Karl HHV Records 41 Items

When PAINKILLER started in 1991, their first two albums “Guts Of A Virgin” and “Buried Secrets” (both released on extreme metal label Earache) were heavy attacks blending grindcore and free jazz that brought together the musical backgrounds of the three protagonists: drummer MICK HARRIS had just left grindcore legend NAPALM DEATH, JOHN ZORN explored new extremities with his NAKED CITY project while BILL LASWELL had as a member of roaring free jazz quartet LAST EXIT ( PETER BRÖTZMANN / SONNY SHARROCK / RONALD SHANNON JACKSON) proven that he was not only a visionary producer but also an accomplished bassist. But it is their 1994 double album “Execution Ground” that remains the opus magnum of the brilliant trio: ZORN’s unmistakable shrieking saxophone, HARRIS’ pounding drums and LASWELL’s growling sub-bass lines were given heavy mixing desk treatment, resulting in extended tracks that are no less intense than their early works but display the full range of the musicians’ skills. Soaked with reverb and delay, avant-jazz, grindcore, dub and ambient melt into eerie tracks of haunting atmospheres - even more so in the ambient versions of disc 2.
Mastered and cut by RASHAD BECKER at D&M Berlin, “Execution Ground” is now available on vinyl for the very first time as 2x 180gr LP incl. a download code and insert in a limited edition of 500 items.

Purple Trap, the powerful trio of Keiji Haino (voice, guitar), Bill Laswell on bass and Rashied ALI (drums), recorded live on stage at The Stone. Recorded in december 2005, this furious live album by what can easily be called a super group remained unreleased till in 2023 Bill Laswell made it accessible in a rough-mixed digital version for his bandcamp subscribers program exclusively. For this vinyl version, the music has been newly mixed by Dirk Dresselhaus (SchneiderTM) and mastered / cut by RUY Mariné at Dubplates & Mastering Berlin. Purple Trap, the trio of Laswell / Haino / ALI, reunited for this one-off gig as part of a 5-day- Haino-festival at John Zorn’s venue „The Stone“, seven years after its only album Decided ... Already The Motionless Heart Of Tranquility, Tangling The Prayer Called "I" had been recorded (released on Tzadik in 1999). The six untitled tracks (+ one as digital bonus) deliver what can be expected from such musical masters: Rashied ALI, iconic free jazz drummer who played with John and Alice Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, Sonny Rollins, James Blood Ulmer and countless more, is all drums, from quiet tiny sounds to high-energy rhythm patterns. Keiji Haino, one of the most prolific artists of the Japanese experimental / noise scene for almost 50 years now, switches between truculent guitar splatters and full-on psychedelic outbursts. Bill Laswell, who as producer and musician created a massive body of work in fiields as diverse as ambient, world music, funk, jazz (and often hybrids of these), has proven his mastery in improvisation in projects like Massacre, Painkiller or (early) Material and provides the low-end grounding with his signicature bass sound, or adds effect-laden ornaments to the whole. An overdue addition to a very small body of work by a clearly under-documented supergroup!

"The event horizon gives the black hole its size; behind it hides the singularity. And the more extended it is, the more massive the black hole is. But the event horizon is also invisible; if matter or light passes through it, there is no turning back.“ (Prof. Dr. Michael Kramer, Max-Planck-Institut f ür Radioastronomie) Ereignishorizont is Schneider TM’s new and with a duration of over 80 minutes truly epic album: experimental guitar, technological innovations and excursions into musical territories beyond the usual. Available as 2x LP / 2x CD / DL.

11th album by the one-of-a-kind collective: psychedelia and free form jazz (not jazz) trigger a sophisticated excursion into weird textures with drastic turns. Dislocated dense music full of secret connections!

For her new and most radical album »Electroacoustic Works for Halldorophone«, Martina Bertoni used the electronic instrument at EMS Stockholm to create four pieces that are massive in scale and incredibly intimate, sonically restrained and emotionally overwhelming—almost ambient and always demanding your full attention. Martina Bertoni returns to Karlrecords with »Electroacoustic Works for Halldorophone,« her most radical album yet. The foundation for the four electroacoustic pieces was laid during a residency at Stockholm’s legendary Elektronmusikstudion (ems) that the Berlin-based cellist and composer used to explore the curious instrument, originally designed by Halldór Úlfarsson in 2008, as an algorithmic system in order to examine tunings and the mathematical relationships between harmonic frequencies. Aiming to analyse and understand their interaction beyond the composer’s control, Bertoni sought to engage more deeply with the concepts of time, tuning, and, most importantly, control. Accordingly, her four »Electroacoustic Works for Halldorophone« seem both massive in scale and incredibly intimate, sonically restrained and emotionally overwhelming— almost ambient and always demanding your full attention. While the halldorophone—famously used by Hildur Guðnadóttir for her »Joker« score—roughly resembles a cello and can be played like one, it is an electronic instrument. The vibration of its strings is being picked up, amplified, and then routed through a speaker. This creates a feedback loop that becomes increasingly complex depending on how much gain is added to individual strings. Úlfarsson gave Bertoni a carte blanche for how to handle the instrument, but she stresses that she relied on »minimal interventions—some string strumming and plucking« that set the interactions of different sounds and frequencies into motion. »I decided to not approach it like a cellist would,« she explains. »Instead I used it as a kind of generative organ by turning it into a feedback machine, with tuned feedback triggering more feedback depending on the tuning, which was based on tetraphonic scales that I could apply on the four main strings as well as the sympathetic group of strings.« Bertoni recorded the material in the EMS studio, later composing and arranging the four complex pieces in her home in Berlin, after which they were mixed and mastered by Ciaran O’Shea. While this can be considered a compositional abstraction process, traces of her concrete work as a KR118_Bertoni - Halldorophone_infosheet.pdf performer are firmly ingrained in the music. »The halldorophone doesn’t have a line output, just a double set of speakers, which is why I recorded all sounds with two microphones in the EMS studio,« she explains. »That’s why there’s plenty of breathing sounds here and there—label owner Thomas Herbst and I jokingly refer to the album as my ›chamber music record‹.« And indeed, there is a striking sense of intimacy to these four pieces throughout which individual sounds, harmonic frequencies, and even subtle rhythmic figures seem to move both on their own accord but also according to a underlying vision that steers their interplay. Indeed, »Electroacoustic Works for Halldorophone« is an album built on and marked by contrasts. The soothing polylogue of single sounds in the higher register on opener »Omen in G« is counterpointed by massive bass drones, while the second piece, »Nominal in D,« plays a cunning game of repetition and difference by combining thick textures with all kinds of rhythmic elements. »Fades in C«—the longest of the four pieces, clocking in at 17 minutes—unlocks the emotional potentials of the sonic qualities of the halldorophone, sounding at once serene and anthemic, and »Organon in D« closes the album by underscoring how Bertoni’s unconventional approach allows her to seamlessly transform simple, quiet tones into complex, towering walls of sound. (Kristoffer Cornils)

