Browse by Artist: VOGEL, CRISTIAN

Artist:	VOGEL, CRISTIAN
Title:	The Inertials
Label:	SHITKATAPULT (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	STRIKE 137CD

Cristian Vogel's fourteenth album is already a classic. Every track is subtly shaped and full of nuances, without drifting into gimmickry. Every sound is efficient and precise. With The Inertials, Vogel nonchalantly provides the soundtrack for an industrial wasteland. This is club music beyond any genre which, while bearing the spirit of industrial techno, is way above the rave-dogma which dominated industrial techno during the '90s. The dark side of high-end production, as you may call it. In the late '80s in the UK, Cristian Vogel with the Cabbage Head Collective, became engaged in the production of electronic music. He completed his studies of 20th century music at the University of Sussex. In the mid-'90s he began to deliver blueprints for minimal and wonky techno. His first album, Beginning To Understand, was released on Mille Plateaux in 1994, and the following 12 albums were released on labels such as Tresor and Novamute. In collaboration with Jamie Lidell, he founded Super_Collider years before Lidell gained recognition as a solo artist. At the same time, he provided work as a composer of contemporary dance and film music. Vogel did remixes for the likes of Radiohead, Maxïmo Park, Chicks On Speed and Thom Yorke. As a programmer and theorist in the field of digital sound research, he is just as much at home as he is as a composer and songwriter. With a great sense of distinct melody and harmony, Vogel as a producer roughs up the digital surfaces. This is how he adds depth and body to his music, which is something a lot of techno-related productions are lacking. Digital clarity has patina and at the same time sounds hazy. At a predominantly moderate tempo, Vogel cleverly combines creaky sounds with swinging rhythms. With a knowledge of dubstep, but unimpressed by the short-lived micro-trends of club music, he has assembled the newest standards of digital production on The Inertials. The lively "Seed Dogs" with its unexpected tempo changes; the surprising "Lucky Connor" with its marvellously complex rhythm; the hypnotic, incredibly groovy "Snakes In The Grass," appearing like a confident nod towards minimal techno; the mysterious "Deepwater," creating suspense from the very first moment, like a John Carpenter soundtrack. The list could be continued indefinitely. Every track is timeless and rests within itself. "Today's Standard Form" is a synthesizer arpeggio fantasy with no beats at all, a prelude for the midi piano, if you like. And with "Dreams Of Apolonia," dub for the first time is not just insinuated, but actually emerging in its own right.

Artist:	VOGEL, CRISTIAN
Title:	Double Deux/Delicado
Label:	STATION 55 (UK)
Format:	2CD
Price:	$18.00
Catalog #:	S55 003CD

For over a decade, UK-to-Barcelona transplant Cristian Vogel has been carving his own niche in the contemporary music scene. He has released countless experimental techno records on labels such as Tresor, Novamute, Mille Plateaux and was Jamie Lidell's partner in the legendary Super_Collider. But since 2003, Vogel's music has also been electrifying a different kind of dancefloor. It was then that Franz Treichler (Young Gods) introduced Cristian to Swiss choreographer, Gilles Jobin. Since then, Cristian has scored the music for four of Jobin's dance-piece creations including Double Deux (2006) and Delicado (2004). Vogel's provocative soundtracks were composed in parallel with the choreography, forming a direct symbiosis between composer, choreographer and dancers and a creative space for Vogel to explore seriously original ideas. The results are spectacular, abstract pieces of never-before-heard electronic sounds generated at the bleeding edge of technology and art. This release, which includes sleevenotes from Gilles Jobin and Franz Treichler, stands not only as a document of the performances, which continue to thrill audiences around the globe, but also as a deep insight into Vogel's incredible sonic universe. The dynamic range of imagery and emotions shifts from soothing insect pulses to sheer industrial panic and will appeal to all open-minded, thrill-seeking listeners.

Artist:	VOGEL, CRISTIAN
Title:	Black Swan
Label:	SUB ROSA (BELGIUM)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	SR 303CD

Sub Rosa launches a new series called Framework -- an extension of their releases of concrete electronics noise -- a brand new mix-up of unusual conceptions of sound material by young, unknown composers, well-known not-so-young composers, and old but clever composers. Includes one photograph and a geometric form. Limited to 700 copies.
Cristian Vogel was born in Chile and moved to England in the mid-1970s. He first began working with electronic compositions in the late '80s with the Cabbage Head Collective (working with Si Begg, among others). He attended the University of Sussex, under the tutorship of composers Martin Butler and Jonathan Harvey, and graduated with a degree in 20th Century Music, suffusing his techno compositions with influences from musique concrète and other avant-garde styles. In the early '90s, Vogel issued two EPs on Dave Clarke's Magnetic North Records, the first of which was the underground hit, Infra. After further solo EPs and collaborations with emerging UK techno artists such as Russ Gabriel, Neil Landstrumm and Dave Tarrida, Vogel released his debut full-length, Beginning To Understand, in 1994 on Mille Plateaux, and subsequently became the first UK techno artist to be signed to Berlin's Tresor Records. He also started the vinyl-only label Mosquito with Si Begg, on which he released both his own music and other artists'. He is considered to be one of the main founders of the No-Future collective that was active in Brighton during the mid-'90s. In 2001, Vogel moved to Barcelona, where he set up the Erutufon 5 studio, and later Station 55 Electronic Music Studio. He currently lives and works there, managing Station 55 Records and studio. Alongside Jamie Lidell, he formed the group Super_Collider, who released two albums. Vogel currently sings and plays guitar in his band project Night Of The Brain, while continuing to maintain a presence on the underground techno scene. Vogel is sought after as a remixer and album producer, having worked with artists such as Radiohead, Maxïmo Park, Chicks On Speed, and Thom Yorke. The artist says this about Black Swan: "For the curious, the seed audio recordings which I analyzed and modified to resynthesize the score to Black Swan; a few seconds of Awa Odori and Mugiya-Bushi Odori traditional Japanese dance recordings, a Flying-V howling on a Swiss mountain pass in the Val Calanca, two EMS Synthi connected in a voltage feedback loop, a fragment of pachinko hall sound."

Artist:	VOGEL, CRISTIAN
Title:	The Never Engine
Label:	TRESOR (GERMANY)
Format:	2LP
Price:	$22.00
Catalog #:	TRES 231LP

Double LP version; one LP-only exclusive track. "These are electronic science fiction sonnets; aural choreography for other life forms; theorem engineering. Put 'XPUTE theWoopWoop' between your ears: the stark simplicity creates suspicion but you are drawn inwards. Both 'rogue PROTOCHI' and 'PROTOCHI rearMount' cautiously allow the drone to keep its prominence and you are infected without knowing it. The bass dredges a sublime saturation through many of the tracks (check 'SAGA' and 'PERCOL ecoDrive'), and even allows for a fantastic voyage you can take with your MP3 player on the go. If this is the first chapter, we can only imagine the futuristic, celestial steps Cristian Vogel will take before his engines are fit for human consumption."

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