Found Sounds #9

I hadn’t gone to a club in a minute, so when a friend announced that he would celebrate his birthday at an edition of Arno Raffeiner and Mieko Suzuki’s superb KooKoo series at Ohm, that was a perfect opportunity to refamiliarise with a space in which I have danced more than a few nights away. Granted, we weren’t exactly met with party music when we arrived. On the bill that night was Marta Zapparoli with a live set, an artist whom I have seen perform many times, and whose music I value greatly. But this time, I was having connectivity issues: I couldn’t relate to the performance as much as I wanted to.

This wasn’t Zapparoli’s fault, it was obvious that many in the audience were transfixed by what she was doing. What was it, then, that kept me from connecting to her music? Was it just that I can better focus on such sounds in a setting like ausland? Had I had two or so glasses of wine too many? Was I too absent-minded for such a performance after midnight? I still don’t know, but a few days later came across Ben Glas’s new album for Room40, »"music* *?".« In the accompanying notes, the Berlin-based composer explains that the starting point for the seven pieces was a simple aphorism: »Listening is 50% of all music.«

On the surface, this notion is little more than the umpteenth variation of truisms such as »beauty lies in the eye of the beholder« or »all art is subjective.« But Glas also makes it clear that for him, it is a question of our inherent biases and limitations. He writes that he was interested in identifying the »threshold … at which [his] mind secretly decided that a given sonic pattern, composed with no concrete musicality in mind, became ›music‹.« Listening to this album, which features some more or less noisy, more or less dynamic, more or less structured pieces, reminded me of that night at Ohm.

What was it in this particular setting that made it so hard for me to connect to Zapparoli’s music at the time, in that place and the situation that my mind was in that evening? What threshold was so insurmountable to me that I didn’t manage to make a connection, even though it is often music that allows me to make connections with realities that are distinct from mine? Even though I know people who have been infected with the human papillomavirus (HPV), I have no idea what it feels like for a person with female reproductive organs. But there is a record that helps me understand.

»Pink Noise« came out a year ago on DJ and producer Mareena’s Unrush label, but I keep coming back to these three quite literally intimate pieces based on recordings made in the artist’s vaginal milieu. Banu seeks to explore »a deep connection« between the rhythms of her body—her heartbeat features heavily, as does her voice—and her lived experience as a queer migrant faced with an unjust health care system. »Pink Noise« is a stunning, radical piece of sound art, but also an invitation to emphasise—to connect across different thresholds, whether physical or biographical ones.

The same can be said about the self-titled debut by the group Period Music—Susanna Gonzo, Merma Suelo, Tuce Alba, Elizabeth Gallon Droste, Agnese Menguzzato, and Farah Hazim—who interrogate the multitude of meanings of the term »period« through six musical pieces that play with the idea of repetition and cyclicity. The record is accompanied by a book with visual art and writings in different languages, none of which are clearly credited to anyone in particular. Both the book and the music are truly collective pieces of work—art that overcomes the thresholds between the contributing individuals.

The theme of connecting different people with each other and their surroundings has always been at the core of Christina Kubisch’s artistic practice. »TUNING« for Jan Jelinek’s Faitiche album collects three pieces from different eras. The oldest, »Two persons walking through a street in Madrid« from 2004, saw Kubisch and composer Miguel Álvarez-Fernández wear headphones that picked up electromagnetic frequencies while walking towards each other in a shopping centre, meeting briefly, and then going their way again. It was a variation of what Kubisch has referred to as »electrical walks.«

What we hear in these roughly twelve minutes are two people connecting both physically and mentally through the practice of listening; a type of listening that uncovers otherwise inaudible sounds and allowed them to connect with their environment(s) in different ways. Theirs is the clearest example of how 50% of music is indeed listening. Joseph Kamaru a.k.a. KMRU shares Kubisch’s fascination with electromagnetic sound. It is unclear whether the densely layered pieces on his second Editions Mego album, »Kin,« draw upon such recordings. However, it is dedicated to the late label owner Peter Rehberg.

Track titles such as »With Trees Where We Can See,« »We Are,« or »By Absence« emphasise that also the massive drone pieces—featuring a collaboration with drone guitarist Fennesz—were informed by ideas of presence, absence, and thus connection across temporal and physical distances, even life and death. The title of Cedrik Fermont’s new stand-alone piece »Conversations,« released digitally through his own Syrphe, is just as descriptive. Field recordings from Malaysia and Sri Lanka enter into a dialogue with each other, with ominous drones serving as the connective tissue between those different ecologies.