For the first time a full album with recordings based on Yoko ONO’s 1964 collection of texts, event scores and drawings “Grapefruit”, a foundational cornerstone of what became known as conceptual art, and enveloping the orbits of Fluxus and experimental music. Performed by THE Great Learning Orchestra which has during the 25 years of its existence worked with Gavin Bryars, Terry Riley, Pauline Oliveros, J.G. Thirlwell, Arnold Dreyblatt a.o. Originally self-published in 1964 in a limited edition of 500 copies under Yoko ONO’s own imprint, Wunternaum Press, and later reprinted in expanded editions, the collection of over 230 texts, event scores and drawings that comprise “Grapefruit” has long been considered a foundational text in what became known as Conceptual Art, and envelops the orbit of Fluxus and experimental music. Though comparisons to John Cage may seem obvious, ONO’s first attempts at textual composition actually pre-date her first encounter with the American composer by around a decade and have evolved free from Cage’s influence. Another factor that sets these scores apart from associated forms of verbal notation from the same period (like LA Monte YOUNG’s “An Anthology Of Chance Operations” – with a contribution from ONO - or George BRECHT’s “Water Yam”, both from 1963) is ONO’s ambivalence towards the necessity, or even possibility, of their physical realization – instead the idea being that the realization should take place in the mind of the reader (“Music of the Mind” is also the title of the current traveling exhibition which opened at Tate Modern, London in 2024). However, a number of pieces from “Grapefruit” function very well as performance or event scores, with several of them becoming mainstays of ONO’s concerts and performances throughout the early to mid 1960s. But hardly any performances have been recorded and released on disc (one notable exception being Sonic YOUTH’s recording of “Voice Piece For Soprano”) – so, 60 years after “Grapefruit” first appeared, “Selected Recordings From Grapefruit” is the very first full album of pieces selected from the many sections of the book. The sonic realizations presented here are of a number of different kinds, encompassing studio- based ensemble performances, but also location, environmental and field recordings (and at times combinations of these), as the scores themselves dictate, and for the most part recorded live and acoustically, such that the performances, actions, situations and environments that you hear are KR100_ONO_TGLO_Grapefruit_infotext.pdf real. The accompanying booklet with rare performance photos and some original typewritten scores from ONO’s personal archive also includes the text instructions for each piece - thus allowing the listener to make a connection between the imaginative engagement and creative activity executed by the performing members of THE Great Learning Orchestra and the resulting recording. With 20 tracks and approx. 85 minutes duration, “Selected Recordings From Grapefruit” finally brings to ear some of the most important and influential 20 th century avantgarde art! Yoko Ono is an artist, musician, composer and peace activist, born in Tokyo, Japan in 1933. She was active with the international avant-garde music, art, and performance scenes of the early 1960s, organising a series of important events in her New York loft, also active in Tokyo and London, and later becoming a key figure within the Fluxus network of artists. Her 1964 book of instructions, drawings and texts Grapefruit, is regarded as a cornerstone of what became known as conceptual art. Her solo albums, including Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band (1970), Fly (1971) and Approximately Infinite Universe (1973) have proved to be highly influential on the emergence of punk, post-punk, new wave, noise and a wide range of later experimental popular musics. She has staged many high-profile campaigns to promote world peace, including the international WAR IS Over! If you want it billboard campaign (1969), and the proclamation of the conceptual state of Nutopia (1973), in collaboration with John Lennon, and the Imagine Peace Tower, near Reykyavik, Iceland (2007). As an artist, she has exhibited at numerous galleries, museums and institutions internationally. In recent years, this has included a series of retrospective exhibitions, including “yes Yoko Ono” at Japan Society, New York (2001), “Yoko Ono: One Woman Show, 1960 – 1971” at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2015) and “Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind” at Tate Modern, London (2024). The Great Learning Orchestra is an ensemble based in Stockholm, Sweden, which has been organising performances, workshops and events for 25 years. Essentially a network where musicians and artists come together to perform exploratory music, which centres around practices of listening. The ensemble is self-selecting from a list of over 100 musicians for each new project. The GLO was founded in 1999 by Leif Jordansson and Pelle Halvarsson and since its inception has performed a large variety of contemporary and experimental works. The group has worked with Gavin Bryars, Terry Riley and Pauline Oliveros, and in recent years has collaborated with and commissioned new work from J.G. Thirlwell, Arnold Dreyblatt, Christina Campanella and Leah Asher amongst others. Several musicians, composers and artists have also contributed to the A4 Project, which investigates the possibilities of scores written to fit on a single side of A4 paper. The orchestra’s name is derived from British composer Cornelius Cardew’s work The Great Learning, a large-scale experiment in social music making, and the ensemble is in many ways influenced by this legacy of openness, experimentation and participation

This album is disc V "Late Works" of the 5 LP / 5 CD box set "Electroacoustic Works" that celebrates the 100th anniversary of IANNIS XENAKIS (on May 29th, 2022), one of the most influential 20th century avantgarde composers. All tracks have been newly mixed by longtime zeitkratzer sound engineer MARTIN WURMNEST and mastered by RASHAD BECKER and finally reveal their full sonic range and dynamics.

„Electroacoustic Works“ celebrates the 100th anniversary of Iannis Xenakis (on May 29th, 2022), one of the most influential 20th century avantgarde composers. All tracks have been newly mixed by longtime zeitkratzer sound engineer Martin Wurmnest and mastered by Rashad Becker and finally reveal their full sonic range and dynamics. Booklet with English / German liner notes by Reinhold Friedl (zeitkratzer) and rare photos from the Xenakis archive.

Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001) is one of the most important composers of the 20th century avantgarde whose influence on music can be traced to the present day – not only in the world of conservatory-trained composers but also in various streams of current non-academic underground aesthetics such as experimental electronic music, noise and industrial.

After he arrived in Paris in 1947, Xenakis not only studied composition with Messiaen and later became a member of the famous GRM (Groupe de recherches musicales), he also worked as assistant to the famous architect LE Corbusier and realized a.o. the Philips Pavilion for the World Exhibition in Brussels 1958. His compositions often are based on mathematical principles which give his music an unprecedented aesthetic and “shocking otherness” (The Guardian). Although Xenakis also composed for orchestra (his most famous works are “Metastasis“, “Pithoprakta” and “Terretektorh”), electronic music became his way for exploring new ideas and concepts and to develop new techniques like a graphic interface for sound synthesis or later, when computers were easier accessible, his so-called "stochastic synthesis" (Gendy 3, S.709 > Disc V, Late Works). Xenakis’ first electroacoustic pieces (Disc I) like “Diamorphoses” or “Bohor” turned out groundbreaking works while the latter even caused, as Michel Chion put it, the “greatest scandal of electroacoustic music” on the occasion of its performance 1968 at the GRM in Paris.

His so-called „Polytopes“ (Discs II - IV) were overwhelming multimedia performances with especially designed architectures, laser and light shows etc. where sometimes up to several hundred loudspeakers were used to move the sounds in space. For example his most famous composition “Persepolis”, commissioned by the Persian Shah, premiered in 1971 in Shiraz- Persepolis (Iran) as a performance including light-tracks, laser beams, groups of children walking around with torches and 59 loudspeakers to project the music in an open-air situation.

The most radical aspects of sound can be found in Xenakis' late work and its merciless reduction to harsh, almost ruthless sound synthesis. In the early nineties, he devoted himself to the concept of a composing machine: a machine that designs everything independently and calculates the finished piece, the algorithm is the work.

For the first time, the complete electroacoustic works of Xenakis are now available on record the truly overdue testimony and legacy of a restless investigator and explorer of sound. Years of source studies and comparative research by zeitkratzer director Reinhold Friedl, in collaboration with sound engineer Martin Wurmnest, made these critically reflected stereo mixes possible, which were appropriately mastered by Rashad Becker and which, in addition to the aspect of fidelity to the source, put the listener in the center. Xenakis' adventurous music can now finally be enjoyed in its full sonic range and dynamic.

