Sounds only

December 2009 / January 2010

This show features material released by the label Ahornfelder
curated by Alexander Schubert.

1. Anne Laplantine / Ending Programm
2. Greg Davis and Sébastien Roux / Geneva
3. Greg Davis and Sébastien Roux / London
4. Greg Davis and Sébastien Roux / San Francisco
5. Greg Davis and Sébastien Roux / Eugene
6. Greg Davis and Sébastien Roux / Aalst
7. Alexander Schubert / Nachtschatten
8. Alexander Schubert / Few Plateaus
9. Alexander Schubert / Semaphores
10. Semuin / Greeting Prelude
11. Semuin / Wilma
12. Semuin / Circle
13. Semuin / Semui (I)
14. Semuin / Semuin (II)
15. F.S.Blumm / Andi and Jason
16. Anne Laplantine / Nawak
17. Anne Laplantine / Tek
18. Ember / Aruna Aurora

The label Ahornfelder releases audio and print material. The musical releases are instrumental compositions between postrock, minimal acoustic pieces, jazz and fieldrecordings. It is a combination between sound and music, noises and harmonies, patterns and deconstruction, academic approaches and melodic songwriting. In parallel the label releases books with drawings, photographies and collages.
The label's idea can't be explained by a single genre - but as a somehow related approach to instrumental music. The artists on Ahornfelder combine experimental approaches with harmonic elements which leads to an interesting and still melodic result. This concept is applied to different musical forms ranging from popular music, postrock, contemporary classical music, noise, free jazz and folk to experimental electronics. Each artist has his unique way to realize this aim.
The print-releases on Ahornfelder carry the ideas of structures, abstraction and harmonic experimentalism on a graphic level and in such way compliment the musical output. This approach is even more interesting as the artists are in several cases musicians too. FS BLUMM's current book-release "drawings" displays a range of minimalistic and abstract drawings with a brilliant aesthetic feeling for composition.
Ahornfelder is run by Alexander Schubert.
www.ahornfelder.de/about.php

Greg Davis and Sébastien Roux are back with their second collaborative album following the acclaimed release “Paquet surprise”. “Merveilles”, translated from the French word as wonderland, describes the album very fitting as the songs have a very illustrative quality. Where the previous album relied a bit more on sweet melodies and quick changes “Merveilles” explores different sound worlds in depth and illuminates a terrain of diverse emotional scenarios. Silent passages of field recordings are combined with subtle harmonic layers, interrupted by sudden noise eruptions and contrasted by folk like guitar melodies and very concrete sounds, often leaving the listener wondering what the origin of this tone might be.
It is a pleasure to have a documentary of this interesting collaboration in which both musicians are able to realise their grown individual expertise. Sébastien Roux, working at the IRCAM and well known for his success in continuing the French line of music concrète in a new and contemporary way, clearly helps to establish the abstract narrative form of this record with arrangements of cut and edited pieces of concrete recordings. The influence of Greg Davis, often described as the anchor figure in the forming of the laptop folk scene, is clearly audible in melodic guitar lines and the construction of dense harmonic drones. But the strength of this collaboration is the fact that Greg Davis and Sébastien Roux combine their musical ideas creating a very unique approach of their own. This record clearly combines elements of serious and popular music in a highly thoughtful and contemporary way, widening the edges of by now established stylistic fields that Davis and Roux once helped to define.
“Merveilles” consists of edits of live recordings made during a tour through Europe and the US in 2005 - it is the pleasant proof that electronic music of such richness in detail can be played and composed live.
www.ahornfelder.de/releases/merveilles/index.php

Since Anne Laplantine has not released a new record for a few years, Ahornfelder is proud to announce the release of a new album by this outstanding French artist.

Over the last years Anne moved between Vienna, Cologne, Hamburg, Berlin and Paris where she currently lives. This journey reflects her artistic personality - like an explorer she is constantly searching for the ideal solution and the right thing to say artistically. She uncomprimisingly follows her artistic intuition and each step of this ongoing search is never well prepared or calculated. The destination of her journey is not a safe spot somewhere in the music world. She is not interested in finding her musical home or in marking her territory, rather she seems to be most interested in the promising struggle of a new start.

Maybe that's why Anne confused her audience by releasing records on different labels under many different guises: As "Michiko Kusaki" she had a release on the label Angelika Köhlermann (Vienna), for Tomlab (Cologne) she recorded as "Angelika Köhlermann" and "Anne Hamburg", and on Emphase Records (Berlin) she released a wonderful album under her given name. Besides her musical projects, which also involve a variety of impressive collaborations, she is also involved in an all sorts of art projects in the cities she lives in.

