Side A: Splitter Orchester
Side B: Felix Kubin
A 1. Splitter Orchester – Diagram 1 04:32
A 2. Splitter Orchester – Diagram 2 10:43
3. Splitter Orchester – Diagram 3 (digital bonus track) 10:04
B 1. Felix Kubin – Lückenschere 06:25
B 2. Felix Kubin – Lichtsplitter 11:48
diagram 1-3 were recorded in 2015 at nalepastrasse, berlin
recording engineer: jean szymczak
mastered by werner dafeldecker
coverdesign: felix kubin
gagarin records lp gr2036, d 2017
about:
Triggered by the 2015 edition of the Labor Sonor Festival „Translating Music“ in Berlin, this split album between the Splitter Orchester and Felix Kubin offers two sides of the same coin, sometimes appearing like the rendering of an identikit picture.
Taking up side A of the album, the Splitter Orchester remains faithful to its trademark technique of improvised composition. Their sound carries the spirit of artists like Jani Christou, John Cage, Franco Evangelisti and the Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza, taking it further to the 21st century and strictly avoiding any scores. Specially built and prepared instruments add to the complexity of sound layers that slowly unfold, filling both an imaginary and physical space. Starting with a short piano loop, Diagram 1 turns into a darker drone cut by crashing glasses, giving it an almost Hörspiel-like character. Diagram 2 is a piece about transformation and metamorphosis which starts with airy highest tones that unravel into a sort of chanting before slowly descending downwards, reaching deeper realms of rumbling which culminate in brutal noise.
On side B Felix Kubin reinterprets these tracks, creating a physically closer and blunter atmosphere, which turns the distant dreamlike atmosphere of side A into a state of awakening. His two versions present a more systematic technique, counteracting the subconscious swarm composition of the Orchester. For his take on Diagram 1, under the title of Lückenschere, he uses a sequenced sample of the piano loop which generates different dynamics, spiralling over sequencer variations. Much rawer and with aspects of minimal music is Lichtsplitter, a pure electronic blueprint of Diagram 2, that involves a b/w score drawing turned into sound with an 8-channel light scanner.
The Splitter Orchester, founded in 2010, is a Berlin-based collection of internationally respected Composer-Performers which draws inspiration from many genres, most noticibly contemporary/improvised music. Splitter Orchester originates from the „Echtzeitmusik“ scene, which emerged in Berlin in the mid-1990s – a locally based and globally networked experimental music scene and long-term platform for the exchange of artistic ideas.
Available with the download is a bonus track by the Splitter Orchester.
links:
Info: Felix Kubin
Listen on Bandcamp: Shine on you crazy diagram
Website: Splitter Orchester
Label: Gagarin Records
reviews:
The Wire
Translating Music, the Labor Sonor festival that took place in Berlin in 2015, is at the root of Shine On You Crazy Diagram. The festival invited performer-composers from the Echtzeitmusik sceneand beyond to interpret each other’s work. One such artist, the mercurial Felix Kubin, translated the music of a major node in the Echtzeitmusik network, The Splitter Orchester.
Released on Kubin’s own excellent Gagarin label, the four track vinyl LP Shine On You Crazy Diagram ia also available as a download with added bonus track „Diagram 3“. Side A is entirely The 24 piece Splitter Orchester’s domain, with „Diagram 1“ and „Diagram 2“ side B offers Kubin’s interpretation of The Orchester’s instant compositions.
„Diagram 1“ has a sense of forward movement, though this eventually decays into a sparse dialogue between percussion and what sounds like an electronic high frequency that could be a convolution of strings and electronics or simply strings. This is one of the key aspects of Splitter Orchester: a spectralist like penchant for timbral composition and timbral mirroring; electronics and objects sound like traditional instrumentation and vice versa.
