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Komet - Rausch clips

Unequal cycles in search of synchronous experiences: On his new album »Pounding«, Frank Bretschneider tells of distance, convergence and congruence in a continuous, ever-changing flow of events. What is often regarded as an unquestionable dogma in club music (for which Bretschneider has provided significant impetus since the 1990s) – the groove – appears precarious, unstable, and in motion. Pulse and accent are volatile encounters and have to be found again and again for short, delightful moments. Music becomes a constant process of negotiation.
In search of new sound spaces, Bretschneider has recently worked a lot with modular synthesizers, both solo (for example on »abtasten_halten«, 2020) and in collaborations, including the project Beispiel together with Jan Jelinek. »Pounding« was created using similar means - conceived in 2020 for the Pochen Biennale in Chemnitz, subsequently developed further and recorded in March and April 2023 on a sample-based modular system. And in fact, Bretschneider is once again exemplarily scanning his own sound material, such as dub effects that listen to themselves disintegrate; but also the human voice, or more precisely: the stuttering of fragments of speech, far in the distance but omnipresent, like a mysterious narration. Aesthetically, the eleven pieces form part of a series of works with a focus on percussion. Bretschneider has already perfected this approach with albums like »Rhythm« (2007) and has been shifting the perspective ever since, for ever new results.
Shifting is the basic principle of »Pounding«. Bretschneider combines elements that are in different aggregate states, changing their relationship to each other and thus ensuring the complex overall movement. He lets one to two-bar loops run against each other and through small manipulations, develops a network of rhythms that creates a hypnotic state in the counterplay of repetition and mutation, between clearly recognizable meter and disorientation. There are comparable approaches in aleatoric music. Bretschneider combines them with sounds and patterns that are reminiscent of step sequencer logic and at the same time go far beyond it. The result is relational techno. Never obvious, always restless and exciting.

Pounding

Frank Bretschneider »Evening News« taken from »Pounding«

BAND4BAND Remix

frank bretschneider’s new project SINN + FORM (MEANING AND FORM) is based on the idea of a fundamentally chaotic world as we know it from mathematical or physical theories and models (dynamical systems, probability theory, stochastic systems), and the constant attempt of man to recognize and to describe, predict, control and change this world.

musically, this system is simulated electronically using a modular synthesizer system. various modules produce a constant flow of randomly generated data that modulate the decisive musical parameters (pitch, note length, volume, tone). the attempt of SINN + FORM in this context is to transform this stream of events into a musically relevant system of chaos and order, dynamics and statics, content and form by means of an improvised but deliberate process of constant control and influence.

aesthetically, the project recalls the electronic music of the mid 20th century: studios such as the IRCAM in paris, stockholm’s EMS (elektronmusikstudion), the WDR »studio for electronic music« in cologne, or new york’s »columbia- princeton electronic music center«. SINN + FORM also captures the dynamics and energy of a spontaneous improvisation, last but not least as a reaction to a complex world, a world in permanent crisis.

the material was recorded in july 2014 at EMS, stockholm, using the buchla and serge analog synthesizer systems. 

frank bretschneider. free market (excerpt). taken from frank bretschneider. sinn + form

Full stream of Frank Bretschneider's dubby "Elastik," a track from his forthcoming album 'Lunik,' out February 16 on Shitkatapult. 

More info: https://www.xlr8r.com/news/2018/02/premiere-hear-a-dubby-cut-from-frank-bretschneiders-new-album/

@frankbretschneiderofficial
@shitkatapult

Lunik

More info

Premiere: Frank Bretschneider - Elastik

Out on August 7th, 2020. Available at https://shop.tapeterecords.com/new/conrad-schnitzler-frank-bretschneider-construct.html

About the Con-Struct series
Conrad Schnitzler liked to embark on daily excursions through the sonic diversity of his synthesizers. Finding exceptional sounds with great regularity, he preserved them for use in combination with each other in subsequent live performances. He thus amassed a vast sound archive of his discoveries over time. When the m=min- imal label in Berlin reissued two Conrad Schnitzler al- bums at the outset of the 2010 decade, label honcho Jens Strüver was granted access to this audio library.
Strüver came up with the idea of con-structing new compositions, not remixes, from the archived material. On completion of the first Con-Struct album, he decided to develop the concept into a series, with different electronic musicians invited into Schnitzler’s unique world of sound.

Bretschneider on his Con-Structions
I read the name Conrad Schnitzler for the first time in the arti- cle about Tangerine Dream in the Rowohlt Rock Lexicon from 1973 (back then, at 17 in the GDR, an indispensable guide). The first time I heard his music was only in 1980, when his wave track “Auf dem Schwarzen Kanal” was played on the ra- dio, an RCA 12“ Super Sound Single in disco remix. Then the man was gone and stayed under the radar again, in spite of his almost inflationary number of releases. Maybe his mate- rial was too obscure or his approach too radical to be noticed by the general public. It wasn‘t until 1988 that I heard from Schnitzler again, a tape on Jörg Thomasius‘ East Berlin Kröten Kassetten label. And again almost 10 years later his Plate Lunch CDs “Rot” and “00/106”. But it was all too rough and raw for me, both in terms of sound and organization, kind of mechanically and not really cool. Only after I heard Wolfgang Seidel at the NBI around 2002 with one of his tape concerts, I came slowly closer.
Schnitzler‘s early role as co-founder of two influential bands is one reason for the ongoing reception. Another is his con- sequence as an artist. “I‘m not interested in having publicity or a public feedback” he declared in an 1996 interview. It remains an open question whether one has to completely refuse to do so. But I was always fascinated by this almost extinct way of being an artist in its full independence. Just as I feel connected, as a self- taught person and as someone who prefers to look forward instead of looking back: “I don‘t want nostalgia.” After all it was Jens Strüver who inspired me to work with Conrad Schnitzer‘s material.
I had the idea of flowing music in which patterns develop, shift, dissolve and finally reorganize. A modular system seemed the most suitable to connect Schnitzler‘s world with my own by triggering and modulating his sounds via a sampling module and supplementing them with my own. Perhaps I have not always succeeded in merging both worlds congenially, sometimes they orbit, sometimes they collide, but they never stand still. As Conrad Schnitzler says in his „Context“ manifesto: “The sounds don‘t come to stay.”

Buy CD/LP

BB349 Conrad Schnitzler & Frank Bretschneider – Con-Struct (Album Preview)

Inquiries: ✉ info@bureau-b.com ✉

Bureau B is a Hamburg based label which releases past and future classics unearthed from genres including (but not limited to) electronica, avant-garde, Kraut(rock) – a colourful spectrum of diverse, yet contigiuous musical genres. Applying the expertise deployed in trawling the archives, Bureau B has gone on to champion new and contemporary acts with similar musical sensibilities to their pioneering antecedents.