PURPLE TRAP, the powerful trio of KEIJI HAINO (voice, guitar), BILL LASWELL on bass and RASHIED ALI (drums), recorded live on stage at The Stone.
Recorded in december 2005, this furious live album by what can easily be called a super group remained unreleased till in 2023 BILL LASWELL made it accessible in a rough-mixed digital version for his bandcamp subscribers program exclusively. For this vinyl version, the music has been newly mixed by DIRK DRESSELHAUS (SchneiderTM) and mastered / cut by RUY MARINÉ at Dubplates & Mastering Berlin. PURPLE TRAP, the trio of LASWELL / HAINO / ALI, reunited for this one-off gig as part of a 5-day-HAINO-festival at John Zorn’s venue „The Stone“, seven years after its only album Decided … Already The Motionless Heart Of Tranquility, Tangling The Prayer Called „I“ had been recorded (released on Tzadik in 1999). The six untitled tracks (+ one as digital bonus) deliver what can be expected from such musical masters: RASHIED ALI, iconic free jazz drummer who played with JOHN and ALICE COLTRANE, PHAROAH SANDERS, SONNY ROLLINS, JAMES BLOOD ULMER and countless more, is all drums, from quiet tiny sounds to high-energy rhythm patterns. KEIJI HAINO, one of the most prolific artists of the Japanese experimental / noise scene for almost 50 years now, switches between truculent guitar splatters and full-on psychedelic outbursts. BILL LASWELL, who as producer and musician created a massive body of work in fiields as diverse as ambient, world music, funk, jazz (and often hybrids of these), has proven his mastery in improvisation in projects like MASSACRE, PAINKILLER or (early) MATERIAL and provides the low-end grounding with his signicature bass sound, or adds effect-laden ornaments to the whole.
An overdue addition to a very small body of work by a clearly under-documented supergroup!
Tracklist: A1. The Stone, part I A2. The Stone, part II A3. The Stone, part III B1. The Stone, part IV B2. The Stone, part V B3. The Stone, part VI (digital bonus track) B4. The Stone, part VII
Credits: KEIJI HAINO: voice, guitar BILL LASWELL: bass RASHIED ALI: drums Recorded at The Stone, New York, december 15th, 2005. Edited by James Dellatacoma at Orange Music, West Orange, NJ. Mixed by Dirk Dresselhaus at the Zone, Berlin. Mastered & cut by Ruy Mariné at D&M, Berlin. Layout & design by kaidoh. Cover photography by Jasmin Bär.
For the first time a full album with recordings based on YOKO ONO’s 1964 collection of texts, event scores and drawings “Grapefruit”, a foundational cornerstone of what became known as conceptual art, and enveloping the orbits of Fluxus and experimental music. Performed by THE GREAT LEARNING ORCHESTRA which has during the 25 years of its existence worked with GAVIN BRYARS, TERRY RILEY, PAULINE OLIVEROS, J.G. THIRLWELL, ARNOLD DREYBLATT a.o.
Originally self-published in 1964 in a limited edition of 500 copies under YOKO ONO’s own imprint, Wunternaum Press, and later reprinted in expanded editions, the collection of over 230 texts, event scores and drawings that comprise “Grapefruit” has long been considered a foundational text in what became known as Conceptual Art, and envelops the orbit of Fluxus and experimental music. Though comparisons to JOHN CAGE may seem obvious, ONO’s first attempts at textual composition actually pre-date her first encounter with the American composer by around a decade and have evolved free from CAGE’s influence. Another factor that sets these scores apart from associated forms of verbal notation from the same period (like LA MONTE YOUNG’s “An Anthology Of Chance Operations” – with a contribution from ONO – or GEORGE BRECHT’s “Water Yam”, both from 1963) is ONO’s ambivalence towards the necessity, or even possibility, of their physical realization – instead the idea being that the realization should take place in the mind of the reader (“Music of the Mind” is also the title of the current traveling exhibition which opened at Tate Modern, London in 2024). However, a number of pieces from “Grapefruit” function very well as performance or event scores, with several of them becoming mainstays of ONO’s concerts and performances throughout the early to mid 1960s. But hardly any performances have been recorded and released on disc (one notable exception being SONIC YOUTH’s recording of “Voice Piece For Soprano”) – so, 60 years after “Grapefruit” first appeared, “Selected Recordings From Grapefruit” is the very first full album of pieces selected from the many sections of the book. The sonic realizations presented here are of a number of different kinds, encompassing studio-based ensemble performances, but also location, environmental and field recordings (and at times combinations of these), as the scores themselves dictate, and for the most part recorded live and acoustically, such that the performances, actions, situations and environments that you hear are real. The accompanying booklet with rare performance photos and some original typewritten scores from ONO’s personal archive also includes the text instructions for each piece – thus allowing the listener to make a connection between the imaginative engagement and creative activity executed by the performing members of THE GREAT LEARNING ORCHESTRA and the resulting recording.
