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LP/DVD
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EMEGO 129LP
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Editions Mego is happy to announce the release of Kanal GENDYN, a vinyl and DVD set by Russell Haswell & Florian Hecker. This is the first full-length release by the artists following their highly-acclaimed albums, Blackest Ever Black and UPIC Warp Tracks. In the late '90s/early 2000s, it became common for bands, or solo artists to perform live -- often alternative -- soundtracks to feature films or silent classics. Critical of obvious instrumentation and the combination with known classic film, the artists Russell Haswell and Florian Hecker chose to create a real-time soundtrack to an un-scored film, Kanal Video (1992, 60 min.) by the Swiss artist duo Peter Fischli & David Weiss. Core to Kanal GENDYN is Haswell & Hecker's ongoing research on the legacies of polymath Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001) and in particular, his concept of the Dynamic Stochastic Synthesis, an abstract sound synthesis procedure that creates "sound out of nothing." In an interview with Peter Hoffmann, the artists recall: "This video, which consists of an hour-long 'ride' through the Zurich sewage system, with a remotely controlled maintenance vehicle equipped with a video camera to survey the sewers for eventual irregularities of defects -- struck us both as an ideal piece to be projected in a 'nightclub' or music venue with a GENDYN only performance. We found twisted relations with such an hour-long 'tunnel vision.' Once with the seemingly endless amount of computer-generated video projections used as visuals accompanying raves and techno parties during the 1990's -- and also to the accounts of visual hallucinations induced by mescaline as described by Heinrich Klüver in the 1920s -- with the so-called 'form constants' -- where he mentions amongst others, 'tunnel-like' patterns. The particularities of GENDYN, with its ever-changing and meandering waveforms appeared to us as an ideal counterpart." Kanal GENDYN was performed on the occasion of the event "Musterraum 9. Dual Presentation -- Peter Fischli & David Weiss -- Russell Haswell & Florian Hecker" at Musterraum, Munich, 1/30/2004. Originally constructed as an experimental building, "Musterraum" -- German for "sample" or "reference room" -- was a freestanding cube with a base area of 10×12 meters. Built as a test and reference space for the planning and construction of the adjacent Pinakothek der Moderne. Two stereo feeds were crossed for quadraphonic (4.0) diffusion using a L&B F12/B12 loudspeaker system. Performed concurrently to the Peter Fischli & David Weiss, Kanal Video (1992, 60 min.) screened on three facing walls. Kanal GENDYN is released as a stereo vinyl LP + 4.0 DTS 24 Bit/48 KHz DVD (audio-only) set. The cover features 10 stills from the original Fischli & Weiss video, included inside is a 30x30 cm 170 gram paper insert with a further, full-page still, plus extensive sleeve notes by musicologist and software developer Peter Hoffmann, and everything was designed by NORM, Zurich. It's also worth noting that, with a running time of over an hour, this is one of the longest single LP releases you will come across. Cut by Rashad "The Master" Becker at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin, September 2011.
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CD
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WEA 64321CD
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New collaborative album from Haswell (Mego, Warp) and Hecker (Mego, Editions Mego), featuring Electroacoustic UPIC recordings. And yes, in one of the stranger major label alliances of the past few decades, it's issued on WEA Classics in the UK!! "Following a period of study at the Xenakis Institute of Research on Music and Acoustics in Paris, Russell Haswell and Florian Hecker have produced an album using Xenakis' UPIC system -- a computer program which interprets lines and shapes into music. The duo worked with the unique electroacoustic UPIC system which implements a graphic approach to sound synthesis; one literally draws the sound. Haswell and Hecker recognized the UPIC as an instrument of metamorphosis, turning imagery into sound. First, they fed the UPIC with images of our time; erotica, food pornography (images of French desserts), a geodesic dome, a double helix, a microscopic portrait of the blackest ever black, the Madrid train bombing and a mushroom cloud of a nuclear bomb. Next, they furnished the UPC with their own drawings: dense patterns of hundreds of arcs in the manner of Sol LeWitt's conceptual drawings. Pushing further: 'We applied the Surrealist technique of real-time automatic drawing,' -- Hecker. Distilled out of nine hours of original material, Blackest Ever Black is, in Haswell's description: 'a large four panel polyptych, consisting of slices of a succession of images that could assist the experience of synaesthesia.' The artist Haswell and Hecker derived the title Blackest Ever Black from a scientific paper on the 'blackest black ever made on Earth,' an ultrablack coating that can be painted onto optical instruments to absorb essentially all the light that hits them." This is a DDDD recording (the additional "D" based on the fact that that the instrument the music was made on was also digital and the recording was digitally recorded, mixed and mastered).
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12"
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MEGO 069EP
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"Contains one track: Orange-Time-Shock-Format-Wave-Re-Composition (Remix for Voice Crack). The first and till now the only collaboration between extreme computer music artists Russell Haswell & Florian Hecker. Possibly the first record to sound very similar when played on either 33 or 45 rpm, or in fact, any speed! Edition of 500."
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