Benjamin Kilchhofer is not new to the world of recorded music, yet he doesn’t seem to fit into a particular scene or group. As an outsider he is, however, fully immersed and melded into his own universe. He mentally escapes to a parallel world and weaves an alternate reality which would otherwise not exist in his daily life. Kilchhofer avoids the spotlight and therefore isn’t really visible in today’s culture of ever changing content and social media. This is where Marionette steps in to attempt to shed as much light as possible on this unique and incredibly talented artist.

The Book Room is Kilchhofer's musical diary, it's his library of emotions. It's a fairytale, an imaginary place shaped by exotic cultures, an escape from modern society, a collage of real and imagined experiences. You can hear influences abstracted from a wide number of musical approaches: the story-telling nature of folklore music, naive and conflicting rhythms of tribal drums, melodies and pads reminiscent of classical minimalism and microtonal experimental music, the freeform approach of early electronic music and krautrock, and buried deep within the tracks some hints of hedonistic dance and club music.

Artwork by the brilliant Jake Fried.

Kilchhofer - The Book Room [Marionette 07]

Pierre Bastien orchestrates his meccano marionettes on Tinkle Twang ‘n Tootle to form the charming imaginative ensemble that he’s been known for since the late 80s.

Equal parts composer, inventor, mechanic, and performer - Bastien translates his imagination into instruments and compositions that defy any musical categories. Whether it’s preparing instruments like playing a trumpet underwater or through a kazoo, using belt-driven motors and mechanical components to perform cumbersome yet surprisingly musical operations on traditional instruments and household items, or using a fan to hit the strings of a kundi harp with flowing paper - Bastien’s love for tone, rhythm, noise and harmony is poetically reflected across his quite extensive oeuvre.

Playful and melancholic, the sound sculptures that Bastien invents and plays with are partly inspired by the work of Raymond Roussel, a visionary French author who at the turn of the 20th century wrote a unique form of literature which inspired and guided artists from the surrealist and pataphysical movement and was declared by Michel Foucault as one of structuralism's founding fathers. On that note, the influence of literature and syntax on Bastien’s work cuts all the way through to the palindromes he uses for his track titles - which, much like his machines, infinitely loop.

True to it’s adorable title, Tinkle Twang ‘n Tootle is a music box of unfolding whimsical structures, half broken rhythms, detuned harmonies, and fantastical sound collages that evoke a childlike sense of wonder and an urge to explore the spaces in between the sounds.

Pierre Bastien - Tinkle Twang 'n Tootle

Papiro’s approach to music is never technical, but always personal. Since the mid-Nineties, he has released a handful of noteworthy albums, each carefully put together and seemingly self-contained, yet all sharing an unmistakable musical language and a certain escapist aura.

La finestra dentata (The Toothed Window), is no exception. It includes both studio and concert recordings from 2016–2020. The sounds on this album appear infinite and full of marvels, ingenious in portraying imaginary creatures and environments.

The title track and Anelli take up most of the first side and include live outtakes. These swirly symphonies are specifically intended as immersive deep-listening experiences for concert venues, and have been edited for this album to meet the physical demands of vinyl and domestic use. Imagine the younger cousins of Laurie Spiegel’s Concerto Generator performance, or Terry Riley’s Shri Camel.

However, those who know Papiro only from the stage might be unaware of a different side to his oeuvre; starry-eyed miniatures that may appear frivolous in comparison to the more heady tracks, but are nonetheless well worth discovering. Each piece adds a chapter to a phantasmagoric world populated by such characters as "Giant Duckling", "King Hard-Beard", or the "Bodulator". Tracks like the opener Odilon or Il triciclo nascosto, meanwhile, emanate a candor rarely found in the domain of serious music, and revisit Papiro’s early days of instrumental storytelling.

La finestra dentata

Papiro - La Finestra Dentata (Preview)

Francesco Cavaliere and Tomoko Sauvage embody a tactile audio visual display, radiating the colour green into sounds and painting meditative music. By transforming collected objects into invented instruments and scenography, each motif becomes a dedication to a specific situation, an anecdote or a symbol, sometimes real and other times absurd, that the artists have encountered through their travels and conversations: the Chinese myth about a man wearing a green hat, the naming convention of Japanese traffic lights, or even the imaginary chants of frolicking twin dolphins. This inspired the duo’s personal research on experimenting with raw and synthesized idiophones, stage landscape design, spontaneous field recording and organized improvisation.