On her latest releases Anne developed her very own way of composing electronic pop music. Concerning structure and harmony her music owes more to baroque polyphony than to the standard track format. Little lo-fi sound samples of flute, guitar, etc. are arranged to create fragile polyphonic minature-masterpieces. This fascinating and friendly way of composing is further developed on her album for Ahornfelder. But this record offers much more to discover: Concentrated experiments with structure and sound, beautiful songs which are sparsely orchestrated with guitars and an old school drum computer, and additionally an incorporated art project. The album contains 58 tracks, 34 of which are nothing but "silences" in between 4 to 20 seconds. But these "silences" are not totally silent. In these short passages you can either hear the first few seconds after a recording is finished, or you can listen to the the stage setting of the next recording to come. You do not hear the recorded music itself. Anne again seems more interested in the promising struggles of new beginnings - where so far nothing is said, but everything could be said - than in fixed results or answers.
It speaks in favour of Anne's focused musical sensibility that this "silences" experiment does not dissipate her album into incoherent pieces. The dramaturgy of the album is conclusive and each little piece of silence helps to bundle the attention of the listener all over again.
www.ahornfelder.de/releases/anne/index.php

The first record "Malinche" by Taunus was mostly focused on minimal, interlocking folky guitar-patterns. "Harriet" on the other hand features more contrasting elements: Strictly composed passages, which are rigid and static in character, are combined with free, fluid and improvised parts. Dissonances enter a framework of open tuned folk-harmonics. And on top of the warm and immediate sounds of acoustic intruments an artificial voice generator talks about the inconstancy of concepts and theory. By bridging and sometimes even blurring these contrasts and differences, Taunus expand their way of musical expression. "Harriet" successfully explores new ways of composing interesting, reflective and charming music based on fingerpicked guitars. The album is named after Darwin's lady freshwater turtle "Harriet", which died in 2006 at the age of 175 years. She was mistakenly thought to be a male exemplar of her species for most of her life.
www.ahornfelder.de/releases/taunus/index.php

Sinebag is the more pop orientated side project of Alexander Schubert. It’s electro-acoustic music with influences from contemporary music, improvised music and experimental pop music.
Alexander Schubert is also a composer for contemporary multimedia music and plays in different improvised contexts, for example in the electroacoustic free jazz quartett „Ember“. While these two poles and the harmonic sinebag project used to be really three different fields of work – they start to merge together more and more by now being rather different aspects of a similar approach on music. This becomes evident comparing the first two releases („Milchwolken in Teein“ and „Près de la lisière“) with the current musical material.
Several pieces have been based on the use of field recordings. A lot of the pieces are arranged versions of studio recordings of live-electronic improvisations. Jazz elements are present as much as acousmatic and minimal elements. Overall the music changes slowly from a rather ambient approach to a more counterpoint and diverse compositional approach.
Sinebag has been performed live a lot of times with the constant aim to try to create the pieces on stage from scratch relying on several acoustic instruements, custom made objetcs and programs and the collaboration with instrumentalists – the goal always being to have the performance be comprehendable and well perceivable. His records have been released on his label „Ahornfelder“ and on „Pulsmusik.“
www.sinebag.de

Alexander Schubert was born in 1979 in Bremen and studied computer science and biology in Leipzig focusing on neuroinformatics and cognitive science.
During his studies he has worked as a musician and composer in a variety of different environments. In addition to this, Schubert worked and studied for one year at the ZKM (Center for Art and Media) in Karlsruhe at the Institute for Music and Acoustics. Since 2007 he has started a degree in multimedia composition at the Hamburg Academy for Music and Drama.
Schubert's research interest explores cross-genre interfaces between acoustic and electronic music. Musical pieces for audio tapes and the formal notation of compositions for live electronics belong just as much to his work as the design of software-setups and manipulation / design of instruments for an intuitive handling in an improvised context. A permanent focus of his work is the employment of noisy sounds, realised through the unconventional use of different modes of playing (based on preparations) and field recordings. His technical training is the basis of a differentiated utilisation and individual design of sound synthesis and controllers (e.g. in the installation "A Set of Dots").
Apart from working as a composer and solo musician Schubert also plays in the ensembles "Schubert-Kettlitz-Schwerdt" (for improvisations solely based on noises) and the electronic trio "Trnn". The formation "Ember" (saxophone, drums, piano, electronic) mainly realises minimal, poly-rhythmic pieces that are a mix of free jazz and contemporary chamber music. Schubert has contributed to a variety of different projects as a musician, composer and programmer (e.g. for the "Wiener Festwochen" and their commission of the play "151 Meter über dem Meer"). Alexander Schubert curates the music festival contemporary electronic music in Leipzig and runs the publishing company "Ahornfelder-Verlag" for experimental audio and book releases.
In 2009 he was awarded with a Bourges residency prize.
His works have been played for example at: ICMC Montreal, SSSP Leicester, Klangwertage Hamburg, ZKM Karlsruhe, SMC Porto, Ahornfelder Leipzig, Bipolar Festival, Blurred Edges Hamburg, Disparate Bodies Festival, Headphone-Festival, Komponistenforum Mittersill, Maribor Slovenia, Hilltown Festival Irland.
www.alexanderschubert.net

Hier werden Produktionen aus Archiven der Elektroakustischen Musik, wie z.B. dem Archiv der DEGEM oder dem IDEAMA- und dem DEGEM-Archiv des ZKM, dem Archiv des elektronischen Studios der TU Berlin sowie anderen internationalen Archiven und Dokumentationen elektroakustischer Kunst unter verschiedenen Aspekten präsentiert.