E D I T I O N  D E G E M  / A U F  A B W E G E N  RELEASE INFO

cd-audio
release date: 01.10.2011
artist:  various artists
title: DEGEM CD 10: Replace
order no.: ed01
Label code (LC): 27648
time: 78:08 min
packaged in full colour digipak with 6 panel fold booklet in german and english. curated and designed by Marc Behrens. 1000 copies.

EDITION DEGEM

aufabwegen is proud to host EDITION DEGEM, the new label issuing the annual compilations of the German Association for Electrocaoustic Music / Deutsche Gesellschaft für Elektroakustische Musik e.V. Each CD is curated by a sound artist and devoted to a specific theme/topic. The music covers a very wide range of electronic sounds, from sound art to post industrial cut ups, from field recordings and soundscapes to radiophonic composition.
The website for EDITION DEGEM is www.editiondegem.de

DEGEM CD 10: Replace

The first release on the new imprint is the compilation CD DEGEM CD 10: Replace, curated by Marc Bahrens. It includes 14 unreleased tracks by such artists as Nicolas Wiese, Kirsten Reese, Sam Auinger, Nikolaus Heyduck, Frank Niehusmann, Denise Ritter and more. Total playing time is 78 mins. The CD comes in a nice digipak with 6 panel fold booklet with liner notes on each track and a short essay on the theme “Replace” in german and english.

Price:  14,00 euro plus postage
Wholesale upon request.

EDITION DEGEM bei aufabwegen

Die DEGEM fördert die elektroakustische Musik in nationalem und
internationalem Rahmen. Diesem Zweck dienen die Organisation von
Fachtagungen, -kursen und Konzerten, der internationale Austausch von
Informationen sowie die Herausgabe von Publikationen und CDs.

Seit Oktober 2011 erscheinen alle DEGEM-Publikationen unter dem Label
EDITION DEGEM, welches die DEGEM in Zusammenarbeit mit Till Kniola
(aufabwegen, Köln) gegründet hat.

Die kuratorische Verantwortung für Veröffentlichungen übernimmt die
DEGEM. Inhaber und Betreiber des Labels ist Till Kniola.
Im Online-Shop der EDITION DEGEM finden sich neben den aktuellen
Produktionen auch frühere DEGEM-Publikationen wie CDs, DVDs und CD-ROMs.

www.editiondegem.de

A U F  A B W E G E N  RELEASE INFO

CD-AUDIO
release date: 01.10.2011
artist:  MARC BEHRENS
title: 20 Zonen
order no.: aatp35
Label code (LC): 01291
time: ca. 40 mins.
full colour printed sleevecard and booklet housed in clear plastic slipcase; designed by Marc Behrens.
limited to 300 copies
price: 13 € plus postage

On “20 Zonen”

Produced in 2010 for a radio broadcast on Germany’s hr2-kultur radio, “20 Zonen” (20 Zones) is Marc Behrens’ homage to Darmstadt, Germany, his hometown, and in particular the city’s Kranichstein district, where he grew up and learned to listen. Behrens made recordings in such locations like an equestrian club, a heavy ion research unit, a railway museum, and of trains and airplanes noisily cutting through the supposed serenity of the industrially planted forests around Darmstadt. From time to time the subjective microphone goes underwater and dips into the area’s various ponds, among them the world famous Messel Pit Fossil site, which used to be a rainforest millions of years ago, not unlike the Amazon still is today. The intricately edited material is arranged into zones that “form themselves into cells, into blocks, into a topophonic cross vein” (Stefan Fricke, hr2-Kultur), set in a grey area between musique concrète and phonography.