With 20 tracks and approx. 85 minutes duration, “Selected Recordings From Grapefruit” finally brings to ear some of the most important and influential 20th century avantgarde art!
Yoko Ono is an artist, musician, composer and peace activist, born in Tokyo, Japan in 1933. She was active with the international avant-garde music, art, and performance scenes of the early 1960s, organising a series of important events in her New York loft, also active in Tokyo and London, and later becoming a key figure within the Fluxus network of artists. Her 1964 book of instructions, drawings and texts Grapefruit, is regarded as a cornerstone of what became known as conceptual art. Her solo albums, including Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band (1970), Fly (1971) and Approximately Infinite Universe (1973) have proved to be highly influential on the emergence of punk, post-punk, new wave, noise and a wide range of later experimental popular musics. She has staged many high-profile campaigns to promote world peace, including the international WAR IS OVER! If you want it billboard campaign (1969), and the proclamation of the conceptual state of Nutopia (1973), in collaboration with John Lennon, and the IMAGINE PEACE TOWER, near Reykyavik, Iceland (2007). As an artist, she has exhibited at numerous galleries, museums and institutions internationally. In recent years, this has included a series of retrospective exhibitions, including “YES YOKO ONO” at Japan Society, New York (2001), “Yoko Ono: One Woman Show, 1960 – 1971” at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2015) and “Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind” at Tate Modern, London (2024).
The Great Learning Orchestra is an ensemble based in Stockholm, Sweden, which has been organising performances, workshops and events for 25 years. Essentially a network where musicians and artists come together to perform exploratory music, which centres around practices of listening. The ensemble is self-selecting from a list of over 100 musicians for each new project. The GLO was founded in 1999 by Leif Jordansson and Pelle Halvarsson and since its inception has performed a large variety of contemporary and experimental works. The group has worked with Gavin Bryars, Terry Riley and Pauline Oliveros, and in recent years has collaborated with and commissioned new work from J.G. Thirlwell, Arnold Dreyblatt, Christina Campanella and Leah Asher amongst others. Several musicians, composers and artists have also contributed to the A4 Project, which investigates the possibilities of scores written to fit on a single side of A4 paper. The orchestra’s name is derived from British composer Cornelius Cardew’s work The Great Learning, a large-scale experiment in social music making, and the ensemble is in many ways influenced by this legacy of openness, experimentation and participation.
Tracklist: CD1 / LP1 Secret Piece 13:56 City Piece 8:11 Pieces for Orchestra No. 1: Peel 0:17 No. 2: Peek 0:44 No. 3: Take Off 0:39 Voice Piece for Soprano 0:23 Tape Piece II (Room Piece) 4:52 A Piece for Orchestra (Count all the stars . . .) 4:58 Water Piece 3:49 Clock Piece 2:16
Credits: All compositions by Yoko Ono Copyright by Yoko Ono 1964, 1970, renewed 1992, 1998 Produced by Robin McGinley Recorded, engineered, mixed and assembled by Ricardo Atienza, Niklas Billström, Robin McGinley and Leif Jordansson Mastering and lacquer cut by Kassian Troyer at D&M, Berlin Artwork concept by Thomas Herbst Layout and design by kaidoh
For her new and most radical album »Electroacoustic Works for Halldorophone«, Martina Bertoni used the electronic instrument at EMS Stockholm to create four pieces that are massive in scale and incredibly intimate, sonically restrained and emotionally overwhelming—almost ambient and always demanding your full attention.
