Releases of the Month

Free jazz and improv, punk rock and ... Umm Kulthum? These are the references the Berlin label Zehra mentions in the context of »Al Saher,« a joint release by Egyptian singer Aya Metwalli and Calamita, the band of 'A' Trio member and Al Maslakh co-founder Sharif Sehnaoui and Sawt Out bassist Tony Elieh together with drummer Malek Rizkallah. As surprising as it may sound however, that is indeed an apt description for the juxtaposition of this Lebanese all-star line-up and a singer who, in the midst of the explosive interplay between the three musicians, intervenes in their free-form sound as much as she acts as a structure-giver in other moments. It is for example not uncommon for the guitar, bass and drums to fall (almost) completely silent in order to set the scene for Metwalli's expressive singing. But even in the most chaotic moments, she remains the calm and cool centre of the heated chaos the other three musicians conjure.

This month, the extremely successful exhibition »Broken Music Vol. 2« in the Hamburger Bahnhof came to an end. Dealing with the cult around and the visual and conceptual possibilities of the vinyl record, it was only logical that it would include an installation piece by Christina Kubisch. In this respect it is likely more than a happy coincidence that »Plus« now makes it possible to take five of her works home on wax. The medium was chosen on purpose; the titular plus or bonus being the surface noise inherent to the format. As radio legend John Peel once said: »Somebody was trying to tell me that CDs are better than vinyl because they don't have any surface noise. I said, 'Listen, mate, life has surface noise'!« And indeed: The wonderful sound poetry of »Teatime« or the 25-minute piece »Vasenresonanz« all take on an even more vital character with a bit of crackling and popping.

The Berlin-based collective, festival and label Tehran Contemporary Sounds is dedicated to representing Iranian artists from the country and the worldwide diaspora, focusing on electronic music that often aims at the dance floor. However, the compilation »Tehran Contemporary Sounds – Various Artists 2,« following a first instalment from 2020, proves that organiser Behrooz Moosavi and his colleagues want to paint as nuanced a picture as possible in terms of aesthetics and style. In addition to industrial noise rap by Milad Ahmadi and the advanced techno of Sciahri, the album also features pieces by »modular drummer« Cinna Peyghamy, sound artist Hadi Bastani and bubbling electroacoustics by Moosavi himself. These sounds are not only contemporary, but even forward-looking.

For those who prefer a more classical approach but still want to follow what is happening in Tehran, Iran and the diaspora, Ehsan Saboohi's new releases for the label Noise à Noise, newly based in Berlin are worth checking out: Within the framework of a trilogy plus an additional release with preludes, the highly productive composer presents the aesthetics of a »Post-Orientalism,« including 24 pieces recorded by the musician Saina Zamanian on the târ.

The Leipzig-based artist Anna Schimkat conceived »Brot und Ro-sen« as a sound installation, drawing on interviews with women from the former West Germany and the GDR. For this release on the Fragment Factory label, they are either reproduced directly, as in the second piece, or used as a collage-like libretto for choir. The result is a humorous and thoroughly socio-politically engaged album that breathes new life into an old battle cry.

Chromacolor is a new project by Hanno Leichtmann, but many other people can be heard on his self-titled debut album for the Danish label Arbitrary. Above all, there’s the voice of Annie Garlid, who also released a new album as UCC Harlo on the Berlin label Subtext this month, and who can be heard again and again on these nine tracks. They are complemented by contributions from the Berlin scene by the likes of Sabine Vogel and Sabine Ercklentz. They are subtly being added to Leichtmann's playing on vibraphone and Fender Rhodes, which is dedicated to a not-so-rigorous minimalism.

Full disclosure: field notes editor Kristoffer Cornils has worked on the release of »Chromacolor« as a writer.

»Fiction of the Physical« brings together four or, in the digital version, five pieces by the poet, performer and composer Ellen Zweig from the 1970s and 1980s. As part of the so-called Downtown scene, the US-American experimented, among other things, with a principle she called »the human loop«: individual phrases are constantly repeated by different performers. She proceeds similarly in some of these pieces by superimposing different readings of the same text. This opens up a game of difference and repetition, enables ever new perspectives on the same text and at the same time constantly evokes different emotional qualities. The reduced yet playful music perfectly sets the scene for this.

