Found Sounds #10

It is almost 9 p.m. and the DJ has decided to make the last minutes count, reaching for vocal-heavy house bangers. The dance floor isn’t exactly packed—the people who come to ://about:blank on a Wednesday prefer to hang out in the club’s labyrinthic garden and have a sip or two of prosecco while they catch up with friends after a long day at work. So when they get up to dance, this is an even bigger compliment to the DJ.

As his last track fades out, a dozen or so people applaud as the DJ grins and takes a bow. Nothing about this scene is particularly special, especially in a city with this many clubs. Yet it’s remarkable for another reason—or rather remarkably unremarkable. Maybe no-one in the audience knows that they are currently living something called inclusion—that the DJ is a person with a disability, something that right now doesn’t matter.

The DJ is an alumnus of the IckMachWelle project, founded in 2018 by the team behind the Berlin techno label KilleKill and the Krake festival for electronic and dance music. Around a dozen musical projects have sprung from IckMachWelle. Some have released records or even played at festivals where hardly anyone—just like here and now—had any idea that the band on stage was inclusive, i.e. that it brings together people with and without disabilities.

While Berlin has had an inclusive party series, Spaceship, for years now, IckMachWelle is a pioneering institution in the city. It tackles a major issue that people with disabilities face on a daily basis. The social exclusion and isolation that many of them experience are exacerbated by a lack of funds—workshops for people with disabilities in Germany pay an average of € 1.46 per hour , not enough to enable participation in cultural events or integration into society.

What makes this scene today so remarkably unremarkable is how these and other barriers have ceased to exist for a moment. These are strangers who bond over a mutual love for vocal-heavy house tunes selected for them by a DJ who is merely doing his job. This is why IckMachWelle puts an emphasis on music: It can facilitate such individual moments of inclusion that, bit by bit, might one day amount to collective social progress.

I am reminded of this when the next in a seemingly endless flurry of solo albums lands in my inbox, »I Alone« by Berlin-based electronic musician Andrea Taeggi. Its title seems to comment on the bleak reality that artists have to live through as people who, if only for economic reasons, are incentivised to work and market themselves as individuals. Is social progress even possible at a time in which everyone works alone in a culture of atomisation?

»I Alone« takes a stand against this by problematising it. While his complex, rhythmically challenging micro-grooves and complex Just Intonation harmonies and melodies may not be for everyone, Taeggi reminds us through his track titles that these pieces (and music more broadly) are addressed to anyone who cares: »I alone am dull,« one of them reads, »I alone don't know« reads another. This is music that insists that no human is an island.

Taeggi suggests that we become archipelagos: »I Alone« isn’t available on vinyl or CD; potential buyers can instead purchase a set of postcards. The symbolism is striking: this is a medium that allows people to connect with one another across distances and differences. The music is meant to be shared this way, collectively, in a gesture of inclusion,and this makes me reconsider all these solo albums in my inbox: Aren’t they postcards, too?

Take »alternative conditions« by Nicholas Bussmann, a new four-track EP featuring piano ballads that are as whimsical as they are wistful and which, thanks to the generous use of vocals, address their audience head-on, including it in Bussmann’s inner worlds. Quentin Tolimieri also uses the piano across the twelve pieces of the triple-CD »Monochromes II,« but the composer and improviser doesn’t raise his voice.

Still,even when Tolimieri hammers away on only one key like on the opener »16a,« the stark reduction in regard to rhythm and tonality unlocks sprawling sonic potentials—especially in the minds of his audience. Guitarist Olaf Rupp offers just as many discoveries between the notes on »Fuzzy Logic« for Bill Orcutt’s Palilalia, working between traditional improv argots and the more straight-forward structures of rock music.

The press release for »Fuzzy Logic« quotes Rupp saying that »Echtzeitmusik people will once again nag at all those minor chords and the indie rock fans will shake their heads in vain looking for the beat,« but that doesn’t mean that he isn’t sending postcards forth and back with someone like biegungen im ausland co-organiser Han-earl Park, whose »uᴉɐƃ∀ ʍǝN sI plO sI ʇɐɥM« opens with the cheekily-titled »All the Wrong Notes.«

Across the 18 pieces, Park’s playing is often knotty and rapid-fire, but also offers plenty of breathing room for his listeners—this music strives to challenge, but not overwhelm. The same is true for Federico Perotti’s »Quadro« for Feral Note. These elaborate organ pieces draw on different traditions, and while they remainrespectful of the instrument’s history, they also utilise techniques from drone and minimal music.

Space—namely, the Basilica di San Sisto in Piacenza, where »Quadro« was recorded—plays a key role in Perotti’s work. This is even more the case on »Faint Light Blackens,« the new album by Henrik Munkeby Nørstebø. This electroacoustic work for solo trombone, released through Psychic Liberation, was recorded in Oslo’s Tomba Emmanuelle and makes liberal use of its resonant qualities, turning the building itself into another player.

Nørstebø knows a thing or two about working with others, after all. In vocal artist Audrey Chen he has found a human collaborator who is known for producing some more-than-human sounds. The two work together as a duo under the name Beam Splitter and organise the event series Dedicated Play, which often sees them feature artists with diasporic backgrounds. Their project is inherently inclusionary.

