Di. 11.11.2008
Einlass: 20.00h, erstes Konzert: 21.00h

aufabwegen präsentiert:

<<<geräuschwelten>>>

Merzbow/R.Pinhas
(the godfather of noise meets the guitar philosopher)
&
Das Synthetische Mischgewebe
(42 Entgleisungen in Stereo, Caen)

Stadtgarten (Saal)
Venloer Str. 40, 50672 Köln

BANG! Der nächste Streich in der Konzertreihe für post-industrielle Experimentalelektronik in Köln – „geräuschwelten“ Heute gibt es die Deutschland-Premiere des Duos Merzbow + Richard Pinhas! Zu Masami Akita und seinem Projekt Merzbow muss man nicht mehr viel sagen: Er hat das Genre des Japanese Noise erfunden und manipuliert seit über 20 Jahren in seinen Krach-Dada-Attacken die Geräuschwelt unseres Alltags. Richard Pinhas war Begründer der legendären französischen Krautrock-Postpunk-Truppe HELDON und ist als Sologitarrist auf den Spuren von Robert Fripp unterwegs. Support kommt vom Duo Das Synthetische Mischgewebe, die in einer konzertanten Rauminstallation mit mikrotonalen Soundattacken den Hörer in ihren Bann ziehen werden.
Mit freundlicher Unterstützung der LAG Soziokulturelle Zentren NW e.V. mit Mitteln des Ministerpräsidenten und dem Kulturamt der Stadt Köln.

aufabwegen/Till Kniola
Tel.: 0221-2720055 – Fax.: 0221-2720056
E-Mail: zipo@aufabwegen.com

Informationen

Merzbow + Richard Pinhas: Keio Line

„…Richard Pinhas consolidates his position as the reigning master of mesmerizing, trance/ambient guitar….“ – All Music Guide
“Merzbow is essentially a psychedelic artist, attempting to create shifts in consciousness through extreme sound.” – Pitchfork
Richard and Merzbow are both among the best-known figures in electronic rock music today. Merzbow is probably the single best-known artist in noise music today. While Richard’s work wouldn’t be considered to be in the ’noise‘ arena, many of the artists in the field have expressed great interest in his pioneering use of synthesizers and electronics in rock and contemporary music from the 1970s until the present. Despite coming from very different backgrounds, they had long expressed admiration for each others work. Given all of this, it is probably not surprising that the most important electronic musicians of France and Japan should finally collaborate together! During Richard’s second tour of Japan in the fall of 2007, he performed with Merzbow in what Richard called, „an incredible concert“. A week later, at the end of this tour, they booked two days in the studio to work together again, this time on a recording. All material was recorded completely live by the two musicians, with extensive work done in the mix and re-mix stage. Keio Line (the name refers to the name of the train Richard and Masami would take from downtown Tokyo to the recording studio) is a two CD set, released at a special price, that is violent, soothing, hypnotic, noisy and trance-inducing. All aboard the Keio Line!
Merzbow

Japaner, das ist bekannt, neigen ab und an zur Übertreibung. Extreme sind es die faszinieren. So wundert es auch nicht, dass sich im Land der aufgehenden Sonne Punks finden, deren Irokesenschnitt beinahe einen Meter in den Himmel ragt. In dieses Bild der Extremkunst passen auch die unzähligen Lärmattacken der japanischen Industrialpioniere, die seit 1981 den Weg in die Plattenläden dieser Welt finden.
Benannt hat sich Merzbow nach einer Kollage des deutschen Merz-Protagonisten Kurt Schwitters, dessen eklektizistische Kunstwerke aus gefundenen Objekten darüber hinaus den Blueprint zu Merzbows lärmigen Geräuschkollagen liefert, die ebenfalls versuchen den alltäglich vorgefundenen Lärm künstlerisch zu reflektieren. Überhaupt bildet die europäische Avantgarde der ersten Jahrhunderthälfte einen ständigen Reibungspunkt für den 1956 in Tokio geborenen Kunststudenten Masami Akita. Zeitweilig von seiner Frau Reiko Azuma und Budotänzern unterstützt, versteht sich Merzbow als die musikalische Umsetzung surrealistischer, dem Unbewussten entspringenden Automationstechniken.
Unzählige Projekte machen Merzbow heute nicht nur qualitativ, sondern auch quantitativ zu einem der Topplayer in der internationalen Industrialszene. Gleichzeitig unterstreicht der Einsatz von Tanz, Performance, Kollage, Malerei, Videokunst, Philosophie und Musik ein offenes Kunstverständnis, an dessen Ende dann auch mal eine Kollaboration mit der Berliner Frauencombo Lemonbabies stehen kann.
www.merzbow.net
Richard Pinhas