For their installation and performance, Cavaliere and Sauvage assemble a green cabinet of curiosities - an instrumentarium combining water, glass, clay, bamboo xylophones, metallophones and synthesizers. Tomoko describes in an interview: “When you are actually surrounded by green musical instruments, it has a calming effect as if you were looking at a forest or mountain.” Surrounding themselves with amulets and fluorescent fluids, the duo transcend into a musical imagination that connects scores, choreography and sculpture. Motions like crisscrossing the stage, feeling the presence of a perfectly plump leaf as it strikes a glass bowl, minerals slipping through fingers, all resonate to the soothing sounds of splashing water. There’s an intuitive yet methodical nature to this conceptual approach to composition reminiscent of the fluxus art movement. The pair’s initial motif was to play Henning Christiansen’s Green Music, whose score turned out to be nonexistent. By then, their green dream was already flourishing in their mind, retracing the path of so-called environmental music from Walter Tilgner and Knud Viktor to the likes of Kankyo-Ongaku and Hiroshi Yoshimura.

Since there is a strong visual element to their work, witnessing this captivating site specific performance may be imperative in understanding the range and influence of the colour green and the impact on the sounds they create together. On ‘Viridescens’, the first release by Cavaliere and Sauvage, we are invited to experience these recordings in a more musical context. Acting like an intermediary, the duo transport us to their special planet, enlivened by animal voices, wind, and aquatic creatures dancing across a luminous aurora.

Tracks A1, B1 and B2 were recorded by
Pratik Dasgupta at the Empty Gallery, Hong Kong in 2017.
Track A3 was initially composed for the installation work
≒ AO presented as part of the festival Infra, Tokyo in 2017.
Special thanks to the Empty Gallery, Hong Kong;
Q-O2, Brussels; Yuri Landman (electric xylophones)

Composed and arranged by
Francesco Cavaliere and Tomoko Sauvage
Mastered and cut by Noel Summerville
Artwork by Benjamin Kilchhofer

Viridescens

Francesco Cavaliere & Tomoko Sauvage - Viridescens (Preview)

Since his Beat Diary debut (a 12xLP box set comprising 365 beats recorded daily over the course of a year), Julian Sartorius has immersed himself in unique and ambitious projects - trekking the path not travelled to arrive at rhythmic life forms through found objects and prepared instruments. Equally as mighty are his two other escapades, the most recent being Locked Grooves - 112 beats cut as endless loops on vinyl spanning 56 dense 1.8 second compositions per side. Preceding that is his auditory hike into the mountains (Hidden Tracks: Basel - Genève), wading through and playing the landscapes around him like a lithophone.

While Julian’s previous releases focus on innovative and conceptual approaches to realizing an album, his new venture on Marionette (titled Mux) is a culmination of all his efforts thus far to mimic a synthesizer and drum machine. This seemingly impossible feat challenges Julian to experiment and develop a musical language that bridges the gap between organic timbres and electronic music. When listening to Mux, one might simply forget that the seemingly electronic sounds are only constructed organically via hand movements. The common thread in all his works thus far is that the drums are treated as resonant bodies - free to flow and form rhythm and harmony in spacetime.

This is Julian’s second outing for the label, the first being (the long out of print) Sulla Pelle with Valentina Magaletti in 2019. Other collaborations include prolific artists such as Matthew Herbert, Sylvie Courvoisier, Gyda Valtysdottir, Dimlite, Shahzad Ismaily and Dan Carey (Speedy Wunderground).

All music by Julian Sartorius
Mixed by Julian Sartorius and Jonas Cslovjecsek at Studio Suze, Biel
Mastered and cut by Noel Summerville
Artwork by Scott Daniel Ellison

Julian Sartorius - Mux (Preview)

Razen is the collective consciousness of core members Brecht Ameel and Kim Delcour, who since 2010 have realized themselves through virtuoistic and highly expressive improvisations with lesser-heard instruments. Experimenting with repetition of tones through controlled breathing and phrasing, Razen arrive at a synesthetic playground of auditory textures and colorful imagery.