Marc Behrens

Born in Darmstadt, Germany, in 1970.
Marc Behrens works on several cerebral and physical levels.
His works mainly consist of concrete electronic music, installations, the occasional photograph or video. Recent activities include field recording trips to remote western China and the Amazon rainforest, founding an incorporated company as a social art work, and staging a rite of passage for an investment banker.
Behrens has performed and exhibited extensively across six continents, and developed collaborations with Jeremy Bernstein, Ana Carvalho, Bernhard Günter, Nikolaus Heyduck, Francisco López, Paulo Raposo, Achim Wollscheid, among others.
2006–2010 Marc Behrens was a lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts, Saarbrücken, Germany (HBKSaar), and 2007–2009 at the University of Applied Arts Darmstadt-Dieburg, Germany.
He is a member of the Frankfurt Association for Contemporary Music (FGNM), the German Association for Electroacoustic Music (DEGEM), Granular (Lisbon), subscriber to the Electronic Music Foundation (EMF), and a citizen of The Kingdoms of Elgaland~Vargaland. 2003–2007 he was co-director of the Portuguese music label Sirr.

www.marcbehrens.com

A U F  A B W E G E N  RELEASE INFO

10” VINYL
release date: 25.08.2011
artist:  FRANCISCO LÓPEZ
title: untitled #205
order no.: aatp31
Label code (LC): 01291
time: ca. 18 mins + 20 locked grooves
clear vinyl in clear plastic sleeve, with 20 locked grooves for DJs on
B-side. Limited to 300 copies

Price: 13,00 Euros

On “untitled #205”:

Francisco López states: “Based exclusively on end grooves from vintage
records, ‘untitled #205’ is
a straightforward and joyful exploration of the potential for reincarnation
of these unintended sonic structures into new life. More a tool than a final
product, it delves into static, noise and rhythm with a hopeful
perspective.”
The untitled #205 mix on the a-side brings us 18 minutes of hissy, textural
sound in dissolution, ranging from ryhthm to noise. The b-side has the 20
original loops López constructed out of old vintage 78s so if you buy 20
copies of this 10” you might be able to recreate the track….

On Francisco López

Francisco López is internationally recognized as one of the major figures of
the sound art and experimental music scene. Over the past 30 years he has
developed an astonishing sonic universe, absolutely personal and
iconoclastic, based on a profound listening of the world. Destroying
boundaries between industrial sounds and wilderness sound environments,
shifting with passion from the limits of perception to the most dreadful
abyss of sonic power, proposing a blind, profound and transcendental
listening, freed from the imperatives of knowledge and open to sensory and
spiritual expansion.

He has realized hundreds of concerts, projects with field recordings,
workshops and sound installations in 60 countries of the five continents.
His extensive catalog of sound pieces (with live and studio collaborations
with over 100 international artists) has been released by more than 200
record labels worldwide, and he has been awarded three times with honorary mentions at the competition of Ars Electronica Festival. [Pedro Higueras, Sonom Studios]

www.franciscolopez.net

A U F  A B W E G E N  RELEASE INFO

cd-audio
release date: 21.06.2011
artist:  KONRAD KRAFT
title: temporary audiosculptures and artefacts
order no.: aatp33
Label code (LC): 01291
time: 74:24 min
packaged in a special carton fold box, designed by KK. Limited to 300 copies

On “temporary audiosculptures and artefacts”:

Trying to set musical events in a sculptural form, the Düsseldorf/Wuppertal based artist and musician Detlef Funder (a.k.a. Konrad Kraft), develops the temporary audio-sculpture. Knowing that a tonal event can never take the materiality of a real sculpture, Konrad Kraft attempts this special transformation with the help of various elements. Human imaginativeness, time, as well as the tonal event itself are the elements for the listener to form an individual audio-sculpture and to let it develop in their heads. The audio-sculpture with its acoustic body, around which various tonal/sound elements and events float, appears with a physical structure, a dimensionality. Tonal/sound elements are of various origins. In part elicited from nature, or being conjured up synthetically, or just being put together randomly, all elements are enhanced and altered sometimes significantly to the point that the character has changed completely and can hardly be identified. The term ‘artefact’ relates to the fact that sound fragments, through the synthetic alteration, are broken-up and only exist and appear as particles.  They flow as ‘artefacts’ in the tonal range.
It sounds like floating metallic sound units interfere with small concrete sounds in the foreground. It reminds us at times of some of the work by Illusion Of Safety, Controlled Bleediung and Cisfinitum.