Martina Bertoni returns to Karlrecords with »Electroacoustic Works for Halldorophone,« her most radical album yet. The foundation for the four electroacoustic pieces was laid during a residency at Stockholm’s legendary Elektronmusikstudion (EMS) that the Berlin-based cellist and composer used to explore the curious instrument, originally designed by Halldór Úlfarsson in 2008, as an algorithmic system in order to examine tunings and the mathematical relationships between harmonic frequencies. Aiming to analyse and understand their interaction beyond the composer’s control, Bertoni sought to engage more deeply with the concepts of time, tuning, and, most importantly, control. Accordingly, her four »Electroacoustic Works for Halldorophone« seem both massive in scale and incredibly intimate, sonically restrained and emotionally overwhelming—almost ambient and always demanding your full attention. While the halldorophone—famously used by Hildur Guðnadóttir for her »Joker« score—roughly resembles a cello and can be played like one, it is an electronic instrument. The vibration of its strings is being picked up, amplified, and then routed through a speaker. This creates a feedback loop that becomes increasingly complex depending on how much gain is added to individual strings. Úlfarsson gave Bertoni a carte blanche for how to handle the instrument, but she stresses that she relied on »minimal interventions—some string strumming and plucking« that set the interactions of different sounds and frequencies into motion. »I decided to not approach it like a cellist would,« she explains. »Instead I used it as a kind of generative organ by turning it into a feedback machine, with tuned feedback triggering more feedback depending on the tuning, which was based on tetraphonic scales that I could apply on the four main strings as well as the sympathetic group of strings.« Bertoni recorded the material in the EMS studio, later composing and arranging the four complex pieces in her home in Berlin, after which they were mixed and mastered by Ciaran O’Shea. While this can be considered a compositional abstraction process, traces of her concrete work as a performer are firmly ingrained in the music. »The halldorophone doesn’t have a line output, just a double set of speakers, which is why I recorded all sounds with two microphones in the EMS studio,« she explains. »That’s why there’s plenty of breathing sounds here and there—label owner Thomas Herbst and I jokingly refer to the album as my ›chamber music record‹.« And indeed, there is a striking sense of intimacy to these four pieces throughout which individual sounds, harmonic frequencies, and even subtle rhythmic figures seem to move both on their own accord but also according to a underlying vision that steers their interplay. Indeed, »Electroacoustic Works for Halldorophone« is an album built on and marked by contrasts. The soothing polylogue of single sounds in the higher register on opener »Omen in G« is counterpointed by massive bass drones, while the second piece, »Nominal in D,« plays a cunning game of repetition and difference by combining thick textures with all kinds of rhythmic elements. »Fades in C«—the longest of the four pieces, clocking in at 17 minutes—unlocks the emotional potentials of the sonic qualities of the halldorophone, sounding at once serene and anthemic, and »Organon in D« closes the album by underscoring how Bertoni’s unconventional approach allows her to seamlessly transform simple, quiet tones into complex, towering walls of sound. (Kristoffer Cornils)
Tracklist: A. nr. 1 – Omen in G B. nr. 2 – Nominal D C. nr. 3 – Fades in C D. nr. 4 – Organon in D
Credits: Halldorophone recorded at EMS Stockholm in November 2023 All music recorded, composed and produced by Martina Bertoni Mixed and mastered by Ciaran O’Shea Lacquer cut by Kassian Troyer at D&M, Berlin Cover Artwork by Gregory Cowling / Praxis Typography
Noise artist DAVID WALLRAF returns with his second album on Karl – “Crudeltá Necessaria” deals with the role of cruelty in the works of PIER PAOLO PASOLINI.