The ensemble is carefully orchestrated for every occasion with the intent and desire to escape to environments unbeknownst to them, taking shelter in the fleeting ego-dissolving moments that arise, whether divine or disturbing.
While the formula of instrumentation and like-minded peers may appear mundane on paper, it’s Brecht and Kim’s outlook and imagination beyond musical references that’s the immeasurable catalyst to their peculiar pursuits. Conversations about paintings, books, or films ultimately manifest themselves into live performances or album recordings - with the philosophy of embracing playfulness and exploration through the lens of a child’s eye.

Only six collaborators have been invited to their inner circle to date. This is mainly attributed to the rarity of finding spiritual counterparts that are seeking freedom outside the confines of written musical scores. Trading notes and rhythms for strokes and color, the band embodies emotive and meditative drones that demand a deep listening state. Joined by Will Guthrie and Paul Garriau, Razen venture into their vision of Arcadia through Regression, proudly presented by Marionette. On this album, Brecht Ameel turns to his trusty prepared harmonium and celesta, while Kim Delcour controls air and breath on various wind and reed instruments. Featuring Will Guthrie on tuned and melodic percussion (timpani, glockenspiel, marimba, vibraphone), the recordings have a distinct flow and fluid movement when compared to some of Razen’s previous works where rhythm is taking a backseat. Hurdy-gurdy specialist, Paul Garriau, plays accompanying melodies and drones on Moon, Aether and Nebula.

The album's earthly elements deal with survival, timelessness, and simplicity; such as the life affirming rewards of finding refuge and the wonders of observing the interstellar. The unearthly elements pitch this narrative into the realm of mythology and superstition, in the hopes of trying to understand our primeval universe and thrive in the unknown. Regression also addresses Razen’s fascination with inhospitable places and how to adapt to the sorrows that come with this sort of brutalism. The resulting destination is a mind and time bending zone - one that can be reached by riding sound waves that transcend the past, future, and present.

Razen on this occasion is:

Brecht Ameel: harmonium, celesta
Kim Delcour: winds, reeds
Will Guthrie: percussion
Paul Garriau: hurdy-gurdy on Moon, Aether, and Nebula

Mastered and cut by Noel Summerville
Artwork by Scott Daniel Ellison

Recorded July 2020 in two days at two locations

Wood, River, Trout, and Sleep: recorded by Christophe Albertijn
Moon, Aether, and Nebula: recorded by Niels Latomme

Regression

Razen - Regression (Preview)

Max Loderbauer’s career in music spans the last 3 decades, yet he’s still managed to keep his listeners hungry by releasing only 3 solo albums to date. Two of those releases (Transparenz, 2013 and Donnerwetter, 2020) were on Tobias Freund’s label Non Standard Productions - his long time collaborator and Templehof studio mate. In between those releases, Loderbauer graced Marionette with Greyland in 2016, revealing a previously unheard youthful and sentimental side. Now in 2022, the seasoned mind voyager is back with Petrichor, making yet another rare and treasurable solo appearance.

Petrichor distills the elements of Loderbauer’s work that are fundamental to the initiation of the label. With his buchla, modular synth, and haken fingerboard, Loderbauer’s improvised studio maneuvers dilate into imagined journeys from glacial peaks into the exosphere. This is Maxi at his most exhilarating state, morphing through bittersweet and optimistic soundscapes to bleak moments of throbbing unease - all while maintaining a sense of grace and elegance. Petrichor is a reflection of Loderbauer’s impactful trips to the mountains, and returning from these summits with an electrifying urge to paint this mighty perspective. The harmonies and melodies on the tracks simulate emotional peaks and valleys, with vibration and rhythm rooted in the foundation of the sound, as though it's woven into the fabric of the fauna and flora.

Legendary collaborations like Vilod (with Ricardo Villalobos), the Moritz Von Oswald Trio, Non Standard Institute, Sun Electric in the early nineties, and the newly formed Ambiq ensemble have gained this unique artist the respect of the underground and avant garde scenes alike.

