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MIKROTON: the last news (September 2021) MKM: Norbert Möslang, Jason Kahn, Günter Müller / Bangalore / Mikroton 92 / LP Bangalore marks MKM’s fifth release for Mikroton. Recorded in concert on February 2, 2019 in Bangalore during a tour of India, this LP documents the group’s plunge in the ebb and flow of India’s intense energy. In visiting India the group found a social space which mirrored their own approach to music. Or in the words of David Tudor: Resonance is the condition whereby a tiny input autonomously cascades into a much larger output. It occurs when a small vibration interacts with the internal structure of a material and greatly increases in intensity, threatening to destroy the object if pushed beyond a certain limit. Chaos is the point at which order breaks down, when elements in an organized system start acting randomly and autonomously, creating a situation where it is impossible to predict exactly what will happen next or in what order. Both involve limits and thresholds that have been crossed, organization that breaks down, actions that go out of control, systems that collapse—creating something new and unexpected in the process. Tudor had a strong connection to India and his work mirrored some of the processes one finds in everyday life there. Marking the fiftieth anniversary of Tudor bringing the first Moog synthesizer to India at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad, MKM arranged a tour to find the inspiration and energy behind Tudor’s ideas of chaos and thresholds, testing their own limits in the process. Bangalore documents the group’s synthesis of their tour experiences in a 36-minute set. Mixed and mastered by Norbert Möslang, the recording is unedited and gets to the heart of MKM’s modus operandi, trying to answer the question, What is the actual material we are working with? In a traditional musical sense, sound can be used to create spontaneous structures, textures, forms. But beyond this, MKM is interested in using sound to translate the experience of a place. Of being somewhere far from home, maybe having traveled many hours the day before a concert. All the logistical trials and tribulations that belong to touring. And beyond this, being immersed in different cultures, being confronted with our own values and expectations in the context of societies which know as little of us as we know of them. Bangalore is an artifact from this journey, one of many which have brought MKM to perform in Japan, Russia, Mexico, the United States, Peru, Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Brazil and throughout Europe. All this travel has done more than enriched the group’s work, it has been the very material which makes their music what it is, testing the spaces between chaos and control, the sonic resonance of social space. Günter Müller iPods, electronics Jason Kahn modular synthesizer, mixer, radio Norbert Möslang cracked everyday-electronics STREET DATE: January 5, 2021 BUY — https://toneditions.bandcamp.com/album/bangalore LISTEN & MORE — https://toneditions.info/mikroton-92/ PERIFERIYA: Christian Kobi, Tomas Korber, Kurt Liedwart, Christian Müller, Mikhail Myasoedov, Boris Shershenkov / Boundary Scan / Mikroton 93 / 2LP How secluded can contemporaneity be? Is every art aimed at an inherent center? Are sound waves soft boundaries? Pack a bag, a sky and a bonfire log to join six exceptional musicians on their expedition to the rough and mellow edges of electronic sound. Periferiya is a Russian-swiss collaboration between Boris Shershenkov (St. Petersburg), Kurt Liedwart and Mikhail Myasoedov (Moscow), Thomas Korber (Zürich), Christian Kobi (Berne) and Christian Müller (Biel) which took place in the remote Vallée de Joux, on the border between Switzerland and France. An encounter of six related yet distinctly different approaches to music, sharing mutual roots in their appreciation for the first generation’s electronic music in Russia and Switzerland. Curated by Christian Müller, the project’s aim was to create querulent and contrasting resonances where the nothing meets the something, where the murmurs range the woods. Recorded during the Hors Normes Festival 2019, Periferiya is an ever playful and surprising sextet that takes you with a minimalistic approach through acoustic layers, through crisp sediments of electronic experiments, microsounds, improv and pop ambient, through full color sound landscapes at last. Christian Kobi soprano saxophone Tomas Korber guitar, electronics, ppooll Kurt Liedwart modular synthesizer, electronics, ppooll Christian Müller clarinet, electronics Mikhail Myasoedov modular synthesizer, electronics Boris Shershenkov phonotrone STREET DATE: January 5, 2021 BUY — https://toneditions.bandcamp.com/album/boundary-scan LISTEN & MORE — https://toneditions.info/mikroton-93/ SCHNEE: Christof Kurzmann, Burkhard Stangl / Снег / Mikroton 94 / LP “I love plainness in colour, monotony, snow is rather a monotonous tune. Why should colour not give an impression of singing? White is like a murmur, a whisper, a prayer." (Robert Walser). The first Schnee record appeared in 2000. 20 years later their fourth album, the first coming on vinyl (!), on Mikroton. In between these years, the laptop player, saxophonist and singer Christof Kurzmann and guitarist Burkhard Stangl went different ways, but met again and again in projects such as Schnee, together with the American spoken word recording artist Ursula Rucker or in the context of Bernhard Fleischmann's “The Year Of”. Guitarist Burkhard Stangl was a member of the electroacoustic supergroups Polwechsel and efzeg and collaborated among others with Christian Fennesz as well as with Taku Unami, Taku Sugimoto, Angélica Castelló or Mario de Vega. Besides his fantastic reinterpretations of several Robert Wyatt numbers, Christof Kurzmann is known as the founder of the Orchestra 33 1/3 and the legendary label charhizma and — together with Fennesz — the forefather of electroacoustic improvisation music in Austria. Among many others he currently works regularly with John Butcher, Mats Gustafsson or Ken Vandermark. Schnee is concerned with the actual sensory non-cerebral experience: the relationship between colour, image and sound. Schnee sets music to imaginary films or makes music that relates to films that have not yet been shot. The invisible film as a drama of a possibly liberated life, embedded in the soft, cold dress of sound creative avantgarde or experimental electroacoustic improv. Furthermore, songs are also repeatedly implemented in the instrumental electroacoustic dispositive of Schnee, which reveals references to literature, pop culture, politics and writing conceived as speaking about the unspeakable. “If there was ever a battle, it must have been the one between the guitar and the computer”. Schnee has long fought the battle and maybe even won it. Why? Because poetry and resistance revolve in the record groove. STREET DATE: January 5, 2021 BUY — https://toneditions.bandcamp.com/album/- LISTEN & MORE — https://toneditions.info/mikroton-94/ |
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