Composer, guitarist and electronics innovator Richard Pinhas is recognized as one of France’s major experimental musicians. A pivotal figure in the international development of electronic rock music, Pinhas‘ stature in France is analogous to Tangerine Dream’s in Germany: the father figure of an entire musical movement. The pioneering, aggressive music produced by his band Heldon during the 1970s, fusing electronics, guitar and rock, heralded the industrial and techno to come and remains today vital and unsurpassed. The ‘Father’ of electronic music in France is also recognized as a world-class guitarist whose “diabolical guitar work” (Progression) earns comparisons with Robert Fripp.
Pinhas received a degree in guitar at 17, and a PhD in philosophy from the Sorbonne, studying under philosopher Gilles Deleuze and writing on time and science fiction. He taught philosophy before abandoning an academic career for Heldon, his 3rd band, whose name derived from Normal Spinrad’s writing. Over the course of his subsequent musical career, Pinhas’ ongoing philosophical studies and interest in science fiction have fired, infused, and continually renewed his music.
Heldon released 7 groundbreaking, critically acclaimed albums between 1974-78. Simultaneous with his Heldon work, Pinhas released 5 solo albums between 1976 and 1982. All of the Heldon and Pinhas recordings from this period have been reissued by Cuneiform, in a major Heldon/Pinhas CD reissue project that the US label began in 1991. Critics have lauded these 20-year old recordings, remarking that Heldon’s “trailblazing electronic pathways have rarely been eclipsed even today” (i/e).
Pinhas returned to music with a vengeance in the 1990s after spending much of the 1980s away. Beginning with DWW (1992) on Cuneiform, his numerous 90s releases included projects with Peter Frohmader (Fossil Culture Cuneiform 1999), John Livengood, Scanner, Pascal Comelade, and others, as well as solo works. He also resumed performing.
During the ‘90s, Pinhas began developing a system of electronic processing to use in performing live solo guitar concerts. Experimenting with tape loops and infinite delays, he expanded, transformed and even transcended the “Frippertronics” technique Fripp used in his work with Eno, and “developed a set of personal parameters that stand on their own legs, his looping strata giving birth to interlocking patterns, chordal waves and even harmonic movements…” [Touching Extremes].
Pinhas also began experimenting in the late 90s with projects using spoken word, first used in his work with Heldon. Spoken by prominent 20th C. visionaries and futurists, including the philosopher Deleuze, science fiction writers Spinrad and Philip K. Dick, and French novelists Maurice Dantec and Chloe Delaume, the words – either taped or live/ real time, in English or French – add another layer of sound, texture and conceptual meaning to Pinhas’ rich soundfields.
In 1998, Pinhas formed an on-going project, Schizotrope, with noted cyber-punk author Maurice Dantec that fused guitar, electronics and spoken word from texts by Dantec and Deleuze. Spinrad also played a role. Schizotrope toured and released three CDs, including a live recording on Cuneiform, The Life and Death of Marie Zorn, (2000) which Carbon 14 called: “A totally unique and personal approach to “electronica;”… a veritable deluge of sounds… triumphant music.”
In 1999, Pinhas released his first solo CD based solely on guitar and processing systems, De L’Un Et Du Multiple (Spalax). In 2002, Cuneiform released his 2nd, Event and Repetition to widespread acclaim. Critics praised it as one of Pinhas’ very best works, a sophisticated and mature manifestation of his experiments with electronically processed guitar and unique interpretation of Frippertronics. In the words of Touching Extremes, “Absolutely deep and rich, this record is a diamond.” The BBC described it as “Music that is in flux and stasis at the same time, with an almost sculptural presence, stuffed with overtones and rich textures.” The All Music Guide, however, summarized Event and Repetition the best: “…a sporadic but constant thread in Pinhas’ music has been his experimentation with guitar feedback, loops and effects boxes, even in the early days of Heldon…Event and Repetitions may well signal the full realization of Pinhas’ long-time vision. The drifting, hypnotic patterns of the five pieces on this CD… have a shimmering beauty and depth that seems to suggest a destination at the end of a long journey – and perhaps the beginning of a new journey.” – Bill Tilland, All Music Guide
In Tranzition , Pinhas augments his guitar-and-electronics palette to weave a more elaborate and textured tapestry of sound. Additional instruments such as laptop (Jerome Schmidt), violin (Philippe Simon) and drums (Antoine Paganotti, of Magma) provide additional color, while spoken word tapes provide another layer of sound and conceptual depth, rich in detail and texture. The late Philip K. Dick can be heard on “Moumoune girl”, in a 1977 tape that he gave Pinhas. The Simsi/The Sims/Sims Voice on “Aboulafia Blues” is that of Chloe Delaume, whose writings explore the notions of virtual reality + reality simulation. Arresting and provocative, Tranzition is a multifaceted and richly jeweled work in which cause and effect, acoustics and electronics, taped sound and live playing change roles and even realities.
www.richardpinhas.com
Das Synthetische Mischgewebe