Petrichor

Max Loderbauer - Petrichor (Preview)

LYL Radio - Marionette Mix 
October 20, 2022

Tracklist:
01) Karl Lindh - Djurgårdsgatans Ögonblick [Low Company 2017] 
02) Michael Anklin - Pythia [Sais Records 2022]
03) Nikolaienko - Glass Flowers [Muscut 2022]
04) Drew Grag - 1 [Other People 2014]
05) Hiroshi Yoshimura - Feel [Air Records 1986 / Light In The Attic 2020]
06) Sofie Birch & Johan Carøe – Sugar And Air [ Stroom 2021]
07) Svarte Greiner - The Boat Was My Friend [Miasmah 2017]
08) Midori Takada - Mr. Henri Rousseau's Dream [Palto Flats & WRWTFWW 2017] 
09) Roger Doyle - Imperfect Memory [Wah Wah Wino 2022]
10) Olmo Devin - KW99 [Wah Wah Wino 2022]
11) Orphan Fairytale - De Beer [KRAAK 2020]
12) DSR Lines - Ontwaakt (startraag) [JJ Funhouse 2016]
13) Vlad Dobrovolski - Ultramarine XY (Feat P-SH) [Muscut 2022]  
14) Jack Chrysalis - Carrier2 [Mana 2022]
15) Tomaga - Bluest [Negative Days 2019 / Hands In The Dark 2022]

Marionette Mix - LYL Radio Oct 20

In the midst of a wave of hybridizing ambient, drone, folklore and experimental electroacoustic music, Roxane Métayer has gained a cult following with only a couple of releases to date. Following her debut album (Éclipse Des Ocelles) for Morc with a split EP and a limited cassette for Wabi-Sabi, Roxane now turns to Marionette with her intimate narrative based multi-instrumental recordings, a match made in the heavens if you ask us. With her violin, woodwind, voice and various effect pedals, Métayer takes the listener on a newfound journey into the ancient, medieval, and primordial.

Perl​é​e de s​è​ve is Métayer’s second full length, a sophomore to the critically acclaimed Éclipse Des Ocelles, where Métayer continues to sonically realize the map of the fictional habitats that inhabit her mind. Coming from a background of studying narration and different animation mediums, it’s no surprise that her recordings evoke vivid imagery and carry a trace of the environment they were conceived in. The instruments morph as extensions of her body and ultimately become new organs, a means of communicating these bio-memetic stories and creating a dialogue between herself and her surroundings. Meandering melodies intertwine with accompanying drones, mantra-like fragments and a handfeel percussion lend themselves as living and breathing elements in Roxane’s beguiling and spellbinding anecdotes.

Roxane is an observer of the world, her projects conceived from elements that inform her reality, such as the organic imagery and sounds of nature, then transforming that into a strangely familiar parallel universe that would not exist otherwise. Whether it's active research or taking her instruments to the forest, Métayer opens up her imagination by taking this mental journey to discover locations, creatures, and time periods then channeling that into her own fairy tales. The album and track titles act as a portal into those worlds, like chapters in a book where the protagonists are animalia, plantae, and fungi. As Métayer wrote in an interview: “Stories are a privileged way to create an awareness of a specific subject.”

About Roxane:
Roxane Métayer was born in France in 1992 and is currently based in Brussels developing herself as a multidisciplinary artist creating music, visual art, and sculptures. Métayer learnt to play the violin at a young age, and then continued her studies in Belgium at the Ecole de Recherches Graphiques, where she obtained her master’s degree in Speculative Narration, Narratives and Experiments. 

Recorded and mixed by Roxane Métayer
Mastered and cut by Noel Summerville
Artwork by Jon Joanis

Perlée de sève

Roxane Métayer - Perlée de sève (Preview)

Deer - String Theory EP 
Cat. no.: Marionette01 
Format: 12” Vinyl (180g) + Digital
Release Date: July 2014

String Theory

Deer - Spooky Action At A Distance

Deer - Holding On, Moving Up

Deer - Spooky Action (Dwig's Evocational Remix)

Deer - String Theory EP 
Cat. No.: Marionette01 
Format: 12” Vinyl (180g) + Digital
Release Date: July 2014

Deer - Emerging Wildlife

Laurine Frost - A Fading Virtue By Passing Time EP 
Cat. no.: Marionette02 
Format: 12” Vinyl (180g) + Digital
Release Date: June 2015
Distributed by: Honest Jon's
Illustration by Jake Fried

A Fading Virtue By Passing Time

Laurine Frost - Viburnum Opulus

Laurine Frost - Virtue

Laurine Frost - Marionette Manifesto

Maxim Wolzyn - Affirm, Deny, Reconcile EP 
Cat. no.: Marionette03 
Format: 12” Vinyl (180g) + Digital
Release Date: December 2015
Distributed by: Honest Jon's
Illustration by Jake Fried

Pulsating reconstructions of fragmented piano compositions, melded with gritty peripheral field recordings. Transcending from flashbacks, lingering between natural and industrial landscapes. Broken left-field electronica by Maxim Wolzyn for the third Marionette issue.