To quote The Wire’s review from May 2018:
“This is the definitive Persepolis“

This album is disc IV "Les Polytopes III" of the 5 LP / 5 CD box set "Electroacoustic Works" that celebrates the 100th anniversary of IANNIS XENAKIS (on May 29th, 2022), one of the most influential 20th century avantgarde composers. All tracks have been newly mixed by longtime zeitkratzer sound engineer MARTIN WURMNEST and mastered by RASHAD BECKER and finally reveal their full sonic range and dynamics.

„Electroacoustic Works“ celebrates the 100th anniversary of Iannis Xenakis (on May 29th, 2022), one of the most influential 20th century avantgarde composers. All tracks have been newly mixed by longtime zeitkratzer sound engineer Martin Wurmnest and mastered by Rashad Becker and finally reveal their full sonic range and dynamics. Booklet with English / German liner notes by Reinhold Friedl (zeitkratzer) and rare photos from the Xenakis archive.

Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001) is one of the most important composers of the 20th century avantgarde whose influence on music can be traced to the present day – not only in the world of conservatory-trained composers but also in various streams of current non-academic underground aesthetics such as experimental electronic music, noise and industrial.

After he arrived in Paris in 1947, Xenakis not only studied composition with Messiaen and later became a member of the famous GRM (Groupe de recherches musicales), he also worked as assistant to the famous architect LE Corbusier and realized a.o. the Philips Pavilion for the World Exhibition in Brussels 1958. His compositions often are based on mathematical principles which give his music an unprecedented aesthetic and “shocking otherness” (The Guardian). Although Xenakis also composed for orchestra (his most famous works are “Metastasis“, “Pithoprakta” and “Terretektorh”), electronic music became his way for exploring new ideas and concepts and to develop new techniques like a graphic interface for sound synthesis or later, when computers were easier accessible, his so-called "stochastic synthesis" (Gendy 3, S.709 > Disc V, Late Works). Xenakis’ first electroacoustic pieces (Disc I) like “Diamorphoses” or “Bohor” turned out groundbreaking works while the latter even caused, as Michel Chion put it, the “greatest scandal of electroacoustic music” on the occasion of its performance 1968 at the GRM in Paris.

His so-called „Polytopes“ (Discs II - IV) were overwhelming multimedia performances with especially designed architectures, laser and light shows etc. where sometimes up to several hundred loudspeakers were used to move the sounds in space. For example his most famous composition “Persepolis”, commissioned by the Persian Shah, premiered in 1971 in Shiraz- Persepolis (Iran) as a performance including light-tracks, laser beams, groups of children walking around with torches and 59 loudspeakers to project the music in an open-air situation.

The most radical aspects of sound can be found in Xenakis' late work and its merciless reduction to harsh, almost ruthless sound synthesis. In the early nineties, he devoted himself to the concept of a composing machine: a machine that designs everything independently and calculates the finished piece, the algorithm is the work.

For the first time, the complete electroacoustic works of Xenakis are now available on record the truly overdue testimony and legacy of a restless investigator and explorer of sound. Years of source studies and comparative research by zeitkratzer director Reinhold Friedl, in collaboration with sound engineer Martin Wurmnest, made these critically reflected stereo mixes possible, which were appropriately mastered by Rashad Becker and which, in addition to the aspect of fidelity to the source, put the listener in the center. Xenakis' adventurous music can now finally be enjoyed in its full sonic range and dynamic.

To quote The Wire’s review from May 2018:
“This is the definitive Persepolis“

This album is disc III "Les Polytopes II" of the 5 LP / 5 CD box set "Electroacoustic Works" that celebrates the 100th anniversary of IANNIS XENAKIS (on May 29th, 2022), one of the most influential 20th century avantgarde composers. All tracks have been newly mixed by longtime zeitkratzer sound engineer MARTIN WURMNEST and mastered by RASHAD BECKER and finally reveal their full sonic range and dynamics.

„Electroacoustic Works“ celebrates the 100th anniversary of Iannis Xenakis (on May 29th, 2022), one of the most influential 20th century avantgarde composers. All tracks have been newly mixed by longtime zeitkratzer sound engineer Martin Wurmnest and mastered by Rashad Becker and finally reveal their full sonic range and dynamics. Booklet with English / German liner notes by Reinhold Friedl (zeitkratzer) and rare photos from the Xenakis archive.

Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001) is one of the most important composers of the 20th century avantgarde whose influence on music can be traced to the present day – not only in the world of conservatory-trained composers but also in various streams of current non-academic underground aesthetics such as experimental electronic music, noise and industrial.

After he arrived in Paris in 1947, Xenakis not only studied composition with Messiaen and later became a member of the famous GRM (Groupe de recherches musicales), he also worked as assistant to the famous architect LE Corbusier and realized a.o. the Philips Pavilion for the World Exhibition in Brussels 1958. His compositions often are based on mathematical principles which give his music an unprecedented aesthetic and “shocking otherness” (The Guardian). Although Xenakis also composed for orchestra (his most famous works are “Metastasis“, “Pithoprakta” and “Terretektorh”), electronic music became his way for exploring new ideas and concepts and to develop new techniques like a graphic interface for sound synthesis or later, when computers were easier accessible, his so-called "stochastic synthesis" (Gendy 3, S.709 > Disc V, Late Works). Xenakis’ first electroacoustic pieces (Disc I) like “Diamorphoses” or “Bohor” turned out groundbreaking works while the latter even caused, as Michel Chion put it, the “greatest scandal of electroacoustic music” on the occasion of its performance 1968 at the GRM in Paris.

His so-called „Polytopes“ (Discs II - IV) were overwhelming multimedia performances with especially designed architectures, laser and light shows etc. where sometimes up to several hundred loudspeakers were used to move the sounds in space. For example his most famous composition “Persepolis”, commissioned by the Persian Shah, premiered in 1971 in Shiraz- Persepolis (Iran) as a performance including light-tracks, laser beams, groups of children walking around with torches and 59 loudspeakers to project the music in an open-air situation.

The most radical aspects of sound can be found in Xenakis' late work and its merciless reduction to harsh, almost ruthless sound synthesis. In the early nineties, he devoted himself to the concept of a composing machine: a machine that designs everything independently and calculates the finished piece, the algorithm is the work.

For the first time, the complete electroacoustic works of Xenakis are now available on record the truly overdue testimony and legacy of a restless investigator and explorer of sound. Years of source studies and comparative research by zeitkratzer director Reinhold Friedl, in collaboration with sound engineer Martin Wurmnest, made these critically reflected stereo mixes possible, which were appropriately mastered by Rashad Becker and which, in addition to the aspect of fidelity to the source, put the listener in the center. Xenakis' adventurous music can now finally be enjoyed in its full sonic range and dynamic.

To quote The Wire’s review from May 2018:
“This is the definitive Persepolis“

This album is disc II "Les Polytopes I" of the 5 LP / 5 CD box set "Electroacoustic Works" that celebrates the 100th anniversary of IANNIS XENAKIS (on May 29th, 2022), one of the most influential 20th century avantgarde composers. All tracks have been newly mixed by longtime zeitkratzer sound engineer MARTIN WURMNEST and mastered by RASHAD BECKER and finally reveal their full sonic range and dynamics.