Johan Arrias has played with international greats such as Tetuzi Akiyama and collaborated with numerous members of the Swedish jazz, improvised and contemporary music scenes, just as he worked with Axel Dörner, Kai Fagaschinski and Tisha Mukarji as part of Schall und Rausch. He only tried his hand as a soloist a few years ago and found even more time to expand this practice thanks to pandemic. »Self Portraits« collects six pieces, the focus being Arrias' work or rather reconciliation with the soprano saxophone, which he had not touched for years—although he emphatically proves how much potential this instrument truly has.

»Battering Rams« brings together four pieces that the electronic music and sound artist Kevin Drumm produced between the years 2000 and 2022 and initially released only digitally. The label VAAGNER has now reissued the compilation, which was probably put together based on the obvious similarities between the pieces’ work with sound textures, on its two imprints A Sunken Mall and VAKNAR on vinyl and cassette, respectively. It's easy to hear why this was deemed necessary: Oscillating between (dark) ambient, drone music and electro-acoustic approaches, these pieces are clear highlights in the hyper-productive musician's more than extensive back catalogue.

The fact that Kjell Bjørgeengen and Chris Cogburn call this four-part box set »Fear of the Object« is obviously intended as a wink, but the title alludes not only to the form in which the music is being presented, but also to its concept and content. The video artist and the percussionist, in collaboration with a number of artists such as cellist Judith Hamann, wanted to stage the resonant frequencies of certain objects in contrast to the sonic precision of sine waves and just intonation. This provided audio impulses that triggered video art, which was then in turn (re)translated into audio. Sounds complicated? The four live performances included in this box set certainly don't. Don't fear this object!

»Monument« compiles compositions by Lisa Stenberg that the Swedish composer created especially for (or rather: on) the rare synthesiser EMS Synthi 100 as part of a commissioned work for documenta 14 and recorded herself in Osnabrück and Athens. After the work, first performed in 2017, was released on cassette in 2018, the Stockholm institution Fylkingen now follows up with a remastered version on vinyl and CD, complemented by new liner notes by Frances Morgan. In direct comparison to Midori Hirano's work with the same instrument on the recently released album »Distant Symphony,« Stenberg allows the sonic qualities of this multifaceted instrument to come even more to the fore. Density, intensity and atmosphere characterise these pieces.

The Uganda-based Nyege Nyege collective offers a platform for the forward-looking sounds and rhythms of club music trends in Central and East Africa, but also aims to synthesise tradition and progress. The Nakibembe Embaire Group cultivates playing on the oversized, xylophone-like instrument embaire, as it continues to be played regularly in the small eastern Ugandan town of Nakibembe. On its self-titled album for Nyege Nyege Tapes, the ensemble, which was a guest at the CTM Festival in Berlin in 2020, collaborates for three of the eight pieces with the Indonesian project Gabber Modus Operandi and the audiovisual artist Harsya Wahono from Jakarta. The transcultural project thus opens up perspectives for rethinking music as a social practice.

In recent years, the organ has been increasingly expanded and some artists have even designed completely new systems that are only loosely based on the design of the classic pipe instrument. Not so Robert Piotrowicz, who unceremoniously faked the sound of the organ for his album »Afterlife.« The acoustic illusion is almost perfect; the Polish composer and sound artist was even able to create an opulent spatial sound with synthetic means. But these three pieces are more than a mere mimetic etude in sound modelling: Piotrowicz works with an alternative tuning system that produces strange harmonic effects. A kind of counterfactual composing, you could say. One that is positively overwhelming.

