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Perifaerye | Jorn Ebner – English

Perifaerye | Jorn Ebner

Perifaerye | Jorn Ebner
English | Deutsch
Gruen 219 | Vinyl (+ Digital) | Digital > [order]
Reviews

Perifaerye is a multi-part work of art comprising of 18 soundscapes, 36 digital drawings and 24 writings. Perifaerye is at once a record release, a book, a website; in the autumn of 2023 a series of playlists were published on billboards, linking the online soundscapes to the real-life physical realm. This publication is an artistic hybrid: a vinyl record / book combining sound, image and text.

The 18 audio works condense the sounds of the urban periphery into a sonic cartography. In Hamburg-Eidelstedt, people live in smaller detached houses and in larger apartment blocks. New housing estates have been developed recently in direct neighbourhood to the motorway, and currently in the district centre; a district where post-war housing estates and architectural remnants from a village past co-exist. Even meadows and fields, surrounded by the noise of motorways and other traffic, aeroplanes (the airport is close by) and railways (passenger and und freight trains, long distance, regional and local services). This collection of soundscapes – each a short composition on its own – presents a sonic portrait of a contemporary urban area.

In the spring 2023, Jorn Ebner recorded the urban spaces of the Hamburg district of Eidelstedt. For each audio piece there is an image. The artist’s writings reflect and accompany the creative process.

For this book and record, Sebastian Kokus and Thomas Korf created a very haptic design. Each part of the whole can be experienced as a single piece: the A2-sized poster is part of the outer sleeve; the booklet presents image and text (German only); the record is visible through the holes in the inner and outer sleeves and forms part of the cover.

The work was funded by the Freie und Hansestadt Hamburg, Behörde für Kultur und Medien

Tracklist

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18 Tracks (34’35’‘)
Vinyl (300 copies)

Booklet, 24 pages (incl. cover)
Vinyl-LP, with printed outer and inner sleeve
Poster, A2

Recorded in Hamburg Eidelstedt Februar-April 2023
Edited & mixed in Berlin Kreuzberg Mai-Juni 2023
Mastering Manmade Mastering, Berlin
Design T.E.O.T.H.
Drawings and writings Jorn Ebner
Fantôme Verlag, Vol. 80 / ISBN 978-3-940999-60-3

Soundscape Series by Gruenrekorder
Germany / 2023 / Gruen 219 / LC 09488

Reviews

textura
Bless Gruenrekorder’s ever-beating experimental heart. The German company has never strayed from supporting unusual projects, and its latest Soundscape Series releases are quintessential exemplars of the label’s vision. Issued on a gorgeous slab of purple vinyl (a 300-copy edition), Perifaerye is built around soundscape recordings Berliner Jorn Ebner collected in spring 2023 of urban spaces in the Hamburg district of Eidelstedt and is presented as a multi-part work comprising audio, images, and text. The cassette release Gold Lines (200 copies), on the other hand, is the brainchild of Paris-based DinahBird and Jean-Philippe Renoult and presents recordings of Super High Frequency radio waves, signal noise, and field recordings. The material collected by the sound artists between 2016 and 2020 originated from antenna bases from Chicago to New York and London to Frankfurt. Both releases (also available, of course, digitally) are uncompromising in their sound presentation, but they’re also engaging and thought-provoking.

Perifaerye is a striking physical product that augments its eighteen action-packed soundscapes with thirty-six drawings, twenty-four texts (the latter displayed in German only), and a fold-out poster (a web site was also created that links online soundscapes to their real-world counterparts). Eighteen images appear in the booklet and eighteen on the sleeve housing the vinyl disc. Ebner produced the drawings and texts; as stated, the thirty-six minutes of audio were captured by him from urban areas within Hamburg-Eidelstedt. Those with no command of German will have little clue as to how text and image connect; even in the absence of such clarity, the project is still fascinating to look at and listen to.

As eye-catching as the visual pieces are, the audio component is the primary aspect. Collectively a sound portrait of a particular urban zone containing small detached homes and apartment buildings, the material blends the sounds of humans and industrial phenomena, from the locale’s people and cars to airplanes and trains, into eighteen mini-collages. They’re not undoctored field recordings, by the way. Ebner’s shaped the material into compositions by sometimes assembling elements into metronomic rhythmic structures and by repeating fragments, moves that strangely give a number of these abstract entities an almost pop song-like form. Mangled chatter and laughter, the hydraulic noise of writhing machines, twittering birds, the violent cawing of crows, the clip-clop of horse hooves, burbling water, typewriter clacks, audience applause, worksite hammering, the shriek of a passing train—all such bits coalesce to form a vivid evocation of an urban centre where residents and workers go about their daily lives. […]
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Rigobert Dittmann | Bad Alchemy Magazin (122)
Auch JORN EBNER war mal in Venedig („Venetian 3“, 7“, 2010). Mit Perifaerye (Gruen 219, LP w/24 p booklet + poster) als urbaner Plunderphonie in 18 Facetten führt der 1966 in Bremerhaven geborene Klang-Bild-Text-Künstler nach Hamburg-Eidelstedt. Stichworte wie ‚Specht‘, ‚Skulptur‘, ‚Glaswände‘, ‚An der Mühlenau‘, ‚Zement‘, ‚Pflugacker, ‚Plattenladen‘, ‚Feldmark‘ verraten die Mixtur aus Wohnblocks, Einfamilienhäusern, dörflichen Resten und sogar Weideland jenseits der A23. Mit Klopfen und Klappern, Stimmengewirr, Spatzenpieps, Amselflöt, Krähenkrah, repetitiven Sequenzen, Lärm in Loops und verhackstückt, dem Sound der Mühlenau, von Regentropfen, Zuglärm, Fußball, Pferdehufen, die Sekunden klacken. Viele der gerne etwas rhythmisierten Geräusche bleiben an den verschliffenen Rändern der Lautwelt unkenntlich. Und die Vögel pfeifen auf alles. [BA 122 rbd]
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