DAVID WALLRAF is a noise artist and theorist living in Hamburg. His artistic work deals with the repressed and uncanny sonic residues of quotidian life, crafting soundtracks for the creeping disaster we inhabit. His works have been released on numerous international tape labels. A recent interest of his is the live scoring of silent films, including works by Luis Buñuel, Maya Deren and Jean Genet. In the academic world, WALLRAF graduated with a BA in musicology at University of Hamburg, MA in time based media at Hochschule für bildende Künste, PhD on noise at HFBK, his PhD thesis “Grenzen des Hörens. Noise und die Akustik des Politischen” (Limits of Hearing. Noise and the Acoustics of the Political) has been published in German. He also regularly gives lectures on power relations in music, noise-theory, sound art/studies and the politics of listening. “Crudeltá Necessaria”, the follow-up to last year’s „The Commune Of Nightmares“, deals with the role of cruelty in the works of PIER PAOLO PASOLINI by blending noise, raw electronics and field recordings into a detailed dystopian sonic experience that „you don’t have to be afraid of“ (R. Mießner, taz). In the words of WALLRAF himself: „The world (another word for society) is cruel in a banal sense: unjust, brutal and segregating. Life under capitalism is the generalized and global form of this cruelty, organized by the logic of abstract labor and alienation. But cruelty also carries a different meaning, one that has resonated with a few artists of the 20th century who positioned themselves against the cruel banality of their times. Cruelty in the sense of mercilessness or remorselessness, both a realism and a necessary stance in a battle against an overly powerful enemy. Antonin Artaud’s conception of the theater of cruelty exemplifies this stance, an “appeal to cruelty and terror […] whose range probes our entire vitality, confronts us with all our possibilities” (The Theater and Cruelty). All our possibilities: an affirmation of radical difference. A similar posture, although it replaces Artaud’s mysticism with a communist viewpoint, can be found in the works of Pier Paolo Pasolini. Pasolini was a merciless analyst and critic of society under capitalist production. His answer to the banal brutality of capitalism was an artistic cruelty of his own design, a necessary cruelty which is evident in the films and texts that inspired these recordings. It is evident in the transformations and transitions of the novel-fragment Petrolio, it glares and screams from the screen in his films. You can hear it in the last and only words of the young cannibal in Porcile (“I killed my father. I ate human flesh. I quiver with joy.”), in Medea’s curse against Iason (“It’s useless! Nothing is possible anymore!”) and in the Sphinx’s desperate cry when murdered by Oedipus (“It’s useless! The abyss you’re throwing me in is in yourself!”). It gazes through the masks of mythological and historical settings. It is evident in the almost violent way Pasolini edited his films, a form of Verfremdungseffekt that exemplifies his remorseless stance towards his audience, the spectacle of the film industry, fascism and capitalistic society. This necessary cruelty serves as a last line of defense in the political and artistic struggle against societal and political pressure. With this release I hope to capture at least a fragment of this demeanor.”
Tracklist: A1 Porcile A2 È Inutile. Niente È Più Possibile, Ormai. A3 È Inutile. La Abisso In Cui Mi Spingi È Dentro Di Te. A4 Nuova Periferia B1 Petrolio
Credits: Recorded in Hamburg-Wilhelmsburg, 2023-2024. Sound design fragments from Pasolini’s films Edipo Re (1967), Porcile (1969) and Medea (1969) were recorded to ¼-inch tape loops and appear throughout these selections. Chanting on A1 recorded on Easter Sunday 2019 outside Karola Boromeusza church in Warsaw, Poland. Boars on A1 recorded in November 2022 in Hellenthal, Germany.
THE BURNING BRIGHT LIGHT is a mind-meld between improvisation trio DROMEDARIES (saxophonist Keir Neuringer of Irreversible Entanglements, Shayna Dulberger on double bass and percussionist Julius Masri) and sci-fi writer/vocalist ALEXOTERIC (Alex Smith), evoking epic sci-fi cinemascapes, vocabulary- and reference-rich underground writing, the liberatory jazz tradition, and playful avant-garde experimentation.
Recorded in a single high voltage burst of cosmic collaboration on an October afternoon at Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Soundworks, THE BURNING BRIGHT LIGHT is a sonic document like no other. A mind-meld between improvisation trio DROMEDARIES and sci-fi writer/vocalist ALEXOTERIC (Alex Smith), the album emerges organically on a foundation of speculative fiction, free jazz interaction, avant-garde textures, and freestyle refrains. With no rules set in advance, each participant brought their entire creativity to bear on a session that birthed a constellation of shimmering stories narrated through equally deep music and words. While it retains all the power and excitement of a spontaneous meeting, the album also reveals deep and atypical shared affinities that are simultaneously sonic, musical, social, political, and cosmic. A key figure in multiple Philadelphia arts subcultures, Smith’s literary voice is unlike any other, and on this recording he stretches his vocal acrobatics to their greatest extent yet. We hear references to grounded, earthly concerns and figures shot through the farthest reaches of spacetime, always with Smith’s incisive queer afrofuturist lens. Smith describes the album as „a future color spray, a hidden missive laser etched into the seams of your galactic multi-death cult corporation flight jacket, the snow fallen ash and embers of a world you can only view through a prism-powered holo-sim. Wild jazz, bad, fresh with no jive—the perfect script for the download digital age, transcending experimental musics through the solar battery at the bio-borg filling station. The anti-Boeing, proto-mothership, swinging the body eclectic, crash landing on a brass planet. Dromedaries are plugged in and transforming, delivering ancient spells like slam poetry on Cybertron.“ All of the music you hear was recorded in real time; for their part instrumentalists Shayna Dulberger, Julius Masri, and Keir Neuringer expanded their energetic, telepathic, playful mode of collective improvisation developed over the past decade together to both embrace Smith as a fourth and equal voice and elevate him as a sacred cosmic orator. The Burning Bright Light at once evokes epic sci-fi cinemascapes, vocabulary- and reference-rich underground writing, the liberatory jazz tradition, and playful avant-garde experimentation. Recording took place in October 2022 at Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Sound works (home to notable recent recordings from Sun Ra Arkestra and Irreversible Entanglements, among others) and was mixed there through 2023 by engineer Mike Richelle and Masri.