Detlef Funder alias Konrad Kraft Bio

1979 – Purchase of first semi-modular synthesiser.
1982 – Creation of experimental and avantgarde music project “Konrad Kraft“. Various tapes and CDs as well as compilation tracks are published.
1988 – 1994 Co-founder of the Düsseldorf based music label “SDV-Tonträger”. Responsible for A&R work.
1989 – 1999 Freelance work as video editor and post-production supervisor for German broadcast and private TV.
1990 – 2011 Producer of electronic music (experimental, ambient, techno) and work as DJ and live-acts worldwide (“Konrad Kraft”, “Gilgamesch”, “D-Fundation”, “Detson Engineering” & “Four Carry Nuts”).
2004 – After a long break resumption of work as artist (fine arts and painting).
2011 – Release of Konrad Kraft “Temporary Audio Sculptures and Artefacts“ audio-CD, with the label “aufabwegen, Cologne”
Releases:
1992 Dino Oon & Konrad Kraft – “Environmental Studies“ (SDV-Düsseldorf) CD
1996 Konrad Kraft – Alien Atmospheres (Elektro Smog-Frankfurt) CD

www.konrad-kraft.eu

retail: 13,00 euro, BUY IT HERE

————————-

REVIEWS:

Vital Weekly #787
KONRAD KRAFT – TEMPORARY AUDIOSCULPTURES AND ARTEFACTS (CD by Auf Abwegen)
The name Konrad Kraft sounds from way back, but not, as I thought from the world of cassettes, although he started in those, 80s, days. Between 1988 and 1994 he had a label called SDV Tontrager, and had a CD, which I am surely but entirely forgot with Dino Oon. He has been producing music all these years but never released that much. In 2004 he resumed his work as a visual artist, and perhaps its there were we see his latest release, which deals with temporary audiosculptures and artifacts. I am not sure, as this is not clear from the press text, wether these are real sculptures or that he sees his pieces of music as sculptures in ways that others refer to them as ‘compositions’, ‘pieces’ or ‘songs’. I understand that Kraft (real name Detlef Funder) uses electronic sounds as well as field recordings, which he breaks up to an extend where they become particles that hold themselves together, in a strange sort of twist of gravity. Sometimes there is some drone or hiss like sound
in the
background which hold these things together, and sometimes not at all. If anything, and here I don’t agree with Auf Abwegen who compares it to Illusion Of Safety, Controlled Bleeding and Cisfinitum, I think Kraft uses the ideas of Asmus Tietchens: sounds are being micro-ed, atomized, and then put together in constellations of some kind. Constellations which we could call sculptures, or compositions – ‘songs’ just doesn’t seem to fit this. Two things to complain about however: the sculptures are all a bit long, and thus the whole album is a bit long. It then lacks some necessary variation. In that sense Tietchens works are shorter and more to the point; something Kraft should consider too. (FdW)
www.vitalweekly.net

A track was broadcast on US independent radio show No Pidgeonholes EXP, July 21st 2011. Listen to the show here: http://nopigeonholesexp.podomatic.com/

A U F  A B W E G E N  / DIE STADT RELEASE INFO

cd-audio
release date: 17.11.2010
artist:  ASMUS TIETCHENS
title: MARCHES FUNEBRES
order no.: aatp32 / DS 112
Label code (LC): 01291
time: 48:08 min
part 13 in the TIETCHENS reissue series
jewel case with full colour poster booklet, reproducing the original artwork plus new photograph and liner notes by Asmus Tietchens
600 copies / co-released by Die Stadt +aufabwegen

On “Marches Funebres”:

The central piece on MARCHES FUNEBRES is “Grünschattiger Nachmittag”. Work on the composition began as early as 1979. A rough sketch of these first steps utilizing analogue rhythm machine and Minimoog is included as the bonus track on this disc. It became obvious that “Grünschattiger Nachmittag” was impossible to realize on the Fairlight CMI. It took nine years for the equipment at Audiplex Studios to match the technical standards needed for the recording of the orchestral version of the piece as it was originally intended. Aided by my teacher and mentor Okko Bekker and equipped with numerous samplers and a sophisticated music software the piece was finally realized in 1988 after several weeks’ hard work. The mockers would have it that I tried to have Django dancing the Bolero. Maybe they were half right. As you know, I am not not a friend of soft entertaining sounds but if it has to be kitsch then do it full-on. Hence even today I am standing in a “greenish afternoon shade”, if you know what I mean.
“Linea 5” was placed on the original LP to balance out “Grünschattiger Nachmittag”. I was hoping to create something equally austere as “Linea 1-4”. But, “Linea 5” got out of hand. Carried away by delays and echochambers I lost myself in erratic mountains of sound (complete with sceneries of St. Elmo’s Fire and alpenglow) until I was wholly exhausted.  For my better I was saved by some good St. Bernhards wearing their bootles of brandy around their necks. Who knows where this journey of belated psychedelia would have ended without them. This time, the mockers’ questions remained unanswered.
MARCHES FUNEBRES was the second time I tried my hand at something vaguely symphonic; a slippery ground for me. It was preceeded by the “Faircomp”-series and followed by the collaborative LP “E” with Okko Bekker. Then this chapter was closed. “Cobbler, stay at your last!” as they say. Still, for such an LP as MARCHES FUNEBRES to come out shows how the scope of what was possible had broadened by 1989. From now on, at the gate to the decade of the 1990ies, there shone an alternative to the quickly fading legacy of industrial at the horizon. Computers became affordable, CD began replacing vinyl, new ideas generated a musical diversity hitherto unheard of. In 1989 the new beginning was near.
Asmus Tietchens, 2010

Info:
www.aufabwegen.com, www.diestadtmusik.de, www.tietchens.de

retail: 15,00 euro
order from zipo@aufabwegen.com

2x cd-audio
release date: 30.07.2010
artists:  VARIOUS
title: VIVA NEGATIVA! A TRIBUTE TO THE NEW BLOCKADERS VOL. II EUROPE
order no.: aatp28
Label code (LC): 01291
time: disc 1: 73:53 min; disc 2: 71:28 min
16 pp full colour booklet with artwork by R. Rupenus; mastered by Asmus Tietchens
500 copies, jewel case

Viva Negativa! A Tribute To The New Blockaders: Volume II: Europe
Volume II in a series of UK / European / US and Japanese artists’ tributes to the pioneering UK Noise group The New Blockaders including exclusive tracks by:
Asmus Tietchens, Runzelstirn & Gurgelstock, Giancarlo Toniutti, Christian Renou, Jerome Noetinger, Alexei Borisov, Lasse Marhaug, Massimo, Cisfinitum, Sudden Infant, Kommissar Hjuler, Freiband, Achim Wollscheid, Mama Baer, Das Synthetische Mischgewebe, Dave Philips, Vortex Campaign, Vom Grill, Zbigniew Karkowski, Grunt, Pita, Treriksroset, Benzo, Eshak, RLW.

The New Blockaders are a group who, more than any other, define the essence of true Noise music both in art and in act. Their influence on the current crop of popular crossover Noise artists such as Prurient and Wolf Eyes is immeasurable. Emerging at the beginning of the 1980s alongside the Industrial grind of Throbbing Gristle and the harsh, abrasive Power Electronics of Whitehouse, TNB stood out through a purity of vision. Their first record, 1982’s Changez Les Blockeurs, is noise in its most rudimentary form: metallic grating sounds and analogue feedback redefined what could be classified as music. Its abstract form and Dadaist construction challenged all that had appeared before. It’s anti-music approach presented a recording closer to the theory-driven work of Einsturzende Neubauten than their supposed contemporaries.They would appear rarely and when they did it would be in anonymity. The records would emerge even more infrequently with little information and in tiny runs. Collaborations in recent years with artists such as Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore and Merzbow have brough their anti-sound to a younger and diverse audience. The metal-bashing of K2, the awkwardness of Runzelstirn & Gurgelstock, the density of Macronympha and the abrasiveness of Merzbow all owe something to the anti-music of TNB. They can truly be credited as pioneers of Noise music as we know it today.

