Vital Weekly #540, 2006
One of the nicer, smaller German labels is Happy Zloty Records, who have a small catalogue of ten releases so far, which hoover on the borders of improvisation, and each release comes in a nicely silk-screened cover. On the ten releases, the latest four are all split LP's, of which the latest contains music by Ensemble Sondarc on one side and Marcel Türkowsky on the other.
Ensemble Sondarc is a group of six contra bass players, living all over Germany, and of which only Jürgen Morgenstern and Johannes Frisch rang a bell here. On this recording they team up with the leader of Zeitkratzer Ensemble, Reinhold Friedl, who plays the organ of the Erlöserkirche in Hannover, Germany. The recording is from 2002, but still sounds as exciting today as it might have been back then. Each of the bass players is in total control of their instrument, improvising in an extraordinary way, with the church organ being the central player, even when Friedl plays his notes carefully. Only one outburst in the piece, but that keeps the tension very well present. A great, powerful piece of improvised music.
On the other side we find Marcel Türkowsky, who in the past worked together with F.S. Blumm, Ignaz Schick, Andrew Cvar and Guido Moebius, among others. His solo 'Tin Thin Tape Music' was recorded live in two Berlin places 'Kule' and 'Ausland' and Türkowsky uses an organ, walkman, four track, loop machine, delay, big muff and no less than twenty-two cassettes of sound diaries made in Berlin and Paris. This is entirely different than that of the other side. Loud, dirty drones played over a bunch of fuzzy sound cassettes, with all sorts of obscure sounds stored on them. Sometimes things get softer or operates in a more collage kind of way. It's however quite nice music, despite me saying things like 'loud and dirty' and 'fuzzy'. Maybe at times a bit too haphazard put together, but it breaks with many traditions, such as improvisation and drone music, and that is always a good thing. Türkowsky tries and finds his own ways.
A road to continue. (FdW)
Testcard, 2006
Semuin lässt den Laptop knuspern und blubbern, legt darüber ab und an
akustische Gitarre und schrägen, meist nur lautmalerischen Gesang,
nicht jedoch, um erneut eine dieser inflationären Datapop-Platten aufzu-
nehmen, die zwischen Elektronik und Indie-Folk unentschlossen pendeln.
Hier greift beides schlüssig ineinander und ergibt eine Art freundliches,
ja kindliches Erforschen von Klingklang mit offenem Ausgang.
Akustische Instrumente und Geräusche werden noch fleckenhaft eingesetzt,
formen sich selten zu etwas, was sich Song nennen liesse.
So bleibt Semuins Musik durchweg offen und brüchig, ein ziemlich
schief gebautes, sehr vom Einsturz bedrohtes Kartenhaus.
Anne Laplantine ergänzt dies gut mit einer ebenso fragilen Musik, obgleich ihre
elektronischen Schichtungen immer mal wieder Melodien erkennen lassen, die
allerdings flüchtig bleiben: Auch hier kehrt nichts wieder, purzelt alles munter
und freundlich nach vorn und bastelt an einer ganz eigenen Vorstellung von
naivem Klang, der jedoch nur insofern naiv wirkt, als dass hier keine
dunklen Stellen auftauchen, sondern nur zarte, lichte wenn auch harmonisch
ungewohnte Momente.
Jaime Fennelly is an electronicist from Brooklyn, New York implicitly interested in sonic feedback and the perverse use of electro/acoustic objects within performance groups including Pee in My Face with Surgery (with visual artist/musician Fritz Welch) and psi (Fritz Welch and guitarist Chris Forsyth). Since 2001, Jaime has been collaborating with choreographer/dancer Miguel Gutierrez on several projects including their improvised duet Sabotage as well as their most recent piece, dAMNATION rOAD which premiered in January 2004 at The Kitchen, NYC. A residency at STEIM (Studio for Electro-Instrumental Music) last year, spawned Jaime´s duo with Swiss/UK drummer Nicolas Field. Other collaborators include Chris Heenan, Sean Meehan, Naval Cassidy and John Jasperse.
W.O.O. Revelator are Bonnie Kane (Sax) and Chris Forsyth (guitar) from New York.
In 1988, the W.O.O. Core of Bonnie Kane and drummer Ray Sage magnetically connected with electric guitarist Chris Forsyth. The recordings on the Splitting Series are the result of Chris and Bonnies european tour in 2002 (Ray Sage is not involved), a unique and intense free-form conversation between sax and guitar.
Testcard, 2006
Jaime Fennellys Split-Beitrag der Happy Zloty-Serie beginnt mit
einem lang anhaltendem, langsam anschwellenden Summen.
Das schliesslich geht in Knacken und Brummen über und
entwickelt eine eigene, nie hastige Dynamik auf intensiven
Geräuschen, die stellenweise klingen, als würden hier Gitarrenseiten
mit einer Stahlbürste bearbeitet.
Die Musik von Jaime Fennelly aus Brooklyn bleibt auf erfreuliche
Weise undertiminiert zwischen Fluxus / Neodada, Elektroakustik
und Improvisation in AMM-Tradition.
Diesen offenen Ansatz greift das New Yorker Duo W.O.O.
Revelator mit Bonnie Kane (Saxophon, Flöte, Electronics) und
Chris Forsyth (Gitarre) auf, ihre Musik ist jedoch wesentlich
bestimmbarer, die Klangquellen lassen sich leichter zuordnen.
