Whatness 001
Liam Gillick
meets
Scott Olson
in Japan


"Hi, you must be Scott. How's it going?"
"And you must be Liam. Nice to meet you."

Tracks
Seven tracks by Liam Gillick
selected from exhibitions at the
Kunsthaus Glarus (ch) in 1998
and the Frankfurter Kunstverein (d)
in 1999 and Sarah Morriss' Film "AM/PM".
All tracks were remixed at Paul's studio in New York
on the day of his wedding, June 2000.

One long track by Scott Olson recorded in Boston and
reworked at the CAA in Kitakyushu, Japan, June 2000.

The last track is a remix of Liam's work by Stephan Mathieu
www.bitstream.de
sleeve designed by Markus Weisbeck from a vague idea by Liam Gillick.

© 2000 Liam Gillick and Scott Olson. All rights reserved.




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Whatness 002
Joseph Suchy
Canoeing Instructional


"Harfe" is a wooden canoe that has been
trasformed into a string instrument by artist
Kirsten Pieroth.


Tracks
All tracks by Joseph Suchy.
Recorded on Feb. 2001 at Kirsten's studio in Berlin.
contact Mr. Suchy: josuch@gmx.de
sleeve designed by Markus Weisbeck

© 2001 Joseph Suchy and Kirsten Pieroth. All rights reserved.




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Whatness 003
Mein Kopf verlor ein Dach
Marc Ushmi meets Reverend Galloway
on Ernst Busch


Mein Kopf verlor ein Dach.
Wissen die Welt ist die Welt.
Vorwärts die Zeit.
Wage den Streit.
Auf der Strasse sprach Salat.
Wer die Sach' im Spass gesagt.
Wer schreit dort Brecht aus?
Keins Swing, die Kommunisten.

Tracks
4  71 bpm  Land! Sie bereit, vorwärts die Zeit
1 127 bpm  What's on my plate? Die Solidaritate
2  128 bpm  Workers & farmers hold'em up
 high in the sky
6 126 bpm  Nur auf die Minuten kommt es immer an.
7 123 bpm  Ein Klavier, ein Kinderspiel aus Glas.
3 128 bpm  Oh, er ist so verschwunden.
6 0 bpm  kt0eks
8  127 bpm  Zahnlos fletschende Zwings,
 wie wir wissen ist es nur im Traum.

Sleeve designed by Markus Weisbeck.
All vocals recorded November 2000 at FTF Studio/Frankfurt.
Produced at Piethopraxis.
© 2002 Marc Ushmi and Stephen Galloway. All rights reserved.
Booking: marcandstephen@whatness.de




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Whatness 004
Aerial Riverseries
Frank Bretschneider
on Olafur Eliasson


«Computermusik ist natürlich immer eine Form grafischen oder besser visuellen Komponierens, einfach durch die Arbeit am Monitor. Und der visuelle Aspekt ist, im Gegensatz zur Notation, ungleich stärker, etwa die umfassende grafische, statische wie dynamische Darstellung aller relevanten Aspekt der Musik: Zeitbezüge, Lautstärke, Tonhöhe, Dynamik, Frequenzspektrum, etc. Die Idee war ja, ein akustisches Äquivalent zu den Fotos zu schaffen. Die «Riverseries» schien sich irgendwie mit meiner Auffassung von Musik zu decken. Mich haben vor allem die filigranen Strukturen fasziniert, die Farbkontraste und Nuancen. Die Fotografien erschienen mir dann sehr artifiziell, fast digital, trotz der eigentlich archaischen Landschaft. Ich habe sie auch nie als Bilder von Landshcaften wahrgenommen, wahrscheinlich durch die fremde Perspektive. So nach und nach hatte ich Vorstellugen vom Sound entwickelt und habe mit den Tracks begonnen, die dann so ihr Eigenleben entwickelten. Ich beschäftigte mich dann mehr damit, Formen zu finden die der Ein-Minuten-Vorgabe entsprachen und das ganze zu verbinden, um einen musikalischen Fluss zu entwickeln.»

Tracks
Olafur Eliasson

«The experience of composition is, I believe, a matter of cultivation. As much as the senses and perceptions are linked with memory and recognition, our relation to composition, space or even colour is closely derived from our cultural habitat. The eskimos have one word for red but thirty for various whites. Lime has a disinfectant effect and was in earlier times thrown into mass graves to prevent diseases from spreading. For health reasons hospitals used the lime to whitewash and disinfect the walls and soon the color white was equal to clean. Many of the modernists believed that an open and clean space — or composition — was the best platform for execution of artistic self-realisation. Imagine if lime by nature would have been yellow, maybe the now well-known white cube museum would be all yellow. The Yellow Musem.»

