einstieg in den Katalog des Labels finden. Frühlingsmusik. Ganz anders und noch besser: die Windharfen-Aufnahmen auf Path Of The Wind von EISUKE YANAGISAWA. Windharfen, große Saiteninstrumente in die Brise gestellt, werden buchstäblich von der Natur gespielt und je nachdem, wo die Windharfen standen mischen sich unterschiedliche Umgebungsgeräusche unter die betörenden Klänge der Instrumente. Ambient Drone mit Seemöve. Minimal Music mit Meeresrauschen. Näher an New Age Klanglandschaften waren Gruenrekorder vielleicht nie, und es schadet nicht: Absolutes Highlight! Das Meer rauscht auch auf De Rerum Natura / Dance of the Elements von MERZOUGA, die nichts geringeres als eine Komposition auf Grundlage des Lehrgedichtes von Lucretius‘ wagen. Soweit so ambitioniert, aber da muss man sich nicht abschrecken lassen. Musik ist immer Ausdruck von Ideen, hier eben einer dezidiert philosophischen. Und elektronische Musik eignet sich auch nicht erst seit gestern, zur Verdeutlichung, mithin Vermittlung abstrakter Vorstellungen. Und so knistert es kleinteilig, die Atome tanzen unsichtbar aus den Lautsprechern, eine Stimme flüstert hier und da Versatzstücke in englischer und lateinischer aus dem Gedicht usw. – ein kurzeiliges, abwechslungsreiches und durchaus spannendes Hörerlebnis, das dem Überbau entsprechen mag; letztlich aber spielt es zum Genuss der Komposition keine entscheidende Rolle, würde ich meinen. Ähnlich gelagert ist es womöglich im Fall von The Secret Life of the Inaudible von ANNEA LOCKWOOD und CHRISTINA KUBISCH anzuhören. Die beiden Klangkünstlerinnen haben sich Soundfiles von an sich bzw. für Menschen nicht hörbaren geophysikalischen Phänomenen zur gegenseitigen Bearbeitung vorgelegt: elektromagnetische Wellen, Ultraschallwellen, Sonnenwinde… akustische Ereignisse also, die zunächst technisch in eine für das menschliche Ohr hörbaren Frequenzbereich überführt werden müssen und von Kubisch und Lockwood bearbeitet wurden, und die dann – wie auch immer das im Detail von Statten ging – daraus sozusagen dunkle Materie gewannen. Mich würde einmal interessieren, inwiefern, das geologisch-kosmische Quellenmaterial, wo es ohnehin in den hörbaren Bereich übersetzt und also synthetisiert werden muss, nicht auch anders, also mit weniger Aufwand, generiert werden könnte? Ich nehme behelfsweise an, es wäre nicht dasselbe! Wie dem auch sei, das Ergebnis fasziniert: Sunn O))) – Kindergarten dagegen. Finster dräuende, pechschwarze Klangflächen. Wahrhaft infernalische Musik aus dem Reich des sonst Nichtwahrnehmbaren. Hervorragend.
link