„Electroacoustic Works“ celebrates the 100th anniversary of Iannis Xenakis (on May 29th, 2022), one of the most influential 20th century avantgarde composers. All tracks have been newly mixed by longtime zeitkratzer sound engineer Martin Wurmnest and mastered by Rashad Becker and finally reveal their full sonic range and dynamics. Booklet with English / German liner notes by Reinhold Friedl (zeitkratzer) and rare photos from the Xenakis archive.

Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001) is one of the most important composers of the 20th century avantgarde whose influence on music can be traced to the present day – not only in the world of conservatory-trained composers but also in various streams of current non-academic underground aesthetics such as experimental electronic music, noise and industrial.

After he arrived in Paris in 1947, Xenakis not only studied composition with Messiaen and later became a member of the famous GRM (Groupe de recherches musicales), he also worked as assistant to the famous architect LE Corbusier and realized a.o. the Philips Pavilion for the World Exhibition in Brussels 1958. His compositions often are based on mathematical principles which give his music an unprecedented aesthetic and “shocking otherness” (The Guardian). Although Xenakis also composed for orchestra (his most famous works are “Metastasis“, “Pithoprakta” and “Terretektorh”), electronic music became his way for exploring new ideas and concepts and to develop new techniques like a graphic interface for sound synthesis or later, when computers were easier accessible, his so-called "stochastic synthesis" (Gendy 3, S.709 > Disc V, Late Works). Xenakis’ first electroacoustic pieces (Disc I) like “Diamorphoses” or “Bohor” turned out groundbreaking works while the latter even caused, as Michel Chion put it, the “greatest scandal of electroacoustic music” on the occasion of its performance 1968 at the GRM in Paris.

His so-called „Polytopes“ (Discs II - IV) were overwhelming multimedia performances with especially designed architectures, laser and light shows etc. where sometimes up to several hundred loudspeakers were used to move the sounds in space. For example his most famous composition “Persepolis”, commissioned by the Persian Shah, premiered in 1971 in Shiraz- Persepolis (Iran) as a performance including light-tracks, laser beams, groups of children walking around with torches and 59 loudspeakers to project the music in an open-air situation.

The most radical aspects of sound can be found in Xenakis' late work and its merciless reduction to harsh, almost ruthless sound synthesis. In the early nineties, he devoted himself to the concept of a composing machine: a machine that designs everything independently and calculates the finished piece, the algorithm is the work.

For the first time, the complete electroacoustic works of Xenakis are now available on record the truly overdue testimony and legacy of a restless investigator and explorer of sound. Years of source studies and comparative research by zeitkratzer director Reinhold Friedl, in collaboration with sound engineer Martin Wurmnest, made these critically reflected stereo mixes possible, which were appropriately mastered by Rashad Becker and which, in addition to the aspect of fidelity to the source, put the listener in the center. Xenakis' adventurous music can now finally be enjoyed in its full sonic range and dynamic.

To quote The Wire’s review from May 2018:
“This is the definitive Persepolis“

This album is disc I "Early Works" of the 5 LP / 5 CD box set "Electroacoustic Works" that celebrates the 100th anniversary of IANNIS XENAKIS (on May 29th, 2022), one of the most influential 20th century avantgarde composers. All tracks have been newly mixed by longtime zeitkratzer sound engineer MARTIN WURMNEST and mastered by RASHAD BECKER and finally reveal their full sonic range and dynamics.

„Electroacoustic Works“ celebrates the 100th anniversary of Iannis Xenakis (on May 29th, 2022), one of the most influential 20th century avantgarde composers. All tracks have been newly mixed by longtime zeitkratzer sound engineer Martin Wurmnest and mastered by Rashad Becker and finally reveal their full sonic range and dynamics. Booklet with English / German liner notes by Reinhold Friedl (zeitkratzer) and rare photos from the Xenakis archive.

Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001) is one of the most important composers of the 20th century avantgarde whose influence on music can be traced to the present day – not only in the world of conservatory-trained composers but also in various streams of current non-academic underground aesthetics such as experimental electronic music, noise and industrial.

After he arrived in Paris in 1947, Xenakis not only studied composition with Messiaen and later became a member of the famous GRM (Groupe de recherches musicales), he also worked as assistant to the famous architect LE Corbusier and realized a.o. the Philips Pavilion for the World Exhibition in Brussels 1958. His compositions often are based on mathematical principles which give his music an unprecedented aesthetic and “shocking otherness” (The Guardian). Although Xenakis also composed for orchestra (his most famous works are “Metastasis“, “Pithoprakta” and “Terretektorh”), electronic music became his way for exploring new ideas and concepts and to develop new techniques like a graphic interface for sound synthesis or later, when computers were easier accessible, his so-called "stochastic synthesis" (Gendy 3, S.709 > Disc V, Late Works). Xenakis’ first electroacoustic pieces (Disc I) like “Diamorphoses” or “Bohor” turned out groundbreaking works while the latter even caused, as Michel Chion put it, the “greatest scandal of electroacoustic music” on the occasion of its performance 1968 at the GRM in Paris.

His so-called „Polytopes“ (Discs II - IV) were overwhelming multimedia performances with especially designed architectures, laser and light shows etc. where sometimes up to several hundred loudspeakers were used to move the sounds in space. For example his most famous composition “Persepolis”, commissioned by the Persian Shah, premiered in 1971 in Shiraz- Persepolis (Iran) as a performance including light-tracks, laser beams, groups of children walking around with torches and 59 loudspeakers to project the music in an open-air situation.

The most radical aspects of sound can be found in Xenakis' late work and its merciless reduction to harsh, almost ruthless sound synthesis. In the early nineties, he devoted himself to the concept of a composing machine: a machine that designs everything independently and calculates the finished piece, the algorithm is the work.

For the first time, the complete electroacoustic works of Xenakis are now available on record the truly overdue testimony and legacy of a restless investigator and explorer of sound. Years of source studies and comparative research by zeitkratzer director Reinhold Friedl, in collaboration with sound engineer Martin Wurmnest, made these critically reflected stereo mixes possible, which were appropriately mastered by Rashad Becker and which, in addition to the aspect of fidelity to the source, put the listener in the center. Xenakis' adventurous music can now finally be enjoyed in its full sonic range and dynamic.

To quote The Wire’s review from May 2018:
“This is the definitive Persepolis“

A download code is included.

New album by the Berlin-based musician, composer and producer MIDORI HIRANO aka MIMICOF, entirely recorded using the EMS SYNTHI100 at Electronic Studio Radio Belgrade during an artist residency: contemporary electronic music / ambient for the advanced listener. Midori Hirano is a Japanese musician, composer and producer based in Berlin. She started learning the piano as a child and later studied classical piano at university. Therefore the music she releases under her own name is based on the use of piano, but yet experimental and an eclectic mixture of modern digital sounds with subtle electronic processing and field recordings. So far, Hirano
released 7 solo albums under her civilian name on labels such as Sonic Pieces and DAUW.

Under the moniker MimiCof she explores the realm of more experimental music and detailed rhythmic patterns, combined with an idea of drawing melodic shapes and harmonies. As MimiCof she performed at prestigious festivals and events such as CTM, Heroines of Sound Festival, Boiler Room Berlin and L.E.V. Festival, and was
selected by Frank Bretschneider for the first volume of the “Sichten” compilation series on his raster label. Besides producing her own works, Hirano has composed music for dance performances, video installations and films which have been screened at Berlin International Film Festival, Krakow Film Festival, SXSW Film Festival and HongKong International Film Festival (among others) and remixed tracks by artists including Rival Consoles, Foam And Sand aka Robot Koch, Liars and Pascal Schumacher.