DROMEDARIES is a collaborative improvisation trio active since 2014 comprised of saxophonist Keir Neuringer (Irreversible Entanglements), Shayna Dulberger (Chaser; Warrior of Light) on double bass, and percussionist Julius Masri (Mephisto Halabi; Spectral Forces; Night Raids). They climb deep into their instruments and play hard to reward listeners for their time, grounding their work in technical virtuosity, instrumental physicality, and a rigorous approach to form. Each has received critical praise for their solo work and collaborations. DROMEDARIES has previously released studio recordings on Relative Pitch Records (2020) and Already Dead Tapes (2017), as well as a live recording released in 2021 by Fire Over Heaven.
ALEXOTERIC, aka Alex Smith (Spectral Forces; Solarized; Arkdust short story collection), is a Philadelphia artist and activist whose writing—from science fiction, to superhero comics, to music and art critique—delves into worlds often forgotten, inhabited by people often marginalized. His work as a critic has appeared on Bandcamp and Pitchfork, as well as in local press for Artblog, The Key, and Philadelphia Gay News, highlighting the strange worlds inhabited by gender, class and racial outliers. As does his fiction.
Tracklist: A1 The Burning Bright Light (the multitudes cannot contain me) 4:16 A2 A Brass Planet (cigarette break in the airlock) 13:46 A3 Subspace Lab Fiend (the duplicitous end of already nothing nowhere time) 4:51 B1 Hermes Majesty 3.0 Firmware Safe Injection Site (or how I learned to love the demiurge) 8:31 B2 Avant Jawn (dissection in the technoverse) 12:21
Musicians: ALEXOTERIC aka ALEX SMITH voice and texts SHAYNA DULBERGER double bass JULIUS MASRI drums and electronicsKEIR NEURINGER saxophone, synth, percussion
Credits: All music composed in real time by the artists Recorded October 1, 2022 at Rittenhouse Sound Works in Philadelphia by Mike Richelle Mixed by Mike Richelle and Julius Masri Produced by Julius Masri Mastering and vinyl cut by Ruy Mariné at D&M, Berlin Cover art „Ghetto / Griot Cyborg Jawn“ by Alex Smith This recording was supported by a grant from The University of the Arts in Philadelphia
DESCRIPTION: In his most recent solo release, “The Devil And The River: Volume One”, recorded live in his rural New Mexico studio, William Fowler Collins tremolo brushes his electric guitar using a calligraphy brush, playing a single chord with no overdubs to produce two compelling side-long pieces of music. Ever present are the minimalist widescreen reflections of the high desert environment in which he lives, with the two sides giving the impressions of a sun rising and then a sun setting over the vast and sparsely populated landscape. The music in the two pieces shifts dynamically from gentle and hypnotic to immense and resonant walls of drone, searing and overdriven. At times the music can suggest a collision between Terry Riley’s “Descending Moonshine Dervishes” and the loud, distorted, emotional abstractions of My Bloody Valentine. Collins first began to focus on performing this music on his 2022-23 European tours with Aaron Turner and Emma Ruth Rundle, respectively. The artwork here is done by Chris Bigg, renowned for his art and design work for the 4AD label.