Photos © Olafur Eliasson
Sleeve designed by Markus Weisbeck.
All music by Frank Bretschneider
© 2002 copyright control mastered by Bo at Calyx




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Whatness 005
Ekkehard Ehlers
Sebastian Meissner
Thom Willems
Music for
William Forsythe


Sie komponieren für die unangefochten beste Ballette Kompanie der Welt, der jeglicher falscher Konservatismus abgeht. Denn immer wieder hat das Ballet Frankfurt den Blick auf das Ballett neu formuliert. Dieser Blick, das vom Körper losgelöste Auge, entspricht in der Musik von Ekkhard Ehlers, Sebastian Meissner und Thom Willems nur zugenau einem vom Körper gänzlich losgelösten Ohr: kein Tänzer tanzt «auf» die Musik, die er hört. Die Musik lenkt den Blick, freischwebend wie Tanz, nicht Note für Note, sondern körperloser, Fokus für Fokus. Indiesem Panorama entstand die bei Thom Willems, Sebastian Meissner und Ekkhard Ehlers gewaltige musikalische Bandbreite, breit und tief wie das Ohr in die Welt reinsehen kann.

Tracks
Endless house
written and produced by Sebestian Messner
and Ekkhard Ehlers 1999
Woolf Phrase
written and produced by Ekkhard Ehlers 2001
Scattered crown
written and produced by Ekkhard Ehlers 2001
The Scott Work live
live performed by Thom Willems 2002

Thanks to Staubgold and Mille Plateaux.
Photos by Armin Linke
sleeve designed by Markus Weisbeck.
© All rights reserved.




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Whatness 006
Adam Butler
schmoozing with
the après garde


The Frankfurt Concert was not a concert at all. Think of bar balladry, played against a background of human conversation and environmental noise. Against it, not for it.But then music for the background wasn't even quite achieved by its conceptionalist Satie, still sticking to compositional values or notationational ideals. That idea of temporarily lending an ear to notes easily strolling along the keyboard was later fulfilled with the repertoire of the evening standardist. Audience satisfaction not by music but in spite of it was eventually accepted by spontaneous composers & improvisers, minimalists, or Jarretts, only for the sake of sharing the same belief in a collectively imagined counter-beyond — the united states of otherness: red, green, or it seems, blue.

No Sir, I can't woogie. As a true cathedralist of the piano's resonances, Adam Butler here transcends clarity's horizon, where you can see nothing but the player's hands rushing over a perfectly well tuned instrument. Wanted or not, you became a witness of recording technology erasing all other sonic information, at your feet for your own private pleasure. In other words, solitude. Gathered sounds here disrupt the flow of righteous routine, while still being processed from sonorities of piano. It always wears a smile when being prepared for release.

It has been said — and been recorded — that the audience is listening — or participating. But this code of interdependence was not transmitted in our 21st century romance. With ears turning away from the sonic explorations of schmoozing, with attention fixed to mouth organs, the sounds of breaking glass or chew of foot, there's no such thing as the all of everything in the cosmos of the après garde. There's an absence present here. An absence that the music seems to treat artistically by organizing communication within the possible worlds of its own parameters. And, as track sequence follows the chronology of the evening, footsteps finally guide your ear to the door.

Tracks
1 Beein' one thing and dooin' another
2 Sprung
3 Twiftopedie
4 Scope/lifetime
5 Against the diagram makers
6 If in doubt, go out
7 Makin' like a bakery truck blues

All tracks are written by Adam CB Butler and published by Autopilot except for "twiftopedie" which is written by Andi Thomas/Jan St Werner,arranged by Adam CB Butler. This arrangement (ie. Twiftopedie) was originally conceived for a Mouse on Mars exhibition at the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf. "schmoozing with the après garde" was recorded by Ekkehard Ehlers at a party for Surface, Frankfurt.
Then edited at Londonstrasse Studios by Adam Butler, and then finally mastered by Joseph Suchy.

© 2003 Autopilot

Contact Mr. Butler:apresgarde@isness.org
The cover is a visual representation o fht eproportional quantities of different
types of wood required to produce a piano. Thanks to Michael Bauer.

© All rights reserved.




