Browse by Artist: EHLERS, EKKEHARD

Artist:	EHLERS, EKKEHARD
Title:	Plays
Label:	STAUBGOLD (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	STAUB 030CD

"This amazing 76min CD contains Ehlers' complete Plays vinyl, originally released on Staubgold and the Dutch Bottrop-Boy label. Staubgold released the mini LPs Plays Albert Ayler, Plays John Cassavetes and Plays Hubert Fichte while the 7" singles Plays Robert Johnson and Plays Cornelius Cardew came out on Bottrop-Boy. 'The 'Plays' series deals with 'reference'', explains Ehlers. 'Everyone is sampling; sampling is the figure of historic devices in digital music. My idea is not to sample, but to refer to historic places and figures.' For the series Ehlers has assembled an intriguing constellation of figures, from actor/film maker John Cassavetes to German author Hubert Fichte, and only the Cardew pieces contain actual samples. 'Reference is a basic structure in digital music', Ehlers continues. 'I'm trying to deal with that more abstractly.' That abstraction is as much macroscopic as microscopic: the back cover of each vinyl record features a photograph of the region the artist of the title came from, filmed by a NASA satellite. An artist and educator based in Frankfurt, Ehlers recorded his first works for Mille Plateaux and its offshoot Ritornell in 1998, as part of the Autopoieses duo with Sebastien Meissner. Since then he has used the aliases Auch and Betrieb (for Force Inc and Klang Elektronik respectively), and teamed up with Albrecht Kunze in the group März."

Artist:	EHLERS, EKKEHARD
Title:	Politik Braucht Keinen Feind
Label:	STAUBGOLD (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	STAUB 041CD

"With his new album after the highly acclaimed Plays series in 2002, pop musician and sound artist Ekkehard Ehlers presents his first fully composed works. 'Mäander' and 'Blind' are based on manipulated bass clarinet and cello recordings which Ehlers arranges like an orchestra in his laptop. Opposed to the pop music he produces with Albrecht Kunze in März, this is avant garde music put into dreamlike states and finally looping in endless circles of magic fragile sound. coming in a foldout digipak with accompanying poster, Politik Braucht Keinen Feind is Ehlers' both musically and visually most advanced artistic statement to date. Ekkehard Ehlers lives in Frankfurt/Germany. His large discography includes releases with autopoieses (La vie á noir, Mille Plateaux, 1999) and März (März, Karaoke Kalk, 2002) as well as his debut CD Betrieb (Mille Plateaux, 2001) on which he put samples of Arnold Schönberg and Charles Ives into new perspective. Last year's CD Ekkehard Ehlers Plays was a musical homage to free jazz legend Albert Ayler, blues singer Robert Johnson, filmmaker John Cassavetes, composer Cornelius Cardew and writer Hubert Fichte. His project März successfully realized his idea of new electronic folk pop. Ekkehard Ehlers also teaches time based media at Stuttgart's Merz Academy for Design."

Artist:	EHLERS, EKKEHARD
Title:	A Life Without Fear
Label:	STAUBGOLD (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	STAUB 066CD

This is Frankfurt-based Ekkehard Ehlers' (Autopoieses, Marz) seventh release for the Staubgold label. A frontrunner in electronic experimentation and electroacoustic composition, Ehlers has reinterpreted Schoenberg, produced an album of folktronica, and paid aural indietronic tributes to Albert Ayler and Cornelius Cardew on his acclaimed Plays series of EPs. Anomalous in the best sense of the word, A Life Without Fear is as unexpected as Jim O'Rourke's embrace of John Fahey's music a decade ago. Ekkehard Ehlers once again harnesses the genius natural resource that is Joseph Suchy's go-for-broke attitude towards the guitar, and the "electric blues" are given yet another definition. A Life Without Fear occasionally strays into Maher Shalal or 21st century Red Krayola Blues, Hollers and Hellos turf, but wait -- Franz Hautzinger's at the door. Droning, guitar-picked porch blues blend with whiskey-soaked vocals, voodoo jazz, and throbbing electronics while low hums rub up against scraped strings and a buzzed-out harmonica heard through a tin-can. This is rough-hewn experimental bluestronica mixed with graveyard dirt.

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