QUOTES: “William Fowler Collins’s set… isan ethereal reprieve of understated cinematic drone… Though loud, the minimal wall of noise is gentle and allows another moment for quiet reflection while bathing in waves of feedback. “ Astral Noize review of Collins’ live set at Amplifest 2022, in Porto, Portugal.
“The music made by William Fowler Collins is sculptural, unwaveringly focused, and succeeds in being deeply evocative while utilizing only the most minimal sonic forms. Events arrive and recede in elemental and seismic fashion—seemingly created by natural forces rather than human hand. That said, William’s musical voice is compellingly distinct whether he is using his primary instrument of guitar, manipulating electronics and field recordings, or as a director in tandem with his collaborators. The potency of his compositions is built not only on the sounds he creates but within his admirable restraint and deeply affective use of space. It is music as much of absence as it is of presence.” Aaron Turner (SUMAC, SIGE Record
TRACKLIST:
A: The Church Steps In Montreuil 15:42 B: A Horse Head Within A Star 17:59
CREDITS: All music composed, performed and recorded live in one take by William Fowler Collinsin New Mexico, USA, 2023 Mastered by John Dieterich Art by Chris Bigg Design by William Fowler Collins
BIO: Based in rural New Mexico, William Fowler Collins (b.1974) is a composer, recording artist, and performer. His music extends across and beyond many genres (including modern classical, drone, minimalism, and free improvisation). Collins has released music on the SIGE, Type, Karl Records, Blackest Rainbow, Handmade Birds, Daymare, Sicksicksick, Tapeworm, and Root Strata labels. He also performs and records in the duo Mesa Ritual with Raven Chacon. Additionally, he has co-founded several collaborative projects including Thalassa with Aaron Turner (SUMAC, Isis), a duo with James Jackson Toth (Wooden Wand), and Summer of Seventeen (with Aaron Turner, Faith Coloccia, Monika Khot, Daniel Menche). Collins has also recorded/performed/collaborated/toured with Margarida Garcia, Monika Khot (Nordra) Johanna Hedva, Marshall Trammell (Music Research Strategies, Black Spirituals), Faith Coloccia (Mamiffer), John Dieterich (Deerhoof), Jeremy Barnes, Heather Trost, Maria Valentina Chirico, SUMAC, and Emma Ruth Rundle among others. Collins performs nationally and internationally, in both solo and group contexts. He is onSwamp Booking’s rosterfor European tours. For EU booking:giorgio@swampbooking.com In 2004 Collins graduated from Mills College with an MFA in Electronic Music and Recording Media.
“Friendly Electrons” presents the electronic side of the original TON STEINE SCHERBEN drummer, book author and longtime CONRAD SCHNITZLER friend / collaborator WOLFGANG SEIDEL.
Born in winter 1949 in a grey and gloomy post-war Berlin, WOLFGANG SEIDEL’s first encounter with electronic sounds was at the cinema: the music for “Forbidden Planet“ by LOUIS and BEBE BARRON sounded like the promise of a bright, exciting future … but in the 1960‘s, the biggest thing for young musicians was to play in a rock band, and as the friends around him all already played guitar, SEIDEL chose the drums and later co-founded TON STEINE SCHERBEN, the legendary German anarchist band. Around the same time, SEIDEL regularly attended the Zodiak Free Arts Lab, the birth place of so-called “Kosmische Musik / Berliner Schule“ (TANGERINE DREAM, CLUSTER, MANUEL GÖTTSCHING etc), and became close friends with CONRAD SCHNITZLER. Realizing how much more artistic freedom electronic music offers, he grew tired of playing the same songs night after night, left the band after their debut album had been released and started experimenting with contact microphones and tape delay (and later, when he could afford one, with a Buchla synthesizer). SEIDEL joined SCHNITZLER’s group ERUPTION and worked with him till his death in 2011 (sometimes credited as WOLF SEQUENZA) on several albums, and also toured some art institutions presenting SCHNITZLER’s “cassette concerts” (who had dropped his suitcases with the tape machines in front of SEIDEL’s flat door and appointed him the “future conductor”). In the 2000s, SEIDEL started playing drums again, this time in the free jazz / improv scene (a.o. others with ALFRED A. HARTH and HANS JOACHIM IRMLER), wrote books about his former band (“Scherben – Musik, Politik und Wirkung der Ton Steine Scherben“) and Krautrock („Wir müssen hier raus! Krautrock, Free Beat, Reeducation“) … and continued his sonic explorations with his Buchla in his studio in Berlin-Wedding. When we met at a birthday party, Wolfgang told me about his electronic pieces – I was interested right away – so he browsed his archive and sent me a selection of tracks. These are often based on older ideas and sketches that he had completed during the pandemic when there were no concerts to play. The result is „Friendly Electrons“ – a collection of 18 tracks, inspired by SCHNITZLER’s collage technique and SEIDEL’s own experiences with improvisation. With the exception of 2 pieces that are actually composed there were no fixed ideas – simply start from scratch and see what happens, review the result from different angles and refine the tracks where necessary. Whereas electronic music is often considered dystopian, the album title mirrors SEIDEL’s positive attitude towards modernism, so his electrons are of a friendly kind!