While the last MimiCof album“ Moon Synch” (2017, Alien Transistor) was recorded on the Buchla analogue modular Synthesizer at EMS Elektronmusikstudion in Stockholm, her latest effort “Distant Symphony” (the 4th as MimiCof ) was created on a different synthesizer: the EMS SYNTHI 100 Synthesizer at Radio Belgrade. All sounds from this instrument were recorded as single sound samples at first, then mixed and modified into three long pieces of music, so that the audience can experience the machine’s uniqueness and versatility of sound. Hirano understands this work as a gesture of respect for the SYNTHI 100’s character: though a vintage instrument, it has never lost the beauty of its modern sound

A download code is included.

The new album by the Peruvian-born / Berlin-based experimental artist Ale Hop was conceived in a context of immobility and provides six sonic vignettes that wonder about location, circularity, rootedness and experience. In collaboration with Ana Quiroga, Concepcion Huerta, Daniela Huerta, Elsa M’balla, Felicity Magan, Fil Uno, Ignacio Briceño, KMRU, Manongo Mujica, Moises Horta, Nicole L’huillier, Raul Jardín, Sukitoa Onamau, Tomas Tello.

Following her explorations on music's inherent fixation to geographic space and time, be it through the longing of home ("Apophenia" 2019) or scientific magnification of invisible worlds ("The Life of Insects" 2020), Berlin-based Peruvian-born experimental composer Ale Hop's fourth album, "Why Is It They Say a City Like Any City?", was conceived in a context of immobility. During the lockdown months, she started a process of remote collaboration, by sending messages, posted from various cities along a South American trip, to thirteen musicians from around the world. She journaled her impressions upon these places to an intimate fictional character while reflecting on matters of time, sound, space, cosmology and colonial memory. The thirteen musicians dialogued with this voice by
taking upon the challenge of responding to the messages with sound collaborations.

Field recordings, mouth drumming, drone cellos, electronic loops, arrhythmic rhythms and voices came back from this experiment. Ale assembled them, by layering, twisting and turning, into sonic vignettes that wonder about location, circularity, rootedness and experience, making it the first time she's set her guitar aside. Expect no answers to the album's title question, but an innermost psychedelic rumination.

"Despite the technological resources that appear to dilute distances, the simulation of closeness mirrored on the digital space is an emptied body, a state of precarity, a flat surface; unable to withhold an experience of exchange," Ale states. "So, I began this project by asking myself, how can we escape from the reduced experience of the virtual? The idea behind this experiment was that my messages and the places they describe could drive the composition, be a catalyzer, a score. Thus, to use geography as a tool to remember and imagine, to allow new soundscapes to emerge."

"Memory, diffuse and divergent, sometimes reaches out to the future in its search for form, taking shape from the reflections and echoes that come back … like throwing a rock in a pond and having a rock thrown back at you." The release of "Why Is It They Say a City Like Any City?" is accompanied by a 50-min audiovisual installation that will premiere at CTM 2022 Exhibition in January, which was created in collaboration with the Mexican technologist and artist Moises Horta. For this piece, an Artificial Intelligence multi-modal neural network was fed with readings of the messages written by Ale, synthesizing them into free-flowing images. The visual imagery resembles the way memory works
when triggered by words, by traveling freely through mental images unfolding them into openended assemblages of spaces and temporalities.

The 5 CD box set+24 page booklet „Electroacoustic Works“ celebrates the 100th anniversary of Iannis Xenakis (on May 29th, 2022), one of the most influential 20th century avantgarde composers. All tracks have been newly mixed by longtime zeitkratzer sound engineer Martin Wurmnest and mastered by Rashad Becker and finally reveal their full sonic range and dynamics. Booklet with English / German liner notes by Reinhold Friedl (zeitkratzer) and rare photos from the Xenakis archive.

Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001) is one of the most important composers of the 20th century avantgarde whose influence on music can be traced to the present day – not only in the world of conservatory-trained composers but also in various streams of current non-academic underground aesthetics such as experimental electronic music, noise and industrial.

After he arrived in Paris in 1947, Xenakis not only studied composition with Messiaen and later became a member of the famous GRM (Groupe de recherches musicales), he also worked as assistant to the famous architect LE Corbusier and realized a.o. the Philips Pavilion for the World Exhibition in Brussels 1958. His compositions often are based on mathematical principles which give his music an unprecedented aesthetic and “shocking otherness” (The Guardian). Although Xenakis also composed for orchestra (his most famous works are “Metastasis“, “Pithoprakta” and “Terretektorh”), electronic music became his way for exploring new ideas and concepts and to develop new techniques like a graphic interface for sound synthesis or later, when computers were easier accessible, his so-called "stochastic synthesis" (Gendy 3, S.709 > Disc V, Late Works). Xenakis’ first electroacoustic pieces (Disc I) like “Diamorphoses” or “Bohor” turned out groundbreaking works while the latter even caused, as Michel Chion put it, the “greatest scandal of electroacoustic music” on the occasion of its performance 1968 at the GRM in Paris.

His so-called „Polytopes“ (Discs II - IV) were overwhelming multimedia performances with especially designed architectures, laser and light shows etc. where sometimes up to several hundred loudspeakers were used to move the sounds in space. For example his most famous composition “Persepolis”, commissioned by the Persian Shah, premiered in 1971 in Shiraz- Persepolis (Iran) as a performance including light-tracks, laser beams, groups of children walking around with torches and 59 loudspeakers to project the music in an open-air situation.

The most radical aspects of sound can be found in Xenakis' late work and its merciless reduction to harsh, almost ruthless sound synthesis. In the early nineties, he devoted himself to the concept of a composing machine: a machine that designs everything independently and calculates the finished piece, the algorithm is the work.

For the first time, the complete electroacoustic works of Xenakis are now available on record the truly overdue testimony and legacy of a restless investigator and explorer of sound. Years of source studies and comparative research by zeitkratzer director Reinhold Friedl, in collaboration with sound engineer Martin Wurmnest, made these critically reflected stereo mixes possible, which were appropriately mastered by Rashad Becker and which, in addition to the aspect of fidelity to the source, put the listener in the center. Xenakis' adventurous music can now finally be enjoyed in its full sonic range and dynamic.

To quote The Wire’s review from May 2018:
“This is the definitive Persepolis“

Limited edition tape (100), handnumbered.
A download code is included.