Affirm, Deny, Reconcile

Maxim Wolzyn - Stadt Aus Sand

Full track playback for Pitchfork - Read article here : bit.ly/Pitchfork_LM

Kilchhofer / Hainbach - Acosta
Cat. no.: Marionette-LM01
Format: 12” Vinyl EP (180g) + Digital
Release Date: May 2017
Artwork by Benjamin Kilchhofer
Distributed by : Rubadub Distribution

Little Mary strays from the pack, floating from one rock to another, in the midst of the narrow cascading river stream. Feeling the respirating leaves ebb and flow, she caught a glimpse of a pagan rain dance, a drum circle within a pocket of sunshine – where all mantras come to life.

This captivating split EP (titled ‘Acosta’), sees Kilchhofer’s second 12”, after his ‘Dersu’ EP on ‘Marionette’. The flip side features Hainbach who gets his work pressed on vinyl for the very first time – after a few tape releases, his latest being on Ted Butler & Cortini’s ‘Limited Interest’ label. This is truly something wonderful from two very gifted and unique artists.

Little Mary is a series by Marionette (a spin-off Marionette artists) – focused on split EPs and collaborative works.

Marionette-LM01

Acosta

Kilchhofer - Suckfuell [Marionette-LM01]

The Book Room

Kilchhofer - Hedha

Side D (Preview) - The Book Room

Side C (Preview) - The Book Room

Side B (Preview) - The Book Room

Side A (Preview) - The Book Room

Soundwalk Collective is a multi-disciplinary audio-visual collective founded by Stephan Crasneanscki, including members Simone Merli and Kamran Sadeghi.  

The Collective’s approach to composition combines anthropology, ethnography, non-linear narrative, psycho-geography, the observation of nature, and explorations in recording and synthesis. The source material of their works is always linked to specific locations, natural or artificial, and requires long periods of investigative travel and field work. 

Their recent projects include a collaboration with Patti Smith and reworking the archive of recordings on Jean-Luc Godard's film set. 

For the 8th Marionette publication, Soundwalk Collective present 'Death Must Die'. A sound piece that began in 2004 and ended up as a composition for the PS1 radio in NY. For this new release the Collective has revisited the piece in a more musical way. 

'Death Must Die' is based on Stephan Crasneanscki’s multiple visits to the sacred Indian city of Varanasi, originally known as Kashi and Banares. Sacred texts maintain that Varanasi isn’t even a city, but rather a lingam of celestial light, the subtle and cosmic form of Lord Shiva which manifested itself as a city for the sake of seekers of liberation. To bathe in the holy Ganga is to be purified of your sins. To die in Varanasi, is to attain liberation and to bring an end to the cycle of rebirth known as transmigration. 

Determined to capture the elusive reality of this ancient city, Stephan has day by day recorded and re-imagined his understanding of how to perceive the continuously moving stream of the holy Ganga; performing a simple form of sadhana, which request is to be very alert but also to allow your mind to be quiet, making it easier to slip into the streams, and into the current that both the city and the river are offering. 

‘Death Must Die' begins before the rising of the sun and reproduces the cycle of a day in Varanasi, going down the river that is believed to be the divinity descended to this Earth in the form of water. She grants us happiness and salvation. The composition attempts to emulate the vibration of Kashi that encourages the kind of interiority that enables a person to get a better perspective on reality than one might have, while constantly being in the current of human life. A vibration dedicated to eliminating the distinction between human and non-human, between alive and dead, between light and dark. 