»Dedicated Play – Live at Morphine Raum,« out on Tripticks Tapes, is a collection of recordings—ten on the cassette version, a whopping 18 in all digital formats—that were made between 2022 and 2023 at Berlin’s Morphine Raum with guests like Elaine Mitchener and Mariam Rezaei, Mieko Suzuki, Hugo Esquinca, or Pak Yan Lau. And of course, this truly communal album also includes a 19-minute-long group improvisation.

»BEYOND FINE LINES« is another release that is characterised by unconventional vocals. Sainkho Namtchylak has worked between traditional Tuvan throat singing and extended avant-garde techniques for a while now and has found a kindred spirit in electronic music composer Mirco Magnani, who complements her expressive English-language sprechgesang with dense, sombre soundscapes.

A much more wholesome and even more intimate collaborative album is »Westend« by the duo Päfgens, whose lo-fi shoegaze-folk has an underwater quality to it. Dedicated both to the duo’s son—you’ll never guess which part of Berlin he was born in—and Filip Drábek’s grandmother, appearing here in the form of a short voice recording, this is another album that sends out postcards across space and even time.

On their collaborative album as Kr-Krr, Nathalie Forget and Gilles Aubry also set in motion a dialogue between the ages—or rather, different sound technologies. »Nebulage« is based on the interplay between the former’s ondes martenot and the latter’s modular synthesizers as well as his work in Max/MSP, in which he has created a ghostly double of his partner’s instrument. The result is a wonderfully complex, atmospherically rich album.

»Nebulage« is based on improvisations, as is »Hallitusvastane Puhastus.« Released on the Berlin-based label I Shall Sing Until My Land Is Free, the album documents a meeting between the duos Bad Groupy (Kris Kuldkepp and Jeff Surak) and Pink Twins (Juha Vehviläinen and Vesa Vehviläinen) during which the two duos find common ground in noise, industrial, and drone music. This makes for an abrasive, energising amalgam across its 37 minutes.

That album pairs well with Dog Plug’s debut album, »Dog Plug كلاب البطّاريّة.« Featuring Berliners Mazen Kerbaj on trumpet, crackle synth and a few other instruments, Tony Elieh on bass and electronics as well as keyboard wizard Maurice Louca, it shows the three of them at their most electronic, noisy, and playful. And Elieh’s collaborative album »Phase I« with drummer Burkhard Beins as Zone Null takes an even more abstract approach.

Alongside Emilio Gordoa, Beins is also a member of the percussion trio that Mariá Portugal founded to bring her 2021 »EROSÃO« album to the stage. Naturally, they ended up in the studio, recording »EROSÃO PERCUSSION TRIO,« co-released by the Berlin labels Kassiani and Fun in the Church. These complex-yet-driving percussion pieces also incorporate Portugal’s vocals, but use them sparingly—and thus all the more effectively.

Margareth Kammerer’s voice plays a more pronounced role on »The Garden« for the Japanese Ftarri label. These pieces, recorded between 2007 and 2019, also feature a slew of collaborators from the Berlin scene such as Axel Dörner, Bernd Jestram, or Valerio Tricoli. Due to her roots in jazz, obvious affinity for folkloristic forms, and her use of Italian lyrics, Kammerer’s intimate songs are at times reminiscent of Silvia Tarozzi’s »Lucciole.«

The connection between Judith Hamann and James Rushford is an even more obvious one—they have often worked together in different constellations. »Midmeste« is their belated debut recording as a duo, the Middle English title referring, fittingly, to a middle point. Indeed, the cellist and the pipe organist effortlessly find common ground across two long-form compositions that move slowly and unfold beautifully.

A title like »The Sound of Difference and Connection« should make it clear that this album follows a similar approach. Composed by Maya Dunietz with Solistenensemble Kaleidoskop, it is based on the idea of combination tones; two notes that together let a third emerge. Realised by ten perfectly attuned players, this results in an incredibly rich album. If you, like me, can never get enough of the first section of Xenakis’ »Metastasis,« you will love this.´

»Green Prism: music by Keith Tippett« is another slightly different example of how composers and performers can become co-conspirators: Alongside a slew of collaborators including Julie Tippetts, Hilary Jeffery used pieces—originally written for his Zinc & Copper trio but effectively unfinished due to Tippett’s passing in 2020—as raw material in order to pay homage to the influential pianist.

You can hear different kinds of echoes reverberate across a new charity compilation on the Berlin label Shameless Rocks. Its proceeds will go to Gaza Children’s Fund and HEAL Palestine and it is called, well, »ECHOES«. The featured musicians—including figures from the Berlin scene such as Biliana Voutchkova, Marta Zapparoli, and Michael Thieke—received a recording of a sonic protest to rework or respond to.

With only a few exceptions this compilation—expertly curated by Boris Hauf and Angélica Castelló—features mostly solo artists who work, in a sense, alone together. They send postcards to Gaza as well as to each other and their audience. It is a striking example of how individual works of art and their creators are always in correspondence with the world at large. Which brings me back to that one evening at ://about:blank.

The IckMachWelle project is currently also raising funds. Having had to rely on a mix of funding sources, these dried up in March, and while the project has received a further grant, it won’t cover office or studio rent. Through a GoFundMe page and the sales of the »Superbrains Vol. 2« compilation, IckMachWelle is trying to raise money in order to survive—for now, it is under existential threat.

Postcards alone won’t save IckMachWelle. However, if listening to all these records has taught us anything, it’sthat even those working solo seek connections with the world around them, that they strive to be included with and include others in what they do—that music can facilitate individual moments of inclusion that might one day amount to collective social progress. This needs to preserved at all costs.