klingt.org (a wordplay in German that means sounds weird) is the website and the collective of Viennese experimental musicians that celebrated its 25th anniversary in January 2025 with a one-day festival, and with, among other acts, the rarely-heard “nine-musician improvisation hydra” klingt.collective”, on its only third performance. This electro-acoustic ensemble represents musicians-improvisers from a wide spectrum of musical activities - sound art, noise, free jazz, free improvisation, contemporary music, reductionist music, and art-rock. The ensemble was put together by turntables wizard dieb13 (aka Dieter Kovačič) and its first performance was during the 2022 edition of the Wien Modern festival.
The king.collective features drummer Martin Brandlmayr (of Radian, Christof Kurzmann’s El Infierno Musical, and Mats Gustafsson’s Fake The Fact), recorders and tapes player Angélica Castelló (of Disturbio duo with Revox tape wizard Jérôme Noetinger, and the duo Chesterfield with guitarist Burkhard Stangl), dieb13 (of Fake The Facts and Gustafsson’s NU Ensembles, and TWIXT duo), ppooll software player Klaus Filip (of sonic luz and Kurzmann’s Orchester 33 ⅓), bass clarinetist Susanna Gartmayer (of Vegetable Orchestra, GBK and So Sner), cellist Noid (aka Arnold Haberl, of sonic luz), electronics player and bassist Billy Roisz (of The Elks and RWIXT), guitarist and electronics player Martin Siewert of (Radian, Georg Graewe’s Sonic Fiction Orchestra, Also and Fake The Facts and in-demand sound engineer) and guitarist and electronics player Oliver Stotz. These musicians collaborated on countless other projects, bands, performances, and albums.
variable densities is the first album of klingt.collective, “composed ex ante and in real-time” and recorded live during its second performance of the ensemble at Festival Denistés in Fresnes-en-Woëvre, France, in October 2023. True to DIY spirit of the collective, the album was mixed by Siewert and Kovačič, mastered by Siewert, and its ironic cover artwork was made by Kovačič with advice by Roisz and Gartmayer.
The music moves between pre-defined structures and free improvised parts and between the resolute opening of massive waves of disorienting, noisy sounds that demand total surrender to highly nuanced and conversational improvisations that its enigmatic, suggestive sounds have a strong, hallucinatory quality, mirroring the diverse stylistic influences and the various backgrounds of the musicians. Obviously, the dynamics of the ensemble stress the many years of common musical work and profound aesthetic history. The album is divided into two extended pieces, fitting the vinyl release. Side A with the title piece is more sparse with a mysterious, dream-like cinematic quality while Side B, “dense variations” deepens this mysterious, psychedelic vibe but slowly gravitates towards an explosive, cathartic maelstrom. As with all the works of klingt.org ’s musicians, variable densities promise that its attentive listeners would be equipped with a much better, recalibrated sensory consciousness of their environments - real, imagined, and dreamt of.
1 comments:
Today’s and yesterday’s recommendations are simply must-haves! Thanks to all.
Post a Comment