tracklist:
Battersea Power Plant
Escalator
Organic Music No.1
Try Harder
Film Noir
Feuerblume
Organic Music No.2
Otto Piene
Streets Of L.A
Art Space
ICC Berlin
EMS #1
Berna Yari
EMS #2
Lichtballett
No Repetition
Easy Easel
Shortwave Radi
credits: All music created, mixed & produced by Wolfgang Seidel Mastered by Ruy Mariné at D&M, Berlin Cover photo by Wolfgang Seidel Layout & design by kaidoh
A new piece by minimalist / experimental composer PHILL NIBLOCK (1933 – 2024), co-composed and performed by ANNA CLEMENTI & THOMAS STERN. Intense, menacing layers of thick drones and alien sounds.
In summer 2022, within just a few weeks and by pure coincidence, 2 proposals regarding PHILL NIBLOCK albums arrived: one suggesting an overdue vinyl reissue of a CD release (more on that when the time has come for it), the other email was from ANNA CLEMENTI saying she and THOMAS STERN were working on new pieces that PHILL NIBLOCK has written for her … when „Zound Delta 2“ was complete, PHILL sent photographs for the two artworks, we met twice to discuss details, but unfortunately he died unexpectedly early january this year so the album now is, sad as it is, a posthumous release … an intense goodbye from one of 20th century most iconic composers.
Phill Niblock Phill Niblock (1933-2024, USA) was an artist whose fifty-year career spans minimalist and experimental music, film and photography. Since 1985, he has served as director of Experimental Intermedia, a foundation for avant-garde music based in New York with a branch in Ghent, and curator of the foundation’s record label XI. Known for his thick, loud drones of music, Niblock’s signature sound is filled with microtones of instrumental timbres that generate many other tones in the performance space. In 2013, his diverse artistic career was the subject of a retrospective realised in partnership between Circuit (Contemporary Art Centre Lausanne) and Musée de l’Elysée. The following year Niblock was honoured with the prestigious Foundation for Contemporary Arts John Cage Award. https://phillniblock.com/
Anna Clementi Italian-Swedish singer Anna Clementi grew up in Rome, where she first studied the flute and completed acting training before moving to Berlin and studying experimental vocal music and experimental music theater with the composer Dieter Schnebel at Hochschule der Künste (now UdK Berlin). Anna Clementi sees herself as an “actress of the voice” rather than exclusively as a singer. In this way she also articulates the diversity of her artistic expression, with which she is always searching for new connections between voice, gesture, language, dance and theater. During her decades spanning career, Anna Clementi has performed at the most important festivals, has premiered numerous works, many of which have been composed especially for her, and worked with Fast Forward, Michael Hirsch, Rupert Huber, Christian Kesten, Alexander Kolkowski, Olga Neuwirth, Josef Anton Riedl,Iris ter Schiphorst, Dieter Schnebel, Laurie Schwartz, Elliott Sharp, and many others. A special focus of hers is the work of John Cage, whose pieces she has performed worldwide. https://www.annaclementi.com/
Thomas Stern Born in Bremen, Thomas Stern moved to Berlin in 1984 where he joined Mona Mur with Alex Hacke and F. M. Einheit (both from Einstürzende Neubauten, with which Stern also worked as live sound engineer for many years). Around 1987 he co-founded the Berlin set up of Crime And The City Solution (Mick Harvey, Alex Hacke a.o.). Over the years, he has has collaborated with artists like Ulrike Haage, Phew, Nick Cave, Ton Steine Scherben, Meret Becker, Nina Hagen, Jaki Liebezeit, Ben Becker, N.U. Unruh, Gry, Iris ter Schiphorst, Automat, Swans, Hans Joacxhim Irmler and many more, on the road or in his own Sternstaubstudio. http://www.thomasstern.de/
tracklist:
Zound Delta 2 21:59
Zound Delta 2 (version) 18:55
credits: Anna Clementi: voice Thomas Stern: slide guitar, bass and soundprocessing
Composition by Phill Niblock, Anna Clementi and Thomas Stern Recorded and mixed by Thomas Stern at Sternstaubstudio, Berlin Mastering and lacquer cut: Kassian Troyer at D&M, Berlin Cover photography by Phill Niblock Layout and design by kaidoh
The new album The Commune Of Nightmares by noise artist David Wallraf is a tapeloopbased musical game of cadavre exquis, a technique developed by surrealist artists.