After PORYA HATAMI and SABA ALIZADEH, we are excited to welcome the 3rd Iranian musician on KARL: the sound and new media artist ARASH AKBARI. ARASH AKBARI is a musician, sound, and new-media artist, based in Tehran, Iran. His interest in dynamic art systems, human perception, nonlinear narrative, and the co-existence between physical and digital worlds compelled him to explore the fields of generative systems, interaction design, and real-time processing. He explores the relationship between human, technology, space, and the environment, and examines the ways interactive cybernetic systems, natural emergent
behaviors, and phenomena can evoke meanings as well as social and emotional responses. Akbari directs his experimental practices into audio-visual performances and installations, interactive applications, and multisensory experiences. His compositions investigate experimental approaches to sound generation, field recordings,
acoustic instrumentation, digital synthesis, DSP, and noise to create immersive sonic environments that explore the agency of autonomous systems, indeterminacy, memory, and the perception of time and space. His works have been exhibited in different festivals and exhibitions around the world, such as Athens Digital Arts Festival, Simultan Festival, New Media Fest, 3D Web Fest, Cinnamon Colomboscope, and Graphical Web Conference. He has released albums on Flaming Pines,
Unknown Tone Records, Taalem, and Soft Recordings among numerous other labels. “Fragments Of Yearning”, AKBARI’s latest solo work, is a finely crafted sonic journey into ambient soundscapes, centered around the topics of yearning, memory and humanity. In his own words: “Some moments linger in us, buried in time but molded the eternity. The dusty echoes from the past, yet are vividly unraveled. The irreplaceable momentary fragments of being human.”

A download code is included. Cello player and electronic artist martina bertoni‘s new album „music for empty flats“ delivers masterfully crafted experimental ambient / drone for fans of hildur guðnadóttir, giulio aldinucci or lawrence english. Martina Bertoni is a berlin based cellist and composer. she started playing the cello at a very young age. Classically trained, bertoni‘s career soon developed around experimental and film music where her cello has been featured in numerous records, soundtracks for awarded movies and tv series and collaborations, among others with blixa bargeld and teho teardo with whom she recorded several albums and performed at many prestigious festivals all around the globe.

A download code is included. First-ever official re-issue of the Ecuadorian composer’s stunning electroacoustic composition “Oeldorf 8” on vinyl and CD. Remastered by Kassian Troyer at D&M, Berlin. Mesías Maiguashca (b. December 24th, 1938 in Quito / Ecuador) is a composer of Neue Musik, especially electroacoustic music, who studied at the Conservatorio Nacional de Quito, at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY (1958–65), with Alberto Ginastera at the Instituto di Tella in Buenos Aires, at the Hochschule für Musik in Cologne and, after a short return to Ecuador, attended the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik in Darmstadt and the Fourth Cologne Courses for New Music in 1966–67 where he studied with Karlheinz Stockhausen. From 1968 to 1972, Maiguashca worked closely with Stockhausen in the Electronic Music Studio of the Westdeutscher Rundfunk in Cologne and joined Stockhausen's ensemble for performances at the German Pavilion at the Expo '70 in Osaka. In 1971 he became a founding member of the Oeldorf Group of composers and performers, and began work at the Centre Européen pour la Recherche Musicale in Metz, at Ircam in Paris, and at the ZKM in Karlsruhe. From 1990 – 2004 Maiguashca was Professor of Electronic Music at the Musikhochschule of Freiburg im Breisgau where he still lives today.

A download code is included. Re-release of the album which Marc Weiser (rechenzentrum, zeitkratzer) and Jürgen Hendlmeier (producer for The Flaming Sideburns, Thee Ultra Bimboos) created as Arurmukha. With the use of soundbites, field recordings, and stylistically diverse tracks, they reprocess the clearing of 13 squats on Mainzer Straße in Berlin-Friedrichshain in November 1990, forming it into an acoustic scenography in the style of the “Maifestspiele” by Einstürzende Neubauten. 14.11.2020 marks the 30th anniversary of the clearing of 13 squats on Mainzer Straße in Berlin-Friedrichshain. The violent confrontation between the police and about 500 squatters, involving armored vehicles, helicopters, and 10 water cannons, was the biggest police operation in Berlin’s post-war history, with 4000 officers deployed, and is deemed to be the last big “battle” of left-wing squatters in Germany. The insert for the LP provides a detailed chronicle of the events (taken from the book “Berlin Mainzer Straße: Wohnen ist wichtiger als das Gesetz [Berlin Mainzer Straße: Housing is more important than the law]”, published in 1992 by Basis-Druck).

On her 6th album, the French electroacoustic composer Bérangère Maximin explores the idea of a kaleidoscopic world a sonic aggregation of living creatures, plants, minerals, nature and buildings, using various sound objects, small percussions, synths, electric guitar, voice and electronics.

A download code is included. Aidan Baker (Nadja, B/B/S) and bass clarinetist Gareth Davis continue their fruitful collaboration with „Invisible Cities II“ five new tracks of finest ambient / chamber jazz / subtle drones of a highly meditative quality.

A download code is included. The compilation “Celestial Birds” reveals and focuses on the widely unkown electronic compositions of the AACM founder and jazz pianist Muhal Richard Abrams. #5 in the Perihel Series, curated by zeitkratzer director Reinhold Friedl.

Noise artist David Wallraf returns with his second album on Karl - “ Crudeltá Necessaria” deals with the role of cruelty in the works of Pier Paolo Pasolini. David Wallraf is a noise artist and theorist living in Hamburg. His artistic work deals with the repressed and uncanny sonic residues of quotidian life, crafting soundtracks for the creeping disaster we inhabit. His works have been released on numerous international tape labels. A recent interest of his is the live scoring of silent films, including works by Luis Buñuel, Maya Deren and Jean Genet. In the academic world, Wallraf graduated with a BA in musicology at University of Hamburg, MA in time based media at Hochschule für bildende Künste, PhD on noise at Hfbk, h is PhD thesis “Grenzen des Hörens. Noise und die Akustik des Politischen” (Limits of Hearing. Noise and the Acoustics of the Political) has been published in German. He also regularly gives l ectures on power relations in music, noise-theory, sound art/studies and the politics of listening. “ Crudeltá Necessaria”, the follow-up to last year’s „The Commune Of Nightmares“, deals with the role of cruelty in the works of Pier Paolo Pasolini by blending noise, raw electronics and field recordings into a detailed dystopian sonic experience that „you don’t have to be afraid of“ (R. Mießner, taz). In the words of Wallraf himself: „ The world (another word for society) is cruel in a banal sense: unjust, brutal and segregating. Life under capitalism is the generalized and global form of this cruelty, organized by the logic of Kr119_d. Wallraf - Crudeltá Necessaria_infotext.pdf abstract labor and alienation. But cruelty also carries a different meaning, one that has resonated with a few artists of the 20 th century who positioned themselves against the cruel banality of their times. Cruelty in the sense of mercilessness or remorselessness, both a realism and a necessary stance in a battle against an overly powerful enemy. Antonin Artaud’s conception of the theater of cruelty exemplifies this stance, an “appeal to cruelty and terror [...] whose range probes our entire vitality, confronts us with all our possibilities” ( The Theater and Cruelty ). All our possibilities: an affirmation of radical difference. A similar posture, although it replaces Artaud’s mysticism with a communist viewpoint, can be found in the works of Pier Paolo Pasolini. Pasolini was a merciless analyst and critic of society under capitalist production. His answer to the banal brutality of capitalism was an artistic cruelty of his own design, a necessary cruelty which is evident in the films and texts that inspired these recordings. It is evident in the transformations and transitions of the novel-fragment Petrolio , it glares and screams from the screen in his films. You can hear it in the last and only words of the young cannibal in Porcile (“I killed my father. I ate human flesh. I quiver with joy.”), in Medea’s curse against Iason (“It’s useless! Nothing is possible anymore!”) and in the Sphinx’s desperate cry when murdered by Oedipus (“It’s useless! The abyss you’re throwing me in is in yourself!”). It gazes through the masks of mythological and historical settings. It is evident in the almost violent way Pasolini edited his films, a form of Verfremdungseffekt that exemplifies his remorseless stance towards his audience, the spectacle of the film industry, fascism and capitalistic society. This necessary cruelty serves as a last line of defense in the political and artistic struggle against societal and political pressure. With this release I hope to capture at least a fragment of this demeanor.”