This release is set to come out sometime in November on vinyl (distributed by Honest Jon's) and digital. A photograph shot by Stephan Crasneanscki from the great smashan - the great burning ghat of Manikarnika - of a man playing the flute, is printed with a Risograph and included as an insert. Also featured in it are complementary words extracted from the Nasadiya Sukta - also known as the Hymn of Creation, the 129th hymn of the 10th mandala of the Rigveda - that is the ancient Indian collection of Vedic Sanskrit hymns concerned with cosmology and the origin of the universe.

Marionette08

Kingdom of Kashi

Zinnen taken from Kilchhofer and Anklin's upcoming record on Marionette titled, Moto Perpetuo to be released in March 2019.

The Scandinavian photographer and filmmaker duo, Frode and Marcus, took a trip to Bali and Grand Canaria to shoot a clip for Zinnen. This melancholic dream sequence of a clip is premiering over at 4:3.

Watch Video Clip: https://vimeo.com/315931008

Moto Perpetuo

Kilchhofer Anklin - Zinnen [from Moto Perpetuo]

Pierre Bastien orchestrates his meccano marionettes on Tinkle Twang ‘n Tootle to form the charming imaginative ensemble that he’s been known for since the late 80s. 

Equal parts composer, inventor, mechanic, and performer - Bastien translates his imagination into instruments and compositions that defy any musical categories. Whether it’s preparing instruments like playing a trumpet underwater or through a kazoo, using belt-driven motors and mechanical components to perform cumbersome yet surprisingly musical operations on traditional instruments and household items, or using a fan to hit the strings of a kundi harp with flowing paper - Bastien’s love for tone, rhythm, noise and harmony is poetically reflected across his quite extensive oeuvre. 

Playful and melancholic, the sound sculptures that Bastien invents and plays with are partly inspired by the work of Raymond Roussel, a visionary French author who at the turn of the 20th century wrote a unique form of literature which inspired and guided artists from the surrealist and pataphysical movement and was declared by Michel Foucault as one of structuralism's founding fathers. On that note, the influence of literature and syntax on Bastien’s work cuts all the way through to the palindromes he uses for his track titles - which, much like his machines, infinitely loop. 

True to it’s adorable title, Tinkle Twang ‘n Tootle is a music box of unfolding whimsical structures, half broken rhythms, detuned harmonies, and fantastical sound collages that evoke a childlike sense of wonder and an urge to explore the spaces in between the sounds.

Tinkle Twang 'n Tootle

Pierre Bastien - Pet Step [from Tinkle Twang 'n Tootle]

Pierre Bastien - Don's Nod

Pierre Bastien - Pet Step

Pierre Bastien - May Yam / Wedded Dew

Pierre Bastien - Rail At A Liar

Pierre Bastien - Tenet

Pierre Bastien - Smart Lilt Rams

Valentina Magaletti and Julian Sartorius maintain a dialogue of irregular tempos and off-kilter percussion on their first collaborative record titled Sulla Pelle. 

Valentina is a force in the world of electronic and experimental music - working with Tom Relleen under Tomaga, jazz/pop band Vanishing Twin, the collective ‘UUUU’ with a couple of releases on Editions Mego, as well as various collaborations with the likes of Nicholas Jaar and Raime/Moin to name a couple. 

Julian Sartorius is a denizen in and of the beat – he's collaborated with artists such as Matthew Herbert, Shahzad Ismaily, Sylvie Courvoisier, as well as touring worldwide and widely through Europe with his solo show on the bill with the likes of Deerhoof, Faust, and Jaki Liebezeit. It’s apparent that time is not perceived in an ordinary manner by Julian – he's released a “Beat Diary” consisting of 365 beats and, on a daily basis, adds an element to his collage and modifies an 8-second audioloop under the project called Morph. More recently, he played percussion on the track ‘Firesmoke‘ on Kate Tempest‘s new record ‘The Book of Traps and Lessons‘. 

Sulla Pelle chisels away at your headspace at varying velocities with a harmonious flow - at times gently carving out channels that dramatically flood with syncopated kick drums and shifting propulsive beats. It’s as much about monotonous playing as it is about those moments where it seems as though every vertebra branches into tentacles and antennas ricocheting hits in foreign symbiosis.  

Rasping prepared drums that traverse the body into all sorts of ceremonial throttles, hedonistic arm flails, primal cheer at every incipient dynamic accent. This raw and sparse drumming and percussion record sees Valentina and Julian cueing each other in on interlocked ratchets and clanks with different mallets and metalwork from Malcom Catto’s studio on top of modular tinkering and occasional distant subdued ramblings.  