Info:
www.thenewblockaders.org.uk

price: 18,00 euro
wholesale requests welcome

On “Fabrication 2″:

„Fabrication 2″ ist the sequel to “Fabrication”, the first collaboration between Richard Chartier and Asmus Tietchens released in 2007. Whereas for the first collab the idea developed from the project around reinterpretations of Chartier’s “Postfabricated” this time the efforts where directly focussed on the reinterpretation of specific basic sound material. This basic sound material can be found on the first disc in the set “Prefabrication 2″ which was constructed by Richard Chartier alone in Montreal and Washington, DC. “Fabrication 2″ is the reworking of this sonic basis by Asmus Tietchens. Whereas the first CD has traces of subtle dematerialized rhythmic structures the second disc is a study in minimalism and concentrated sound manipulation.

Richard Chartier (b.1971), sound and installation artist, is considered one of the key figures in the current of reductionist electronic sound art which has been termed both “microsound” and Neo-Modernist. Chartier’s minimalist digital work explores the inter-relationships between the spatial nature of sound, silence, focus, perception and the act of listening itself.

Chartier’s critically acclaimed sound works have been published over the past 12 years as 38 compact discs on labels such as 12k/LINE (US), Raster-Noton (Germany), Spekk (Japan), Non Visual Objects (Austria), Room40 (Australia), Die Stadt (Germany), DSP (Italy), ERS (Netherlands), and Trente Oiseaux (Germany). He has collaborated with noted sound artists Taylor Deupree, William Basinski, CoH, and German pioneer Asmus Tietchens, as well as installation artists Evelina Domnitch, Dmitry Gelfand, and visual artist Linn Meyers.

Asmus Tietchens has been producing electronic music since the 1960ies and is one of the most renowned sound artists today in Germany. In the last five years he was awarded twice the SWR state radio prize “Karl Sczuka Preis” for radio art. He has released more than 80 records and CDs on labels all around the world.

Info:
www.aufabwegen.com
www.3particles.com
www.tietchens.de

18,00 euros plus postage
order from zipo@aufabwegen.com

A U F  A B W E G E N  RELEASE INFO

cd-audio
release date: 12.04.2009
artist:  ASMUS TIETCHENS
title: EINE MENGE PAPIER
order no.: aatp27
time: 20:40 min
full colour paper sleeve, printed inner sleeve, mini-cd on clear full size printed 8” disc 500 copies / designed by Asmus Tietchens

On “Eine Menge Papier”:

“Eine Menge Papier” assembles 20 minutes of sounds derived from using paper as the sound souce. Two tracks originally came out as a limited 7” record on the austrian Syntactic label in the 1990ies and appear here for the first time on CD. The other two tracks were planned for a follow up 7” on the same label that never materialized. The fifth track is a study of sonic material in the same series. There are two further tracks from the P.I.G. series that are considered by the artists as failed attemps. These remain in the closet. The five sonic movements on “Eine Menge Papier” go back to the Tietchens sound right before he started the Mengen series, using primarily sine waves and white noise. “Eine Menge Papier” is an interesting documentation of the transitioin in Tietchens’ sound from the concretish, post-industrial rumblings and textures to the more refined, abstract and cold atmospheres.
Asmus Tietchens has been producing electronic music since the 1960ies and is one of the most renowned sound artists today in Germany. In the last five years he was awarded twice the SWR state radio prize “Karl Sczuka Preis” for radio art. He has released more than 80 records and CDs on labels all around the world.
Info:
www.aufabwegen.com
www.tietchens.de