THE Burning Bright Light is a mind-meld between improvisation trio Dromedaries (saxophonist Keir Neuringer of Irreversible Entanglements, Shayna Dulberger on double bass and percussionist Julius Masri) and sci-fi writer/vocalist Alexoteric (Alex Smith), evoking epic sci-fi cinemascapes, vocabulary- and reference-rich underground writing, the liberatory jazz tradition, and playful avant-garde experimentation. Recorded in a single high voltage burst of cosmic collaboration on an October afternoon at Philadelphia's Rittenhouse Soundworks, THE Burning Bright Light is a sonic document like no other. A mind-meld between improvisation trio Dromedaries and sci-fi writer/vocalist Alexoteric (Alex Smith), the album emerges organically on a foundation of speculative fiction, free jazz interaction, avant-garde textures, and freestyle refrains. With no rules set in advance, each participant brought their entire creativity to bear on a session that birthed a constellation of shimmering stories narrated through equally deep music and words. While it retains all the power and excitement of a spontaneous meeting, the album also reveals deep and atypical shared affinities that are simultaneously sonic, musical, social, political, and cosmic. A key figure in multiple Philadelphia arts subcultures, Smith's literary voice is unlike any other, and on this recording he stretches his vocal acrobatics to their greatest extent yet. We hear references to grounded, earthly concerns and figures shot through the farthest reaches of spacetime, always with Smith's incisive queer afrofuturist lens. Smith describes the album as "a future color spray, a hidden missive laser etched into the seams of your galactic multi-death cult corporation flight jacket, the snow fallen ash and embers of a world you can only view through a prism-powered holo-sim. Wild jazz, bad, fresh with no jive—the perfect script for the download digital age, transcending experimental musics through the solar battery at the bio-borg filling station. The anti-Boeing, proto-mothership, swinging the body eclectic, crash landing on a brass planet. Dromedaries are plugged in and transforming, delivering ancient spells like slam poetry on Cybertron." All of the music you hear was recorded in real time; for their part instrumentalists Shayna KR116_Dromedaries x Alexoteric_infosheet.pdf Dulberger, Julius Masri, and Keir Neuringer expanded their energetic, telepathic, playful mode of collective improvisation developed over the past decade together to both embrace Smith as a fourth and equal voice and elevate him as a sacred cosmic orator. The Burning Bright Light at once evokes epic sci-fi cinemascapes, vocabulary- and reference-rich underground writing, the liberatory jazz tradition, and playful avant-garde experimentation. Recording took place in October 2022 at Philadelphia's Rittenhouse Sound works (home to notable recent recordings from Sun Ra Arkestra and Irreversible Entanglements, among others) and was mixed there through 2023 by engineer Mike Richelle and Masri. Dromedaries is a collaborative improvisation trio active since 2014 comprised of saxophonist Keir Neuringer (Irreversible Entanglements), Shayna Dulberger (Chaser; Warrior of Light) on double bass, and percussionist Julius Masri (Mephisto Halabi; Spectral Forces; Night Raids). They climb deep into their instruments and play hard to reward listeners for their time, grounding their work in technical virtuosity, instrumental physicality, and a rigorous approach to form. Each has received critical praise for their solo work and collaborations. Dromedaries has previously released studio recordings on Relative Pitch Records (2020) and Already Dead Tapes (2017), as well as a live recording released in 2021 by Fire Over Heaven. Alexoteric, aka Alex Smith (Spectral Forces; Solarized; Arkdust short story collection), is a Philadelphia artist and activist whose writing —from science fiction, to superhero comics, to music and art critique —delves into worlds often forgotten, inhabited by people often marginalized. His work as a critic has appeared on Bandcamp and Pitchfork, as well as in local press for Artblog, The Key, and Philadelphia Gay News, highlighting the strange worlds inhabited by gender, class and racial outliers. As does his fiction

Cover close to NM

In his most recent solo release, “The Devil And The River: Volume One”, recorded live in his rural New Mexico studio, William Fowler Collins tremolo brushes his electric guitar using a calligraphy brush, playing a single chord with no overdubs to produce two compelling side-long pieces of music. Ever present are the minimalist widescreen reflections of the high desert environment in which he lives, with the two sides giving the impressions of a sun rising and then a sun setting over the vast and sparsely populated landscape. The music in the two pieces shifts dynamically from gentle and hypnotic to immense and resonant walls of drone, searing and overdriven. At times the music can suggest a collision between Terry Riley’s “Descending Moonshine Dervishes” and the loud, distorted, emotional abstractions of My Bloody Valentine.

“Friendly Electrons” presents the electronic side of the original TON STEINE SCHERBEN
drummer, book author and longtime CONRAD SCHNITZLER friend / collaborator
WOLFGANG SEIDEL.
Born in winter 1949 in a grey and gloomy post-war Berlin, WOLFGANG SEIDEL’s first encounter
with electronic sounds was at the cinema: the music for “Forbidden Planet“ by LOUIS and BEBE
BARRON sounded like the promise of a bright, exciting future ... but in the 1960‘s, the biggest
thing for young musicians was to play in a rock band, and as the friends around him all already
played guitar, SEIDEL chose the drums and later co-founded TON STEINE SCHERBEN, the
legendary German anarchist band. Around the same time, SEIDEL regularly attended the Zodiak
Free Arts Lab, the birth place of so-called “Kosmische Musik / Berliner Schule“ (TANGERINE
DREAM, CLUSTER, MANUEL GÖTTSCHING etc), and became close friends with CONRAD
SCHNITZLER. Realizing how much more artistic freedom electronic music offers, he grew tired of
playing the same songs night after night, left the band after their debut album had been released
and started experimenting with contact microphones and tape delay (and later, when he could
afford one, with a Buchla synthesizer). SEIDEL joined SCHNITZLER’s group
ERUPTION and
worked with him till his death in 2011 (sometimes credited as WOLF SEQUENZA) on several
albums, and also toured some art institutions presenting SCHNITZLER’s “cassette concerts” (who
had dropped his suitcases with the tape machines in front of SEIDEL’s flat door and appointed him
the “future conductor”).
In the 2000s, SEIDEL started playing drums again, this time in the free jazz / improv scene (a.o.
others with ALFRED A. HARTH and HANS JOACHIM IRMLER), wrote books about his former
band (“S
cherben – Musik, Politik und Wirkung der Ton Steine Scherben“) and Krautrock („Wir
müssen hier raus! Krautrock, Free Beat, Reeducation“) ... and continued his sonic explorations
with his Buchla in his studio in Berlin-Wedding.
When we met at a birthday party, Wolfgang told me about his electronic pieces - I was interested
right away – so he browsed his archive and sent me a selection of tracks. These are often based
on older ideas and sketches that he had completed during the pandemic when there were no
concerts to play. The result is „Friendly Electrons“ – a collection of 18 tracks, inspired by
SCHNITZLER’s collage technique and SEIDEL’s own experiences with improvisation. With the
exception of 2 pieces that are actually composed there were no fixed ideas – simply start from
KR114_W.SEIDEL_infosheet.pdf
scratch and see what happens, review the result from different angles and refine the tracks where
necessary. Whereas electronic music is often considered dystopian, the album title mirrors
SEIDEL’s positive attitude towards modernism, so his electrons are of a friendly kind!