Sulla Pelle will be released end of August digitally and on vinyl with artwork by Benjamin Kilchhofer.

Valentina Magaletti & Julian Sartorius - Sobaka

Experimental trio Giraffe crystalize time on ‘Desert Haze’, their new LP on Marionette. Giraffe is the musical project of Sascha Demand (guitar), Juergen Hall (keys), and Charly Schoeppner (percussion). With only a couple of releases to date on the wonderful Meakusma imprint, little is known about Giraffe.  After letting go of other artistic projects, the trio now focuses solely on Giraffe by continuously searching for and finding their own unique language.

Sascha, Juergen and Charly have quite diverse musical backgrounds, though morphing into Giraffe they tower into one single composer. Their music is a critical statement, not in a political sense but rather an artistic one. The trio is mindful about what it means to create and how to position themselves as artists nowadays and in no way are concerned with the constant hassle of being en vogue and short-lived trends - affirming their rather rare and stoic artistic stance, an expression that has developed ever so naturally and refreshingly honest to witness.

On Desert Haze, they’ve created a vibrant and minimalistic tribal sound that feels inspired by the Saharan traditional music of the Tuareg, Jazz, and German psychedelic krautrock. Giraffe themselves list the radical music of the Viennese School (Schoenberg along with his pupils Berg and Webern) as well as the Köln School with its early electronic experiments as their main influence and inspiration. More precisely the composition process and the organization of musical material within space and time, where a conceptual and intellectual approach melds with an experimental yet expressive sound searching method.

Side A focuses on the trios studio work; it is built around tone color and pitch analysis of resonating prepared guitar sounds. Through a unique mixture of free improvisation and a serialism "rule set”, Giraffe develop instrumental layers and structures to form their tracks. Side B sees Giraffe playing more freely with a reduced setup - representative of what you may hear when listening to the trio live.

Desert Haze, along with its track-titles, showcases an almost mimetic approach to art. The haptic music grabs the listener not as a passive recipient but as an active resonant body to vibrate through. One can almost feel the Elements, pressure and heat forming a diamond, hypnotic overtones ringing through windy caves, shamanistic rhythms conjuring up mysterious and ancient landscapes - where the constant cycle of sedimentation and erosion reveals structures of fragile beauty - always gentle to the hand’s touch and the mind’s eye. 
Desert Haze will be released on vinyl and digitally end of October 2019. The Artwork by Benjamin Kilchhofer may very well be the entrance to the entombed sounds we hear on this album. Thanks Sascha, Juergen and Charly!

03 Heat

01 Drought

On this seven track album we hear MinaeMinae (alias Bastian Epple) playfully scurry through his dense soundscapes on a tightrope. The sounds lying somewhere on the crossroads of psychedelic trance, exotica, ambient and melodic dance music – veering further off orbit with nontypical rhythms and dystopian percussive patterns.

MinaeMinae understands musical material similar to documentary footage which he would cut up, repitch, and rearrange freely. Most of his tracks are a mix of analog, synthetic sounds and recordings of ethnic percussion and guitar. Recently Bastian began experimenting with modular synthesis and self made tape echoes - seeking a more reduced and minimal composition style compared to his earlier quite whimsical tunes.

Growing up in a small village in southern Germany, Bastian was never interested in kitschy folk sounds that everyone would mindlessly clap and sing along to, rather he took solace in the time he would spend delving into patterns and repetitions that pleased him. His guitar strumming and what sounded to his mother like a young Philip Glass on a cheap Casio keyboard encouraged little Epple to continue on this self-taught path of developing his musical language. He then started to experiment with a tape recorder and layering sounds with non-musical samples, which his former village friends found too weird – then to eventually working with a small freeware DAW. Bastian went on to study Media Art at the Center for Art and Media (ZKM) in Karlsruhe – initially enrolled in music but the frustration and doubt of not being able to produce the music he wanted led him into film and documentary media. During his studies, Bastian was living with Florian Meyers (Don’t DJ) for several years where they would philosophize life and music into the wee hours – he encouraged Bastian to start sharing what he’s been quietly working on all these years and slowly emerge from this anonymity which eventually led to his first release on Human Pitch last fall.