David Wallraf is a noise artist and theorist living in Hamburg. His artistic work deals with the repressed and uncanny sonic residues of quotidian life, crafting soundtracks for the creeping disaster we inhabit. His works have been released on numerous international tape labels. A recent interest of his is the live scoring of silent films, including works by Luis Buñuel, Maya Deren and Jean Genet. His PhD thesis Grenzen des Hörens. Noise und die Akustik des Politischen (Limits of Hearing. Noise and the Acoustics of the Political) has been published in German, an English translation is in progress. The Commune of Nightmares stems from the idea that nightmares are the logical reverse of ‘capitalist realism’: an uncanny undercurrent of daily experiences and an algorithmic haunting of dreams that at the same time is a shared – communal – experience of everybody. All songs are based on tapeloops that were cut arbitrarily from a stash of cassettes, some of which found on the street, others from a stockpile of 4 track tapes recorded in the late 90s and early 2000s – a musical game of cadavre exquis played with random strangers and former versions of DW.
Tracklist: A1 He Bit His Tongue In His Sleep A2 Where Nothing Happens But The Wallpaper A3 She Calls In The Airstrike A4 Behind The Billionaire’s Graveyard B1 They Sidestep Extinction B2 Surrounded By The Smell Of Servitude B3 In Nightmares Screened By Algorithms
Credits: All music composed and recorded by David Wallraf in Hamburg-Wilhelmsburg, first half of 2023
REINHOLD FRIEDL (piano) meets RADIAN member MARTIN SIEWERT (guitar, electronics): Three spontaneous sonic explorations – subtle and explosive!
With over a dozen releases on Karlrecords, and a total output of more than 100 albums in general, Reinhold Friedl doesn’t need much of an introduction to anyone interested in contemporary music / avantgarde: his ensemble zeitkratzer is as respected as it is feared for its radical approach on music, and it seems redundant to mention all collaborators and projects. Friedl is known for his unique piano sound, his advanced techniques, and his musical intensity paired with precise exuberant sound constructions and consistent compositional thinking. He cooperated with musicans from Phil Niblock to Lou Reed, Mario Bertoncini (Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza) to Whitehouse, Laurie Anderson to Rashad Becker and works as guest professor at various universities across Europe. The “multi-talented renaissance man” (as Naut Human turned it) is also known as a specialist for Iannis Xenakis, and curates the Perihel series on Karlrecords.
„Lichtung“ is the collaboration of Friedl and no other than Vienna-based Martin Siewert, himself a highly prolific and reputated innovative guitar player and producer in groups like Radian or Trapist. Martin Siewert played with the who is who in experimental and improvised music and celebrated his strong musical identity in international collaborations with Otomo Yoshihide to Oren Ambarchi, Meg Stuart to Christian Fennesz, Sainkho Namtchylak to The Necks. Siewerts guitar play at the intersection of acoustic / electronic generated sounds is unique, evoking echoes of krautrock and musique concrete to electronic jazz and avantgarde.
“Lichtung” was recorded in Vienna: Several studio meetings condensed to three intense tracks, a statement and musical adventure between noise and silence, subtle and explosive! Two musicians, who couldn’t be more diverse, here – in every sense – they act in concert.
credits: Reinhold Friedl: piano Martin Siewert: guitar, electronics recorded on june 22nd 2021 in Vienna mix and mastering: Martin Siewert cover photo: Thomas Herbst layout & design: kaidoh