A new piece by minimalist / experimental composer PHILL NIBLOCK (1933 - 2024), co-
composed and performed by ANNA CLEMENTI & THOMAS STERN. Intense, menacing
layers of thick drones and alien sounds.
In summer 2022, within just a few weeks and by pure coincidence, 2 proposals regarding PHILL
NIBLOCK albums arrived: one suggesting an overdue vinyl reissue of a CD release (more on that
when the time has come for it), the other email was from ANNA CLEMENTI saying she and
THOMAS STERN were working on new pieces that PHILL NIBLOCK has written for her ...
when „Zound Delta 2“ was complete, PHILL sent photographs for the two artworks,
we met twice to discuss details, but unfortunately he died unexpectedly early january this year so
the album now is, sad as it is, a posthumous release ... an intense goodbye from one of 20
th
century most iconic composers.
Phill Niblock
Phill Niblock (1933-2024, USA) was an artist whose fifty-year career spans minimalist and
experimental music, film and photography. Since 1985, he has served as director of Experimental
Intermedia, a foundation for avant-garde music based in New York with a branch in Ghent, and
curator of the foundation’s record label XI. Known for his thick, loud drones of music, Niblock’s
signature sound is filled with microtones of instrumental timbres that generate many other tones in
the performance space. In 2013, his diverse artistic career was the subject of a retrospective
realised in partnership between Circuit (Contemporary Art Centre Lausanne) and Musée de
l’Elysée. The following year Niblock was honoured with the prestigious Foundation for Contemporary Arts John Cage Award.
https://phillniblock.com/

Anna Clementi
Italian-Swedish singer Anna Clementi grew up in Rome, where she first studied the flute and
completed acting training before moving to Berlin and studying experimental vocal music and
experimental music theater with the composer Dieter Schnebel at Hochschule der Künste (now
UdK Berlin). Anna Clementi sees herself as an “actress of the voice” rather than exclusively as a
singer. In this way she also articulates the diversity of her artistic expression, with which she is
always searching for new connections between voice, gesture, language, dance and theater.
During her decades spanning career, Anna Clementi has performed at the most important festivals,
has premiered numerous works, many of which have been composed especially for her, and
worked with Fast Forward, Michael Hirsch, Rupert Huber, Christian Kesten, Alexander Kolkowski,
Olga Neuwirth, Josef Anton Riedl,
Iris ter Schiphorst, Dieter Schnebel, Laurie Schwartz, Elliott
Sharp, and many others.
A special focus of hers is the work of John Cage, whose pieces she has performed worldwide.
https://www.annaclementi.com/

Thomas Stern
Born in Bremen, Thomas Stern moved to Berlin in 1984 where he joined Mona Mur with Alex
Hacke and F. M. Einheit (both from Einstürzende Neubauten, with which Stern also worked as live
sound engineer for many years). Around 1987 he co-founded the Berlin set up of Crime And The
City Solution (Mick Harvey, Alex Hacke a.o.). Over the years, he has has collaborated with artists
like Ulrike Haage, Phew, Nick Cave, Ton Steine Scherben, Meret Becker, Nina Hagen, Jaki
Liebezeit, Ben Becker, N.U. Unruh, Gry, Iris ter Schiphorst, Automat, Swans, Hans Joacxhim Irmler
and many more, on the road or in his own Sternstaubstudio

REINHOLD FRIEDL (piano) meets RADIAN member MARTIN SIEWERT (guitar, electronics): Three spontaneous sonic explorations - subtle and explosive ! With over a dozen releases on Karlrecords, and a total output of more than 100 albums in general, Reinhold Friedl doesn’t need much of an introduction to anyone interested in contemporary music / avantgarde: his ensemble zeitkratzer is as respected as it is feared for its radical approach on music, and it seems redundant to mention all collaborators and projects. Friedl is known for his unique piano sound, his advanced techniques, and his musical intensity paired with precise exuberant sound constructions and consistent compositional thinking. He cooperated with musicans from P hil Niblock to L ou Reed , Mario Bertoncini ( Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza ) to Whitehouse, Laurie Anderson to R ashad Becker and works as guest professor at various universities across Europe. The “multi-talented renaissance man” (as Naut Human turned it) is also known as a specialist for Iannis Xenakis, and curates the Perihel series on Karlrecords. „Lichtung“ is the collaboration of Friedl and no other than Vienna-based Martin Siewert, himself a highly prolific and reputated innovative guitar player and producer in groups like Radian or Trapist. Martin Siewert played with the who is who in experimental and improvised music and celebrated his strong musical identity in international collaborations with Otomo Yoshihide to Oren Ambarchi, Meg Stuart to Christian Fennesz, Sainkho Namtchylak to The Necks. Siewerts guitar play at the intersection of acoustic / electronic generated sounds is unique, evoking echoes of krautrock and musique concrete to electronic jazz and avantgarde. “Lichtung” was recorded in Vienna: Several studio meetings condensed to three intense tracks, a statement and musical adventure between noise and silence, subtle and explosive! Two musicians, who couldn’t be more diverse, here – in every sense – they act in concert

zeitkratzer director Reinhold Friedl and his ensemble present new compositions, grounded on Domenico SCARLATTI's piano sonata F-minor K.466. Commissioned by the dance company Rubato and dedicated to Mario Bertoncini (1932-2019).

the third and closing chapter of the „raum“ trilogy by an moku and stefan schmidt – „raum im raum“ serves f inely crafted ambient / soundscapes, and is the most intense and darkest album of the series. as written in the previous infosheets, the „raum“-trilogy (named after and inspired by a sentence from david foster wallace’s unconventional bestseller novel “infinite jest”) is a child of the recent pandemic: when public life more or less came to a hold, dominik grenzler aka an moku , a sound artist and bass player based in zurich, contacted stefan schmidt (guitarist, composer and improviser from baden-baden) with the idea of collaborating. It turned out a fruitful idea and within just a couple of weeks they not only managed to craft “raum” but indeed had so many ideas that it was impossible to put them all in just one album, a trilogy was the logical consequence. this series now sees its 3rd and final part with „raum im raum“, maybe the most intense and darkest chapter of the trilogy that deals with the abstraction of a possible space within a possible space. grenzler and schmidt continue their adventurous sonic trip into abstract voids, crafted by finely processed sounds of different origins like synthesizer or fretless guitar, field recordings and a vast array of electronic equipment – like they did before, but without simpy re-cooking the approved recipe, instead adding new spices like a kalimba or saz (schmidt being a vituoso on many stringed instruments). the atmosphere is dark and alien, with references to hauntology and musique concrète, and yet organic, and rich of details. „..soon, i loose the ability to distinguish between the two kinds of darkness. i can no longer tell if my eyes are open or closed. but as my eyes became used to the darkness, though, i began to pick out slight differences...“ - h. murakami

M odular synthesizers / electronics + a drum kit enhanced with triggers and sensors: on its self-titled debut album, the duo hÄK / Danzeisen creates a sonic energy that oscillates between high-precision rhythm patterns, analogue sounds and frenzy climaxes.

Sealed copy with tiny seam split!

Cover with bumped corner. Still in shrink, but opened, with hype sticker

Clear vinyl. Copy n° 282/300