Disproportionate forms, color changes, backdrops weaved into the foreground, all lay the dense earth for Gestrüpp through Benjamin Kilchhofer’s artwork.

Distributed through Honest Jon’s.

MinaeMinae - Gestrüpp (Preview)

After fifteen years and two astounding releases, Twinkle³, the trio comprised of Richard Scott, David Ross, and Clive Bell complete their cosmos themed electroacoustic trilogy with the ‘Minor Planets’ LP. Their firstling ‘Let’s Make a Solar System’ (ini itu, 2009) introduced a collage method working with individually generated and recorded sounds. In contrast, their second album ‘Debris in Lower Earth Orbit’ (Cusp Editions, 2015), was recorded in a single session and gravitates more towards the spontaneity of their experimental improvisations. This third album is all about the unique synergies the group discovered in combining improvisations with studio and Musique concrète techniques.

Their shared love towards music from Lee Perry to Noh Theatre via Karlheinz Stockhausen and King Sunny Ade lead them into a singular musical universe where all their various influences can coexist and interact. Aleatoric analogue sequencing, fluttering melodies and dub treatments condense into a distinct and emotive narrative that takes us on an exhilarating hyperspace cruise to the outer reaches.

Clive Bell is a virtuoso of the Shakuhachi. His aesthetic takes us on a timbral journey between noise and pitch, expressed and phrased rhythmically by the contour of human breath. Richard Scott and David Ross share a background in free improvisation and have pioneered new approaches to rhythm using self designed synthesizer systems. Together they move seamlessly between rhythm, noise, dissonance and melody in a spirit of wonder and optimism to produce original music that is both life affirming and uplifting.

The album artwork captures the feeling of peering through the vacuum of space and catching a rare glimpse of the mysterious alien biomes, fossils, and silhouettes cast by dwarf planets, asteroids, Kuiper belt, and other trans-Neptunian objects.

Minor Planets

Twinkle³ - Minor Planets [Full Album]

Maestro melodist Christophe Petchanatz (aka Klimperei) and all around music fanatic David Fenech engage remotely in a repetitive exchange of recordings and overdubs on their debut album titled ‘Rainbow de Nuit’, sporadically spanning over the last decade. Evocations of experimental and improvised jazz, chansonesque songs, bluesy folk, and outsider music undulate harmoniously across the record. From music boxes and walkie-talkies down to plastic straws, plucking various stringed instruments such as the charrango and banjo, kazoos and snake-charmer ocarina and flutes, all the way through the sweet accordion and melodica, found and traditional tuned percussion - there is far from a shortage of sound sources on this freakishly inviting record. What germinates as an imaginative and emotional chord progression played by Klimperei, evolves with Fenech layering additional recordings, which would then find their way back home to Klimperei yet again, and so on, and so forth. This recursive compositional and improvisational loop, combined with Fenech’s musique-concrete-like mixing and editing techniques, transforms the acoustic recordings by way of compression, saturation, and reverberation or simple pitch changes - resulting in the duo’s recordings seemingly sound like they may very well be an octet in real time. While the majority of the recordings have been ping-ponged remotely, David and Christophe unite under one roof to record the closing track of the album.

The pieces presented on ‘Rainbow de Nuit’ treat the ears to a carousel ride waltzing through a multiverse made up of surrealist puppet theaters, dramatic film noir act changes, and a mosaic of polyphonic instruments and toys alike. In other words, a score to a fable brought to life with haunting yet charming melodies and occasional hallucinatory voices reminiscent of laughter and infantile epiphanies which we hear on Tarzan en Tasmanie and Madrigal for Lola. This is taken a step further by Fenech, to a brief libretto of incomprehensible tongues on Pocarina. Amid the mysterious and dark (Septième Ciel and Rugit Le Coeur) also lies tender and simple compositions (Rainbow de Nuit and Chevalier Gambette), murky suspenseful melancholy (Levy Attend and Eno Ennio), and casually slipping into pensive psychedelic backdrops (Un Cercueil à Deux Places) - forming a colorful blend of sounds. A world of echoes. A tale of tales. One persistent earworm that you’ll likely be whistling and humming along to on a first listen.

Rainbow de Nuit

David Fenech & Klimperei - Rainbow De Nuit [Full Album]

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