// radio

A new radio play by Michael Stauffer. He used some beats of mine. It is about climate change, science, politics and how different generations deal with it. Or don’t. It is a WDR 3 production and can be heard here.

I composed and produced the music for the radio play „Suppe kalt, Herz leer“ (Michael Stauffer/WDR3). Kalle Kalima played some guitar, I made beats with sword/air sounds, prepared dulcimer, played some bass and vibes, processed and fused and arranged all the ingredients.
Michael, author and director of the piece, constructed a combination of written texts (women) and improvised reactions (men) after having recorded the speakers separatedly. I find the result very sharp and rich.
Two excerpts of the play:

Today „Le miroir qui revient qui revient“ is broadcasted in Australia’s ABC Classic FM. It is my pleasure being played down under.

Album release show in Berlin: March 28, 2013 @ Roter Salon/Volksbühne
Lump200 Band feat. Fatima Njai
More shows to be announced.

More information about the Band: EPK

„Le miroir qui revient qui revient“ is a piece of radio art I composed and produced for Deutschlandradio Kultur in collaboration with Michael Wertmüller (drums) and Elektroakustisches Studio,  Akademie der Künste. It is going to be broadcasted on August 17th at 00:05 a.m. The piece takes 50 minutes and 18 secounds. Below you will find two extracts and parts of the concept.

„ […] toute réalité est indescriptible, et je le sais d’instinct : la conscience est structurée comme notre langage (et pour cause!), mais ni le monde ni l’inconscient; avec des mots et des phrases, je ne peux représenter ni ce que j’ai devant les yeux, ni ce qui se cache dans ma tête, ou dans mon sexe.“  Alain Robbe-Grillet: Le miroir qui revient

Le miroir qui revient

With „Le miroir qui revient“ Robbe-Grillet opens the genre of autobiography, he exposes memory as construction whose emphasis – compared to the memorized event or situation – shifts dreamlike. Fragments of memory differ in acuity, speculation and fiction breaks through. Attitude is reflected, Robbe-Grillet’s and the one of some close ones and some remote ones, in his familiy and in literature.
In „Le miroir qui revient“ the variations that have led to a kind of serial arrangements of scenes in Robbe-Grillet’s earlier work occur as variations of breaks. The broken material is like stranded goods fished out of the sea of percieved situations and aspects, only its combination reveals the subtext.

Le miroir qui revient qui revient

I suggest a composition of original tone and music that mirrors Robbe-Grillet’s composition of text layers and perspectives and that understands itself as a complement to the text. The text does not occur as language in the piece but as form and in forms and as a grid of links and breaks.

Can there be a similar relation between music and original tone like there is between fiction and perception? Can music reveal additional aspects of the ghosts Robbe-Grillet places in and around the Atlantic? Do that for the musicians have to dig in their own (musical) chasms?

Procedure, material, staff

A formal analysis of the text concerning its layers, their diffusion and the spread of the breaks is done. The record of these relations will provide the architecture for the musical and tonal score. Field recordings are done in the Bretagne and in the Jura – one rough main scene and one mossy and undulating side scene in the bio-/mythography. Both are border regions, once between solid and fluid and once between two countries (RG mentions a hotel that exactly is built on the frontier and where he spent some holidays when he was a child).
I will look for voices of the sea, voices of the landscape and voices of people who have a certain relatedness with locations and motifs appearing in the text. Some of those recordings will already be manipulated musically.

The original tone will be arranged according to the formal matrix of the text. Based on this arrangement as well as on RG’s motifs that have been translated into acoustics I will write instructions for drums and saxophone. Thereby the main focus remains on a versatile and permeable boundary between original tone and music: How and where can arise music from the field recordings? How must the algorithms for recording, improvising and playing be designed in order to vary the relation between music and original tone? Can music simulate the original tone?

Until this point I will be in charge of all work. Michael Wertmüller joins me and we record drums and saxophone in the electroacoustic studio of the Akademie der Künste. Michael plays the drums and I play the saxophone.

etc.

The entire piece can be heard @ sonoshpere.

I made some beats for the new Stauffer radio play „Das grossartige MIMEI“ (WDR/Stauffer). Last week it was broadcasted for the first time and you can download it here.

Voilà an early edit of the secound recording session with Wertmüller for the radio piece „Le miroir qui revient qui revient“ (Deutschlandradio/Desalmand):

I have written a couple of beats and variation stuff for a secound recording session with Michael Wertmüller. We are in my little studio for two days. I manipulate the drums while WM is playing, I play just few saxophone. Some edits with material of this very session can be heard here.

I am in the very west of France. I record and manipulate original tone, the sea and the wind are loud. I play the saxophone on the cliffs, I play for the sea.
And I make an extended interview with an expert for stranded goods. All in all I collect ingredients for a radio piece that I am going to produce next year.

Where am I?

This session initiates a radio play after a text of Alain Robbe-Grillet. I will come back to this project later. Michael Wertmüller plays the drums, we record at the electroacoustic studio of the Akademie der Künste, Berlin.
Here you find an extract of the session.