On 28 February 2022, the Augsburg-based label attenuation circuit released the compilation »С​т​о​п​!,« which was to grow steadily until the end of the Russian war of aggression on Ukraine. Piece 49 of 100 (so far) came from Roel Meelkop and triggered a reflection process in the Dutch artist about activist-motivated art in particular and teleological thinking in the field of aesthetics in general. The result of this is now »Viva in Pace« for the Portuguese label Crónica, a four-part work that frequently breaks out into harsh noise cascades, but in which pigeons can also be heard. Though they do not necessarily seem to herald peace.

The album »Symposium Musicum« is an act of creative anthropology, which is a necessarily engaged one. In the Slovakian towns of Podolínec, Lomnička, Levočské Vrchy and Kolačkov, Anna Khvyl, Elia Moretti and John-Robin Bold conducted interviews with the Romani living there. They used these recordings as the basis for nine compositions characterised by a futuristic electronic sound. The result is wonderfully strange music, as if from another world and yet firmly anchored in a specific cultural and social setting via the recordings embedded in it in various forms. A wonderful, extremely productive juxtaposition.

Within almost three decades, the »krautfolk« project Staraya Derevnya around Gosha Shtasel has produced the most outlandish blossoms and the album »iká« by The Skull Mask is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful so far. The two tracks document the performances of band member Miguel Pérez on guitar and Shtasel on hurdy-gurdy in the support of their main project during a UK tour, for which Pérez had travelled from his native Mexico. At London's Café Oto and Oxfordshire's Supernormal Festival, the pair played two deeply hypnotic sets, constantly testing the possible combinations of their two instruments. A psychedelic, darkly colourful flow unfolds under their hands.

Eiserne Regel: Keine Ausgabe der Releases des Monats ohne Xenakis-Neuheiten! Wobei »Mein Vater« von Mâkhi Xenakis natürlich schon im Jahr 2015 auf Französisch erschienen war und die von Thomas Meyer in der edition neue zeitschrift für musik bei Schott herausgegebene Übersetzung von Ulrike Kolb zu seinem 100. Geburtstag im Vorjahr erschienen ist. Da wir es aber verschwitzt hatten, darauf hinzuweisen, sei dies an dieser Stelle nachgeholt – Papier ist schließlich geduldig. »Mein Vater« ist gleichermaßen Biografie des Komponisten wie Autobiografie der Künstlerin selbst. Xenakis als Mensch: Das ist ein Gebiet, das bisher noch zu wenig erforscht wurde.

Noch bis 18. August widmet die Kunsthalle Düsseldorf einem der innovativsten Adoptivsöhne Berlins eine Ausstellung, die von einer von Gregor Jansen, Linnea Semmerling, Stefan Schneider und Alicia Holthausen herausgegebenen Buchpublikation begleitet wird. »Conrad Schnitzler: „Manchmal artet es in Musik aus“« versammelt Beiträge von unter anderem David Keenan, Geeta Dayal und Gregor Jansen und fokussiert sich analog zur Ausstellung an Schnitzlers Arbeit als »Intermedia«-Künstler. Der passende Soundtrack ist übrigens just bei Bureau B erschienen: »CAS-CON II - Konzert in der Erlöserkirche, Ost-Berlin, 3.9.1986« dokumentiert eine illegale Performance von Schnitzlers Werken durch Ken Montgomery in der damaligen DDR.

Und wo wir schon beim Thema DDR sind: Mit »Magnetizdat DDR. Magnetbanduntergrund Ost 1979–1990« hat das Herausgeber-Trio Alexander Pehlemann, Robert Mießner und Ronald Galenza im Verbrecher Verlag eine umfassende, fast 500 Seiten dicke Anthologie über die klandestine Subkultur Ostberlins, die gerne unter dem Begriff »Kassettentäter« subsumiert wird. Zu den zahlreichen Texten und Interviews mit führenden Figuren aus dieser Underground-Szene gesellt sich ebenfalls eine dazugehörige Compilation auf Edition Iron Curtain Radio, das als Label schon seit geraumer Zeit viele verschollen geglaubte Artefakte aus dieser Zeit wieder auflegt und ähnliche Bemühungen von unter anderem Bureau B und Play Loud! damit trefflich ergänzt.