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Whatness 007
Liam Gillick, Michaela Melián, Markus Schneider, Albrecht Kunze, Nobukazu Takemura, Alva Noto, Shantel
on
Peter Roehr


Peter Roehr's crafted work with a categorical reduction of form, was developed in the 60's: a time of revolt, of divergence, and of pop. He critically observed industrial production and its effects, so it isn't surprising that serialization, in its strictest form, became Roehrs' artistic process. Even less so is, from the result of his far-from-sober "examinations", yet a poetic popping emerges.
This ambivalence is marvellously encapsulated in his purely tonal cuts -his "Film Assemblies" -, which were the earliest loops. Consequently this makes them particularly suitable to be deconstructed and remixed again today.

Tracks
Haare Liam Gillick
for N.E.W.
All sound Liam Gillick except sample of Peter Roehr.

Verkehr Michaela Melián
Music: Michaela Melián & Carl Oesterhelt except sample of Peter Roehr.
Mastering: Michaela Heilrath

Turn Markus Schneider Re. Turn
All sound generated off the original turn audio file by Peter Roehr.
Voices by text-to-speech arranged solely with Ableton live 3.0 Software, courtesy The-Chinese-Room.

Tunnel Alberecht Kunze
Manchmal führt der direkte Weg durch einen Tunnel / Sometimes the direct way leads through a tunnel
Sung & played & produced by Albrecht Kunze.

Wolkenkratzer Nobukazu Takemura
All sound Nobukazu Takemura except sample of Peter Roehr, courtesy Raster-Noton.de
Gulf Alva Noto Dark Shadow of Gulf
All sound Alva Noto except sample of Peter Roehr, courtesy Raster-Noton.de
Kämmen Shantel
Babylon central revisited
Written and produced by Stefan Hantel, additional production by Markus Darius.


Invited by Surface, Markus Weisbeck / mastered by Alberecht Kunze and Peter Fey
Fontside: Peter Roehr, Fußball 1963, Collection Thomas Bayrle / Inside: Thomas Bayrle, Tassen 1967
© All rights reserved




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Whatness 008
The Halfters
60 Jahre D-Mark


»Like an insane person he builds replicas of rooms and apartments that
have been his life.«
»I feel unable or unwilling to speak for my own singular subjective position
under my own name, under the rubric that is my own identity.«
»Of the works themselves it leaves only fragments behind, and communicates
itself, like a cipher, only through the blank spaces from which it has disengaged itself.«
»The ponderous illusions of solidity and the non-existence of things is what
the artist should take for materials.«
»And —nobody knows for sure — he might show us how to fly.«
»The past carries with it a temporal index by which it is referred to redemption.«
»...is it possible that appropriation, too, is a stutter?
R-r-r-ich-ch-chard P-p-pr-r-rince?«
»We walk at night in a circle and are consumed by flame.«
Daniel Birnbaum

Tracks
1. Griechenland 10. Seoul
2. Der Sturz 11. Tschechien
3. Rutheer 12. Tislo
4. Keine Schraube 13. D.D.T.H.
5. Elefantenkuh 14. Wolken
6. Marianne 15. Kutter
7. Im Büro 16. Zeh
8. Seattle 94 17. Hammer
9. Feuchte Mütze 18. Des Medel

don aqua: vocals, big drum
moabit klos: vocals, small drum, cymbal
ruediger-christian: vocals, guitar


all songs by Pornoheft
contact thehalfters@bjotl.com
recorded live at Fey Tontechnik;Frankfurt, February 17-18,207
edited by Albrecht Kunze
engineered, mixed and mastered by Peter Fey
sleeve designed by Markus Weisbeck.
© 2000 All rights reserved.




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Whatness 009
Kippenberger hören
Oliver Augst, Rüdiger Carl,
Sven-Åke Johansson


Aufstehen
Stuhl kaputt machen
you
yellow
you

Tracks
Mit Texten, O-Tönen und der Stimme von Martin Kippenberger
Im Auftrag von rbb und Deutschlandradio Kultur 2008
Dauer: 52 Minuten

Mit Oliver Augst (Sprache, Gesang, Electronics)
Rüdiger Carl (Sprache, Gesang, Akkordeon)
Sven-Åke Johansson (Sprache, Gesang, Perkussion, Autohupen)

Komposition: Augst, Carl, Johansson
Tonmeister rbb: Kaspar Wollheim
Mix und Realisation: Augst, Carl

Dank an den Nachlass Martin Kippenberger, Köln

Photo by Andrea Stappert
Sleeve designed by Surface
© 2008 rbb, lizenziert durch rbb media GMbH




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