„Diagram 2“ opens with vertiginous string drones and shimmering, glinting and glistening petals of metallic sounds. A conspiracy of shrill woodwind underpinned by a soft burr of white noise melts into gorgeous string glissandi. This becomes devoured by a squall of white noise, subsonic brass, electronics and cymbals. The end is oblique, signified by the solitary resonance of a gong.
Felix Kubin’s take on this music is inventive and thoroughly captivating. „Lückenschere“ starts with an electronic rhythm that might have taken its tempo and pattern from the opening motiv of „Diagram 1“. The sequence intensifies into a Conrad Schnitzler-esque motorik acid rocker. Shards of The Orchester pierce its incessant lope.
For „Lichtsplitter“ Kubin uses an 8-channel light scanner to scan the graphic score of The Orchester’s „Diagram 2“; this data then either generates or modulates sound. It opens slowly with a slim line of high frequencies. An analogue synthesizer drips, whistles, chuckles, gurgles and giggles. Light percussion and the soft scrub of brushes on drum skins converse with what sounds like bows hoiked in plain air but probably isn’t. The last few moment surge into an accelerated heavily compressed overload that ends abruptly with maximum dramatic effect.
– Richard Thomas
Vital Weekly
One could say: two sides of the same coin, two vistas of the same view; appearing like the rendering of an identikit picture. On the first side the Splitter Orchestra plays its inimitable style of improvised composition – music indebted as much to John Cage as to the Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza and above all, taking these cues right and well into contemporary domains. The group uses no scores to reach a depth and clarity of constructed sound masses that bristle with slowly unfolding spaces, both literal and aural. Energetic spiky percussion and crashing glass open up a deep dark and uncomfortable drone into narrative spooky qualities. A play for sounds; a Hörspiel that morphs in shape and size with content matter and plot being constantly thrown across the sonic scene. High frequencies shriek and pierce the sky; like a choir of ghostly and ghastly unbelievers gathered to usher in blistering noise.
Felix Kubin retells the Splitter Orchester’s stories. He adds swooshes of his trademark quirky acid beats and proto-synth pop irony. Kubin works his magic within the Hörspiel framework he’s a grandmaster of. The rough and raw hewn edges of the Splitter Orchester are replaced by not per se happy go lucky easy going tunes, but Kubin does make the palette more readily available to ears accustomed to rather more clean cut popular idioms. No rude awakenings here from the erratic dream like states of side A. Kubin thusly projects a deceptively elegant lull, which belies the same kind of intricacies that undercut the swarms of varied dynamics the Splitter Orchester, radicalizes. A back and forth between both sides of this bloody amazing record brings new interpretations and insights into both modes of working, ‚compositions‘ and styles while also progressively building passageways and bridges between seemingly disparate musical worlds.
– Sven Schlijper-Karssenberg
Bleep
Gagarin Records come on strong with a split album from Splitter Orchester & label head Felix Kubin, as the title suggests Shine On You Crazy Diagram is an enigmatic journey into an electro-acoustic sound world that carries a penchant for the scientific psychedelic.
Taking up the entire A, the Splitter Orchester offer up a fascinating glimpse into the found sound world they occupy. Blending elements of real-time recordings with gargantuan washes of filtered proto-techno recorded on what are described by the imprint as ‚Specially built and prepared instruments add to the complexity of sound layers that slowly unfold, filling both an imaginary and physical space.‘ The resulting soundscapes sound something like Black Lodge releasing on GRM.
On the flip, Felix Kubin offers his reinterpretations of these tracks with a physically closer and often rather blunt calls that turn the distant dreamlike atmosphere of side A into a state of awakening. Bringing a taste of the technical, Felix delves into realms of proto-techno abstraction on Lückenschere, while Lichtsplitter glazes over the drums with a slowed down radiophonic style glaze that calls to mind Bruno Spoerri and Betha Sarasin’s drone jazz classic Kunst Am Computer.
Gagarin is fast becoming one of the most important imprints for pre-computer concrète music.
