Inconvenient – new tape out on Industrial Coast

recording, release

•front_flattened-X4-PRINT-WALLRAF-07-V-2020

The four track tape album Inconvenient is now available on Industrial Coast.

C35. Jcard. Onbody labels & presentation envelope.

These recordings were assembled in a rather inconvenient way during a period in 2019 when the audio interface on DW’s computer did not work properly. All sounds had to be recorded on mobile devices and then transferred to a DAW for mixing.

The pieces revolve around impossibilities – transducing and transposing inaudible events into the hearable spectrum and mixing unrelated audio from different locations to create the simulacrum of a place that never really existed.

The détournements of song titles by Bob Dylan and Don van Vliet act as a reminder to the possibility of deconstructing your own memories and archives.

The aesthetic choices made during the recording process were influenced by the collage work Une Semaine de Bonté by Max Ernst.

Radiophonic lecture on noise

lecture, radio, release

amorphes silizium

Radiophonische Vorlesung über Noise: ein Begriff, der die Grenzen seiner eigenen Definitionen sprengt und ein semantisches Rauschen in den Apparaten der begrifflichen Sprache freisetzt. Als Lärm, Geräusch, Rauschen und Störung durchquert er verschiedene Wissensgebiete, insistiert in ihren Zwischenräumen und zieht neue Verbindungslinien. In diesem Beitrag wird Noise als chaotisches Bindeglied zwischen Diskursen der Akustik, Philosophiegeschichte, Musikwissenschaft, Politik, Thermodynamik und Informationstheorie vorgestellt.


– – –
Ein Projekt des Online Musicking Call Mai / Juni 2020 des Verbands für aktuelle Musik Hamburg, gefördert von der Behörde für Kultur und Medien Hamburg.
– – –

[Radiophonic lecture on Noise: a term that breaks the boundaries of its own definitions and releases a semantic noise in the apparatuses of conceptual language. As hissing, sonic disturbance, entropy and acoustic violence it traverses different fields of knowledge, insists in their interstices and draws new connecting lines. In this feature, noise is presented as a chaotic link between discourses of acoustics, history of philosophy, musicology, politics, thermodynamics and information theory.]

 

Rosaceae – Efia| LP out now

release, text

This Pudel Produkte/Noisexistance co-release of Rosaceae’s first LP is now officially available:

rosaceae efia

Written and produced by Rosaceae, 2019
First performed on March 29, 2019 at the
Noisexistance Festival at Kampnagel, Hamburg
Mastered by Rashad Becker
Additional Mixing by Anders Fallesen
Additional Vocals by Jesseline Preach, Mazlum Nergiz
Liner Notes by David Wallraf
Layout by Markus Izzo
Released by Pudel Produkte
(pudelprodukte.bandcamp.com)
In cooperation with Noisexistance
(noisexistance.com)
Released June 26, 2020

Wallraf/Jetzmann joint-release

release
Wahrschau
Nizza NY

This collaboration was originally intended as a live performance for Hamburg’s Blurred Edges festival in May. Now two spoken word/noise tracks are available as a joint-release on Jetzmann’s and my respective Bandcamp accounts. The project started with Jetzmann providing lyrics and me developing soundtracks based on the texts, using material recorded during sessions originally intended as preparations the performance.

Wahrschau is a reaction to the current pandemic situation, Nizza NY is a travelogue. English translations are provided with the downloads.

11.06. – Stubnitz – Stream

live, video

First concert since February is coming up – live show plus artist talk with TinTin Patrone at the new Plattenfroster TV by MS Stubnitz in Hamburg, streamed live via twitch/klub_forward on thursday, June 6th at 20:15 (18:15 UTC).

plattenfroster stubnitz

Of course it’s not a real concert. That’s still cancelled. Ambivalent feelings on the whole streaming thing: is noise a good metaphor for social distancing or is it totally pointless to play a noise show without physical presence?

A noise show doesn’t produce a community-vibe like other musical genres do – not much of dancing, sing-along etc. – it tends to isolate the attending persons in their own bodies by excess of volume. Paul Hegarty writes in Noise/Music – A History:

„The listener at a loud noise event is taken out of the subject body to be dumped back into embodiment, lowered into something like ecstatic noise consumption. The mistake would be to imagine any lasting freedom emerging from that ecstasy. It is certainly more ecstatic than pleasant, and closer to the sublime than the beautiful, with which it cannot share anything. Like Kant’s sublime, though, it is also a framing of the moment the self is lost as the rational reflection on the moment the self was lost.“ (p. 147)

But if noise produces this awareness that is centerd on the self in an almost solipsistic way, at the same time it can emphasize that which is the basis of any communal experience: the inbetween, the space of the inter between bodies, persons, individuals. By filling the room with excessive noise, it can create a space where a group can exist without being centered on a sonic or semantic structure like rhythm, melody or lyrics. Imagine a noise show where every single body finds its own rhythm and structure in the chaos – a community without identity.

It could be argued that noise itself creates a paradoxical inter between social distance and community. Watching a live stream of a noise show seems like a metaphorical comment on this paradox.

Difficult Music/William S. Burroughs

radio

difficult music ballard burroughs

After a two month hiatus, Markus Izzo’s excellent radio show Difficult Music has been back on the air since February, both as a broadcast on Radio Z and as a stream on Hallo:Radio. The archive of 255 episodes so far is accessible via Mixcloud.

The topic of the latest broadcast is the psychological effect of lockdown and for this I was honoured to produce a short radio play based on William S. Burroughs text The Danish Operation. The short story was first published in 1964 in Arcade magazine, for this piece I used a German translation by Carl Weissner. The seven minute audio track can be found here.

 

 

culture’s cancelled #5

live, recording

nemo

This is the 5th and final part in a series of live recordings from before the cancellation of public life… Recorded at Berlin’s Zum Limit on February 21st. Let’s see what happens next. Maybe when everybody’s done with grief work for all the cancelled events we can agree to burn down Netflix and Spotify and expropriate Amazon. When there’s no more room in the internet, the dead will walk the Earth.