This triple-split album presents electroacoustic compositions by attenuation circuit label head EMERGE, long-time associate Gerald Fiebig, and – for the first time ever on a physical release – the Italian, Bremen-based composer and sound artist Mattia Bonafini. The final track is a trio improvisation EMERGE, Fiebig and Bonafini played at Hulsberg Crowd in Bremen in June 2019, a temporary art location in a former nurses‘ home which has since been demolished.
Although the three pieces were composed independently, they seem to share a certain aesthetic feel: Sonic atmospheres stained by constant hiss (EMERGE), vinyl surface noise (Bonafini), and car traffic (Fiebig) pervade the album. Out of this grey sleet of acoustic debris, the composers try to salvage moments of clarity in the form of concrete sounds, melodic fragments or drone chords.
EMERGE works with a variety of field recordings that every once in a while quite literally emerge from the monochrome fog of background hiss that seems to be visualised in the colours of the cover artwork. The ‚betamorphoses‘ of the title could refer to the moments in which the static drone hiss of the piece morphs into more distinct acoustic scenes. One could think of it as moments when the static hum of ‚capitalist realism‘ (Mark Fisher) that muffles the whole of our reality is replaced by the sounds of something different – ‚betamorphoses‘ perhaps being beta tests for a metamorphosis of society at large that needs to take place.
Fiebig’s ‚Far-end Crosstalk (Augsburg – Jinan)‘, based on field recordings from his homebase Augsburg and the soundscape of the Chinese city of Jinan (recorded by Nicolai Volland in 1995) spells out this need for change along ecological lines. The piece maps Murray R. Schafer’s idea of the urban ‚lo-fi soundscape‘ onto the problem of climate change: With increasing car traffic, cities around the world not only sound increasingly the same, they also face the same problems with air pollution. The Jinan sounds are modulated with a filter based on frequencies of the note C (for China), the Augsburg sounds are filtered around the note G (for Germany).
‚Turning Pages‘ of musical history, or rather turning music around to see its other side, is what Mattia Bonafini did for his piece: He recorded surface noise from vinyl records in the library of Bremen’s Hochschule für Künste where he studied electroacoustic music, and thus created the piece by manipulating this background noise of the officially documented history of music. Like the other pieces, ‚Turning Pages‘ is an act of musical upcycling in which apparently non-musical sounds are used to create an aesthetic structure and, through sound, make us think about the world.
The live cut from Hulsberg Crowd – the venue itself being a sort of creative, if temporary, repurposing of an urban ‚left-over‘ – continues this by using ’sub-musical‘ elements such as no-input mixer and vocal noises rather than speech or song. But the tension felt in the three previous pieces, the feel of a present wedged uneasily between an untenable past and an uncertain future, is exploded in the energetic interaction of the trio, into a ‚lightbulb moment‘ (Lester Bangs) of whatever the listener may perceive in it – utopian or dystopian?
Comes in black origami cardboard cover, provided with black sigil on the back. Limited edition of 20, signed by the artist. Hand-stamped and numbered CDr in vinyl-look with haptic grooves, both sides of the CDr are black. Linen paper folder, handcut.
EMERGE: voice & effects, recording, mastering and photo
recorded live in january 2017, ganze bäckerei augsburg
III + IV are parts of a series of vocal improvisation works by EMERGE.
I: Mahorka, Bulgaria 2016 II: Earthwalker Records, USA 2017 III + IV: atemwerft, Germany 2021
Thorsten Soltau (1-5,7): piano, electroacoustics and electronics recorded in January and February 2016 commissioned by Swiss Radio and Television (SRF) additional processing, using concrete sound sources by EMERGE, in October and November 2017
EMERGE (1-5,7): field recordings and electronics additional processing, using sounds by Thorsten Soltau, and final mix in November 2017
RLW (6): electronics transformation and re-composition of the contributions by Thorsten Soltau and EMERGE, realised in 2017/18 overall album concept created in 2020
* Bu.d.d.A. & N_M # as Hellmut Neidhardt & Chris Sigdell & Sascha Stadlmeier ~ collab-set
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Bund des Dritten Auges is a fairly new project by Sascha Stadlmeier (EMERGE) and Chris Sigdell (B°TONG). It is dedicated to meditative ambient drone music and uses mainly guitar, violin and voice. Since its conception in Barcelona, the duo has released a couple of EPs, and – despite the 2020 pandemic – completed a sold-out German tour. At the moment the two are working on completing their first Album – with special guests Common Eider/King Eider, Drekka and Bebawinigi.For those who need names: Bu.d.d.A. may sound like Troum meets Earth together with Brian Eno. But in reality the duo builds on the legacy of NID (1995-2005), who Chris was a member of, and which released a post-humous CD on Auf Abwegen.
“the music of N is like a mirror of the moment. regardless how much thinking and planning went before, the sound captured by a „live“-recording setting comes directly from the inside. amps + guitar are the instruments used, there is no cut and paste afterwards nor any overdub… all N-work is counted by numbers that reflect the timeline of recording and / or the moment of the conclusion to go for the certain concept. all N-recordings (with the possible exception of single-tracks) deal with a real place and so the title of any album does.”the roots of this concept go back to 1997 when N aka hellmut neidhardt started the project [MULTER] together with thomas geiter and mal hoeschen, entering the territory of experimental music. while this project is still going on, having released 14 records on different labels, including the homebase genesungswerk and important german ambient / drone / experimental labels as dronerecords and auf abwegen, N also detected the certain challenges of solo-works. in difference to his work with [MULTER], where analogue and digital techniques melt and the recording may just be the source for the later digitally improved work, N decided to focus on the freshness that can only be achieved by recording-while-playing-the-first-time and went for that concept on all solo-recordings since then, using a one guitar / two amplifiers setup with a chain of pedal-effects in between. with this it is possible to record exactly what happened in the moment of the inspiration, creating an aesthetic in sound that is based on a certain warm deepness, being highly attractable both for player and listener.since 2001, the release of the first 7” “karnap”, a collaboration with segment aka mal hoeschen of genesungswerk, N has released 11 records from single to double-album on the belgian label consoulingsounds and the german labels denovali, droehnhaus, ex ovo and genesungswerk and the french label les anomalies anonymes, nearly any of those as vinyl edition with a certain, sequel-like cover artwork, trying to transport visually the atmosphere and the mood of the musical content. during live-performance, N does not use any backing tapes nor prefabricated loops.