Aus dem Trümmern von Free Jazz heraus erarbeiten sich die beiden
neues Terrain, das einerseits sehr >free< und auch >noisy< klingt,
aber auch Pausen zulässt, Momente von Stille, die nie überambitioniert
durchbrochen werden.
Dieses freie Spiel meidet alle expressive Geste, bleibt zittrig zurück-
haltend und wirkt doch oft so, als ob hier Raubtiere im Hinterhalt nur
darauf warteten, auf der Hocke aufzuspringen.
Ein schönes Jazz-Noise-Gezerre in Tradition der Bobetomagus.
THE WIRE, May 2004
This vinyl only release is the first in German label Happy Zloty's limited edition Splitting Series. It's a similar idea to the Fat Cat series of 12"s - the two improvising trios Perlonex and Julijuni are each given a side apiece. Perlonex are Ignaz Schick on various objects, turntables etc, Jörg Maria Zeger on guitar and Burkhard Beins on percussion, all musicians who are active in various other improvising contexts. The Perlonex side begins with a drone and delicate, looping guitar arpeggio before heading into a post-industrial, post-AMM landscape full of feedback, clanking chains and unidentifiable scrapes and thuds.
The piece gathers density as it moves along, becoming a thickly matted assembly of sounds, with a guitar loop as a constant. Perlonex are a cohesive unit and they all pull in the same direction when they play, producing a commited and intense piece of group communication.
Julijuni's sound sources are Powerbook, feedback and guitar, coming from Michael Rieken, Tim Tetzner and Ansgar Wilken respectively. As with Perlonex, recognisable guitar sounds are set against abstract, untuned noises. The music is light-footed and shifts readily from episode to episode. Their sense of space steers them away from thick textures (...).
Vital Weekly, 2003
Happy Zloty is a small German label who has released a whole bunch
of loveable and collectable 7" with improvised music in nice
silkscreened covers. Now they move away from the handwork of glueing
7" covers with the release of their first split LP. Of course in a
silkscreened cover... On this LP we find two improvising bands from
Germany. The a-side has Perlonex, a trio with Ignaz Schick on
electronics, devices and turntables, Jörg Maria Zeger on guitars and
Burkhard Beins on drums and percussion. They have two CDs on Zarek
(see Vital Weekly 235 and 286) and a 7" on Bad Alchemy. Like I wrote
before, it's hard to tell wether the music of Perlonex is entirely
improvised. I once saw them play live and noted the tight playing,
which seemed kind of planned out. Not that it mattered that much to me,
because it was a great thing to hear. Perlonex combine various styles
of music in their own music: it's a bit of noise, electro-acoustic,
ambient, composition and improvisation, that is brought together in
very intense and powerful pieces of music.
On the other side we find Julijuni, a Berlin/Hamburg trio of Tim
Tetzner on feedback, Micheal Rieken on powerbook and Ansgar Wilken
(boss of Happy Zloty) on guitar and electronics. They exist since
2001 and their first rehearsal was also their first gig. Since then
they have played all over Germany and The Netherlands (they say: I
didn't see them). Julijuni operate indeed in a much more improvised
music style and they opt for the more noisy side of improvisation.
Their piece (although divided in three parts, it sounds very much
like an ongoing thing) starts out nicely in a moody way, but
gradually builts up to a wall of noise, feedback and extensive
scraping of contact microphones.
Bad Alchemy, Februar 2004
Das Berliner Trio Perlonex, besetzt mit Ignaz Schick (electronics, devices, turntables),
Jörg Maria Zeger (processed electric guitar) & Burkhard Beins (drums, percussion, objects),
steuert mit dem knapp 18-minütigen 'with enemies like these who needs friends' einen ihrer
typischen Spannungsbögen bei, eine aufwallende, dichte Klangwolke, die wieder sanft am
Horizont verschwindet, ein Naturereignis, konstuiert mit sorgfältigster elektroakustischer
Finesse.
Dass sich ihre im Mai 2001 in Bremen formierten Splitpartner nur eine Lebensdauer bis Julijuni
zutrauten, erwies sich als Irrtum. Gitarrist und Labelmacher Ansgar Wilken, Tim Tetzner (feedback)
& Michael Rieken (powerbook) tanzten nicht nur einen Sommer lang, vielmehr beschallten sie die
Hamburger 'Hörbar', das 'Sonorama' in Arnhem, mit feinen Knirsch- und Knispel - Soundscapes.
In einem diffusen Geräuschstrüpp rumoren elektroakustische Simulacren von organischem Wildwuchs.
Die Suggestion von 'Leben' ist so stark, dass man Tapetenmuster, Teppichknoten und Zimmerpflanzen
kritisch zu beäugen beginnt nach Anzeichen von Gekrabbel. Dabei muss man keine mimetische
Absicht unterstellen. Aber die Akribie, die dieses Trio ins Detail investiert, transformiert den
Hörraum so plastisch in ein hybrides Zwischenreich aus kristallinem Knistern, insektoider Zirb- und
Schabaleatorik, motorischen Geräusch- und automatischen Repetitionsmustern, dass die schroffe
Trennung zwischen dem Realen und und Imaginärem etwas weniger schroff erscheint.
