Browse by Artist: VON HAUSSWOLFF, C.M.

Artist:	VON HAUSSWOLFF, C.M.
Title:	Three Overpopulated Cities Built By Shortsighted Planners...
Label:	SUB ROSA (BELGIUM)
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	SR 217CD

...An Unbalanced And Quite Dangerous Airport And An Abandoned Church. "This second complete CD followed his Rays of Beauty and will build a subtle trilogy work for Sub Rosa. By visiting Lagos in 1983, Tokyo in 1999, 2000 and 2001, Bangkok several times between 1986 and 2002 and Mexico City in 2002 and 2003, CM von Hausswolff came, as thousands of other people, to the conclusion that something is running amok. An uncontrollable avalanche consisting of the construction of houses, streets and in-between spaces develops in large cities as independent do-it-yourselves-organisms. They're places we like because of their 'anything can happen'- status. They're places we hate, because they remind us of what lousy creatures we actually are. How long will they last? Maybe as long as the feedback sustains? A conclusive statement rolled over the above-mentioned composer when he stumbled over an abandoned church in Chicago. This sad place, once illuminated by Marin Luther King, is now in the hands of soaptalkshowcommander Oprah Winfrey's chef Art Smith ... Maybe it's a sign of something good. At least we know the quality of his desserts ... This new release, following his A Lecture On Disturbances In Architecture (Firework Edition Records, Stockholm, 2002), deals with these matters in a formal way. The rest is up to you ...."

Artist:	VON HAUSSWOLFF, C.M.
Title:	800 000 Seconds In Harar
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TO 082CD

This is Carl Michael von Hausswolff's first album for Touch, but the connection goes back many years, of course. Carl Michael von Hausswolff was born in 1956 in Linköping, Sweden. He lives and works in Stockholm. Since the end of the 1970s, Hausswolff has worked as a composer using the tape recorder as his main instrument and as a conceptual visual artist working with performance art, light and sound installations and photography.
CM von Hausswolff says: "I was approached by my old friend and Radium 226.05 colleague Ulrich Hillebrand, now director of Angered Theatre in Göteborg. He informed me that there was a new play in the process of being written by author and theorist Michael Azar called 'Jag är en annan,' (trans. 'I Is Another') stemming from the famous letter written by Arthur Rimbaud in his youth. The play uses Rimbaud's life from being a young poet in Charleville ending with him being the trader in Harar, Ethiopia. Hillebrand asked me if I was willing to compose the music to this play. I accepted. I told Hillebrand that I needed to use material that had something to do with Rimbaud's life and as he had connections in Ethiopia and in the small city of Harar, he said: 'why don't you go to Harar for 10 days and see what you can find?' So I went to Addis Ababa where a guy was waiting for me and drove me the 10 hours beautiful ride to Harar. I made recordings and looked for other useful material. There are two tracks. On the first track, which consists of three 'parts' I have used material from Harar. The long dronic sounds are taken from an instrument that I, after searching for days, bought in Harar -- it's called a 'krar' and is a stringed instrument. As I could not really master the actual playing of this instrument, I bought a bow for a violin and some rosin and with this I got one good tone out from this krar. Then the computer helped me to sort the modes and pitches out. On this piece there are also two location recordings: the first one you hear is a recording I did outside Harar on a hill where there are next to no car sounds or other machine sounds -- just the wind, insects, some kids. The second location recording was done in the night in my hotel, where I woke up one night and became fascinated by the leaking taps in my bathroom so I decided to record this. On the second there are only oscillators used ... several of them ... AND using one low-pitch oscillator I ran a sound filtered through. This sound is the low 'rhythm' you can hear, and it's a low-pitched Morse code signal... and the text is the famous poem Rimbaud wrote in his youth called 'Le Dormeur Du Val' (trans. 'The Sleeper In The Valley'). This poem is a beautiful text starting off in nature, where a person is sleeping in the grass. Slowly, Rimbaud zooms in and we read that it's a soldier and at the very end we are told he has two red wounds on his chest -- the guy is dead!." Arthur Rimbaud lived in Harar from 1884 until shortly before his death in 1891.

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