Nevers is the duo of Clare Cooper and Jean-Philippe Gross, whose debut album »Berlin« was a long time coming—the two first got together in 2007. In their practice, Cooper’s guzheng playing and Gross’s work with a mixing desk, microphones, feedback loops, and speakers straddles the line between electroacoustic abstraction and concrete improvisation. It is a kindred spirit to »Courage Bones,« the first duo album by vocalist Audrey Chen and guitar anarcho-virtuoso Tashi Dorji: Recorded at Berlin’s Morphine Raum, these two side-long pieces tap into the city’s techno history for tense free-form improvisations.

The trio Dell-Lillinger-Westergaard find even more connections between different—and often thought of as distinct—musical traditions and modes of expression. In their work, Christopher Dell (vibraphone), Christian Lillinger (drums and percussion), and Jonas Westergaard (double bass) seamlessly navigate between jazz idioms, contemporary composition, and the occasional hip-hop-inspired groove. »DLW: Live at Salle Cortot« for bastille musique is a massive double live album recorded in a few more different places than just the titular Paris venue. It is an extensive showcase of this tight-knit trio’s innovativeness.

Cologne’s Emily Wittbrodt is a similarly versatile musician, and a regular Berlin visitor, whether with her duo Ludwig Wittbrodt at ausland or her band hilde at the Jazzfest Berlin. »Wearing Words« is nominally her second solo album, but also a communal affair. Most notably, opera singer Sandro Hähnel leaves his mark on many of these ten pieces that themselves unearth connections between classical forms such as the aria, art pop, and Wittbrodt’s background as an improviser. She composed the sung parts in an unusual fashion—writing the lyrics only after the vocal melodies had been fully written.

Magda Mayas draws different connections on her two new albums, taking inspiration from the animal world. The cover of her solo album »Chant«, which will be released on May 15th on Unsounds Records, is adorned by a collage showing a bird (a hawfinch, perhaps?), while the third record of Magda Mayas’ Filamental—featuring improv luminaries such as Rhodri Davies, Anthea Caddy, and Michael Thieke—explicitiely took inspirations from murmurations, the ever-shifting flight formations of flocks of birds. »Murmur,« recorded in 2024 at exploratorium, is an accordingly dynamic album, but thanks to the careful interplay of the musicians feels intimate throughout.

The three pieces on »Chant,« on the other hand, foregrounds Mayas’ solo work with the inside piano (or in the case of the title piece, 16 different ones). They prove just how multi-faceted her approach is, and how diverse her sound can be. »Embodied,« recorded live at Canberra’s SoundOut Festival, feels almost wistful at times, while the finale of »Halcyon« is reminiscent of the drone/doom metal of Earth and Sunn O))) due to the artist’s work with a guitar amplifier. »Chant« even has a haunting, perhaps even hauntological quality—structurally, it calls to mind William Basinski’s »Disintegration Loops.«

The new album by gamut inc will be released on May 22nd and puts the affordances of different technologies in connection with each other, thus overcoming the threshold between past and present. »radiating« follows up on the »AGGREGATE – new works for automated pipe organs« compilation that Marion Wörle and Maciej Śledziecki had curated as part of their on-going AGGREGATE series for MIDI-controlled pipe organs. Across these seven duo compositions, the two strive to reinterpret the organ, which according to them has a »dirty secret,« namely that in ancient amphitheatres in pre-Christian times it was »sensual, ecstatic, feared.«

The pieces highlight these emotional qualities through different means. The two engage in playful ways with the Auenkirche’s massive organ, apparently letting happy accidents happen and rolling with them. This allows them to harken back to the ancient meaning and usage of an instrument that is most often associated with something far less profane. It is a veritable joy to hear them untap these qualities—and makes »radiating« one of the most striking examples for how two artists manage to create new connections where so many others only see insurmountable thresholds.

Taken together, all these albums show how such thresholds can be overcome, how connections between different modes of musicking, different traditions, and even people can be forged through art. And while it may be true that listening is 50% of music, the other half of that equation shouldn’t be ignored—all it takes is listening intently, without prejudice, and more focus. That is what I will do when I next see Marta Zapparoli perform, an artist with whose music I normally can connect in a flash. It is well worth it.