The synthetic mixture of fabrics would be the english translation word for word of the groups name behind that stand Isabelle Chemin and Guido Hübner. It means a little bit more and is rather to understand as a program than as a name.
DAS SYNTHETISCHE MISCHGEWEBE was founded already in ’80, but Isabelle Chemin and Guido Hübner started to work together with a bunch of other people in ’85 in Berlin. In ’86 we moved to Barcelona, in ’91 to Bordeaux where Isabelle Chemin comes from and since the end of ’95 we reside in Caen, Basse-Normandy.
Our first works together were site specific, narrative performances employing installation works, electronic and acoustic noise and Texts by JEAN RENE LASSALLE (french experimental poetry)in places like a public bath, a defunkt railwayjunktion, a slaughterhouse, the backyard, cellar and roofs, but not the exposition space of a gallery itself, a fishmarket, … but also places like the kitchen in New-York or the Santa-Monica Contemporary arts museum of Barcelona.

Dealing with electronic equipment and junk for sound and video the step into the digital realm was made quick once we found access to the necessary material. The title Perception : fast forward made its first apparition. This happens in Barcelona were we started to experiment in computer imagery making use of system failures to obtain strongly ocsilating standimage that become our contribution to the world of the computer animation. But in fact we never considered us as mere image creators in the sense of working in a frame, also it might be a screen of moving elements and hence we soon found ourselfs being involved in robotics, sensors of all kinds, live-video and highly sensible industrial video to computer survilance and measuring/testing systems, etc. We soon had to realize that in fact there’s made a lot in the digital area, but nothing is created for the artist, as best it is made for the artisan as worst for the consumer of “ creative “ household occupations. Since realizing that, we decided to collaborated closely with scientists and engineers to develop the dispositives we need for our installations and performances.

When we started to work in Bordeaux we become involved in medical imagery. Starting by making endostroboscopic recordings of the vocalchords and radiography in movement of the head with focusing also on the speech apparatus for the performance Perception : Fast Forward III , we currently use a lot of RMI (resonance magnetic nuclear imagery) and starting with PET (photon emission tomography) now. We become involve with neurological questions on reconnaissance when developing our interactive installation Perception : Fast Forward IV and now the performance transNEUROsite for that we currently develop a system of navigation in a 3D space by means of a vocal men-mashine interaction that we wish to develop towards a dialog between the booth rather than to a simple navigation by directive commands from the first. The 3D space is occupied by the volumen of a brain made from RMI images around and inside that the navigation takes place. A future version shall allow access to this space through the WWW, but makes the substitution of the vocal interaction with a written text interaction necessary.