May 29th, 2024 at After, Köpenicker Straße 187-188
Xenakis birthday: listening session „Persepolis“ & conversation
Doors: 19h
Music starts 20h (ca 55 minutes), conversation
Drinks before and after
After is thrilled to present one of the milestones of electroacoustic music, the mindblowing Persepolis by Greek-French composer, architect, and mathematician Iannis Xenakis (1922–2001) in collaboration with Karlrecords. The session will be followed by a conversation with zeitkratzer director and acknowledged Xenakis expert Reinhold Friedl.
“Persepolis” is the longest electroacoustic composition by Xenakis who ranks among the most influential 20th century avant-garde composers. Commissioned by the Persian Shah for the Festival of Arts Shiraz-Persepolis, the piece was part of a multimedia performance – Xenakis‘ so-called “polytopes” – which premiered in 1971 as a multi media event including flare lights, laser beams, groups of children walking around with torches and 51 loudspeakers to project the music open-air in various locations within the ancient ruins of Persepolis, the ceremonial capital of the Achaemenid Empire. The socio-political context in which the work was commissioned, developed and presented has been subject to heated discussions in both worlds – the growling of Xenakis’ multilayered sound representing “the history of Iran” would soon emancipate itself from the imported speakers it was played on and grew in a few years to overthrow the regime of its very commissioner and install the Islamic state which is still in power today.
Xenakis had realized “Persepolis” on 8-track analogue tape in the Studio Acusti in Paris and released a stereo reduction on vinyl in the famous Philips series “Prospective 21e Siècle” in 1972, adding the new subtitle “We bear the light of the earth”, his most hymnal title ever.
Out of print for decades, the LP – especially the Japanese edition from 1974 – became one of the most expensive collector’s items of electroacoustic music. There were some later CD versions with different durations – one too long due to a wrong sample rate, another shortened by 3 minutes due to other reasons. The Perihel series curated by Reinhold Friedl on Karlrecords presents a new version (KR044), which will be played tonight: mixed from the original (!) master 8 track tapes by longtime zeitkratzer sound engineer Martin Wurmnest and mastered by Rashad Becker at D&M, Berlin, which, in addition to the aspect of fidelity to the source, puts the listener in the center. Xenakis‘ adventurous music can now finally be enjoyed in its full sonic range and dynamic.
Limited space, please come in time.
After Köpenicker Straße 187-188, U Schlesisches Tor
courtyard back left corner ground floor
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May 17th, 2024 at West Germany, Skalitzer Str. 133, 10999 Berlin
Wolfgang Seidel / support: Pharoah Chromium
Doors: 20.00
Start: 21.00
Tickets at the door
Release concert for Wolfgang Seidel’s album „Friendly Electrons“
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!
Tonight SEIDEL presents his album in the trio line up of
Wolfgang Seidel – Buchla Music Easel Synthesizer
Ulf Mergersen – 6-String Bass
Alerto Cavenati – Guitar
support: PHAROAH CHROMIUM
Pharoah Chromium, named after a song by the band Chrome, is a project by German-Palestinian musician and sonic performer GHAZI BARAKAT. He has released albums on labels such as Grautag, Deep Distance and Labelle69 and has collaborated with Günter Schickert, Vincent Epplay and Osman Arabi among others.
https://pharoahchromium.bandcamp.com/
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April 26th, 2024 at West Germany, Skalitzer Str. 133, 10999 Berlin
Martina Bertoni I Anna Clementi & Thomas Stern perform Niblock
Doors: 20.00
Tickets at the door
release concert for „Zound Delta 2“ by Phill Niblock / Anna Clementi / Thomas Stern, performed by A. Clementi & Thomas Stern.
Support: Martina Bertoni (Studies for Halldorophone premiere)
MARTINA BERTONI
Martina Bertoni is a Berlin based cellist and composer. She started playing the cello at a very young age. Classically trained, Bertoni‘s career soon developed around experimental and film music where her cello has been featured in numerous records, soundtracks for awarded movies and TV series and collaborations, among others with Blixa Bargeld and Teho Teardo with whom she recorded several albums and performed at many prestigious festivals all around the globe.
The core of her solo work is based on deconstructing the relationship with her own instrument by combining acoustic sound, repetition, analog and digital synthesis. After the EPs „In A Paradise You Would Be Happy“ (2018) and „The Green EP“ (2019) she released her critically acclaimed full length album „All The Ghosts Are Gone“ with the Reykjavík based label Falk in january 2020.
Bertoni’s album „Music For Empty Flats“ for Karlrecords was voted one of the ten best drone albums of 2021 by Acloserlisten.com. Her latest album „Hypnagogia“ was released in 2023.
On this special occasion, Martina Bertoni will premiere new compositions based on material she recorded during a residency at EMS Stockholm on the Halldorophone.
https://martinabertoni.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 Joachim Irmler and many more, on the road or in his own Sternstaubstudio.
http://www.thomasstern.de/
Clementi and Stern will perform „Zound Delta 2“, a new piece by minimalist / experimental composer PHILL NIBLOCK (1933 – 2024) which the duo co-composed. Intense, menacing layers of thick drones and alien sounds. The album will be released on april 12th (LP / CD / DL) on Karlrecords.
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January 19th, 2024 at West Germany, Skalitzer Str. 133, 10999 Berlin
hÄK/Danzeisen & David Wallraf
Doors 20.00
Tickets at the door
release concert for David Wallraf’s new album „The Commune Of Nightmares“ & label birthday.
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.https://davidwallraf.com/
hÄK / Danzeisen
One must imagine hÄK / Danzeisen as a man-machine apparatus. A collection of cables, resonating bodies and restless limbs that together question all routines. Who overthrow conventional role of instruments and explore the possibilities of a new sound language.
Bernd Norbert Würtz alias hÄK operates modular synthesizers, self-soldered circuits and control knobs. Philipp Danzeisen plays a drum kit enhanced with triggers and sensors. These two poles are connected to an interdependent whole in which a constant musical dialogue takes place. The dependencies within this system have been meticulously defined by hÄK / Danzeisen: Drum rolls and sound modulations are interconnected in such a way that there is no contradiction between the strict technological structure and the creative outburst that is possible at any time.
What drives hÄK / Danzeisen is the basic idea that the contrast between acoustic drums and synthetically produced sounds must be overcome in order to create a new experience. Würtz, Danzeisen and their combined instrumentation simultaneously rub up against the same edges, finding a single, piercing voice.
Ideal manifestations of this approach are the duo’s live performances: raw energy that oscillates as precisely as it surprises between drones, abstraction and noise attacks, driven by an impudent take on jazz. Constantly oscillating between the registers of „composed“ and „improvised“, each performance by hÄK / Danzeisen ultimately becomes one of a kind.
(Arno Raffeiner) https://www.hak-danzeisen.com/
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November 30th, 2023 at Morphine Raum, Köpenicker Str. 147
NICKOLAS MOHANNA & SVARTE GREINER
Doors 20.00
Tickets at the door
SVARTE GREINER is Erik K Skodvin’s alter ego, dwelling in shadows and the surreal since 2005.
http://miasmah.com/eks/
NICKOLAS
MOHANNA is an artist and composer based in New York. His practice
deploys various media to fade the borders between music, sound and
visual art, producing works from environmental and internet sounds to
guitar and percussion. He also operates the publishing project R/O
Editions from which he has released audio objects & artist books. https://nickolasmohanna.bandcamp.com/
https://www.nickolasmohanna.com/
https://runoffeditions.com/https://fb.me/e/1s6OW5SZ7