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#242: The Tape-beatles – America Is Confident

The American nation as a media construct – that is the core thesis of the Tape-beatles. The Iowa-based collective has been exploring it in collaged pieces featuring samples from film, television and music. During the Iraq War in 1990/91, there was ample opportunity to collect material.

#16: David Toop – Mabutawi-Teri: Rain Song

Surrounded by mosquitoes, spiders and cockroaches, David Toop spent two weeks aboard a boat in the Venezuelan rainforest in 1978. The musician was on his way to the remote villages of the Yanomami people and wanted to record their shamanistic rituals with a microphone.

#224: Neu! – November

In the ragas of classical Indian music, the emotional characteristics associated with the moods of different times of day are translated into sound. The German band Neu!, which became legendary in the Krautrock era of the early 1970s, considered what the month of November should sound like.

#42: Peder Mannerfelt – Bapere Dance

’The Belgian Congo Records‘ is a series of traditional music recorded in the 1930s during a brutal colonial regime. When Swedish techno producer Peder Mannerfelt discovered the songs with their manic, driving rhythms in 2015, he decided to reinterpret them on a synthesiser.

#30: Peter Roehr – Hören Sie

When Andy Warhol introduced the element of repetition into art in the early 1960s, he caused both confusion and inspiration. In Germany, artist Peter Roehr applied this technique to audio from 1964 onwards, editing together passages from radio news, music and advertising into loops.

#14: Thai Elephant Orchestra – Thung Kwian Sunrise

Elephants are social animals – but can they also be encouraged to make music together? And with ‘real’ musical instruments, no less? Composer Dave Soldier tried this out in 1999 together with Richard Lair at the Elephant Conservation Centre in Lampang in northern Thailand.

#6: The User – Print #13

For most users, the noises made by devices are nothing more than unwanted by-products. Dot matrix printers were particularly unpopular with their operators because they were loud and disruptive. Thomas McIntosh and Emmanuel Madan discovered the musical potential of these machines in 1998.

Laurie Spiegel – The Unquestioned Answer

‘I want to put as many aspects of myself into music as I can, as much as possible of being alive, intensely conscious on all levels.‘ With this attitude, American composer Laurie Spiegel developed her concept of Slow Change Music in the mid-1970s at Bell Labs in New Jersey, using the prototype of a computer system to control synthesizers.

Jon Hassell, I Magazzini – Frontiera A Sud-Est

A mix of ethnological recordings, found sounds and pirated material formed the basis for the performances of the radical theatre group Magazzini Criminali from Florence. In 1980, they used ambient music by Jon Hassell without permission. The composer was impressed – and collaborated with the group on an adaptation of Jack Kerouac's iconic beat novel ‘On the Road.‘

The White Room (6): Stars

The soundtrack for an imaginary film, harmonising electronics and a vocal language based on traditional Persian music. 44-minute mix with works by Aktuala, Lady June, Muslimgauze, Sussan Deyhim & Richard Horowitz and others – realized between 1972 and 2020.