Based in Osaka and Nantes respectively, Rudolf Eb.er and Will Guthrie have both forged unique and quite different paths in numerous disciplines of experimental music over the past decades and created extensive bodies of work, both as soloists and in collaboration with other artists from around the world.
Austrian-born Eb.er (aka Runzelstirn & Gurgelstøck) might be best known as the initiator and head of the Swiss artist collective Schimpfluch-Gruppe, which has constantly been pushing the boundaries of extreme music and performance art since its foundation in 1987. Among his many audio releases, »Hilt« is his third work for Fragment Factory, following »Nigredo« (as Schimpfluch-Gruppe, 2013) and »Wellenfeld« (with Joke Lanz, GX Jupitter-Larsen and Mike Dando, 2014).
Australian-born Guthrie, on the other hand, has become synonym for breaking new grounds in drumming and percussion, delivering the missing link between radical and forward-thinking jazz, traditional musics and experimental/improvised electronic music. Rather recent collaborators include the likes of Jean-Luc Guionnet (note: »Stones, Air, Axioms / Delme« w/ Thomas Tilly, Fragment Factory, 2015), Mark Fell and Oren Ambarchi.
»Hilt« is the first collaboration of two artists who, based on their previous musical work, seem very different at first glance. However, it quickly becomes apparent, that the distinct approaches to composition and sound complement each other perfectly and make this album a very special and exciting affair. The closer you listen, the more you will be drawn into it and realize that the rhythmic drumming, the careful arrangements of hiss, crackle and eerie muttering paired with fragmented bits of percussive noises make »Hilt« a very coherent whole. A very organic and ritual-like album I would say, captivating and a little daunting at the same time.
Fragment Factory is thrilled to present »Hilt« in its final revelation, pressed in an edition of 300 copies on black vinyl with smashing artwork by Alice Kemp, long-time friend and co-conspirator of the label and Herrn Eb.er.
Drums, Percussion, Microphones – Will Guthrie
Electro-Acoustics, Artwork, Layout, Microphone – Rudolf Eb.er
Dolls, Photography – Alice Kemp
BJ Nilsen is a Swedish composer and sound artist based in Amsterdam. His work primarily focuses on the sounds of nature and how they affect humans. Recent work has explored the urban acoustic realm and industrial geography and mining in the Arctic region of Norway and Russia. His original scores and soundtracks have featured in theatre, dance performances and film.
Judith Hamann is a cellist and performer/composer from Melbourne, Australia, now based in Berlin. Her performance practice stretches across various genres encompassing elements of improvised, contemporary classical, experimental, and popular music. She has studied contemporary classical repertoire with renowned cellists including Charles Curtis and Séverine Ballon, and developed a strong practice in improvisation and sonic arts through collaborative projects both in Australia and internationally.
Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson is an Icelandic musician, painter, sound- and performance artist and founding member of Stilluppsteypa. He studied sound art in Hannover, Germany from 1998 to 2003, where he is currently living. His musical output has been variously described as collage, quiet drone manipulations, and calm and minimal, which offers a range of still, contemplative momants, contrasted with more discordant (though not necessarily noisy) ones.
Heiligenstadt is the documentation of an encounter of the three artists in 2018.
Eryck Abecassis (b 1956) is a french-algerian composer, musician and electric guitar player. He went to Paris in 1976 to study film at the CLCF (Conservatoire Libre du Cinéma Français) and worked as a photographer. From 1979 to 1983 he took private lessons in composition and harmony with Julien Falk (1902-1987) and studied Jazz orchestration with Derryl Hall at the Centre d'informations musicales in Paris. In the following years he took various courses at IRCAM, among others in instrumental research and computer music. He took lessons with Jean-Claude Risset and in 1994 with Pascal Dusapin at the Centre Acanthes. In 1997 he took part in the Cursus Annuel de Composition et Informatique Musicale at IRCAM.
From 1986 to 1992 Abecassis was director of the theatre academy L'Entreprise and received several commissions from Radio France, the French and Canadian governments, Gmem, INA GRM, Grame and Césaré. His music has been performed at various international music festivals such as Présences, Les Musiques-Marseille, Musiques en scènes-Lyon, Escales Improbables, SignalX-Cagliari, the Computer Art Festival Padova and others.
"Siamoises" is his 3rd solo album and 2nd contribution to the FF label catalogue (after "La Gueule Du Loup" w/ Francisco Meirino, 2017). Composed and recorded in Paris 2018, "Siamoises" is the pairing of Eryck's instrument of choice, an Ibanez 2404 double neck e-bass/guitar, with a modular synthesizer.
For nearly two decades Oliver Peters has been working as Evapori, with releases on Entr'acte, Walter Ulbricht Schallfolien, 1000füssler as well on his own now defunct Antiinformation imprint he used to run with his close collaborator Nicolas Wiese since the early 2000's. Following his highly acclaimed Kárka LP (Walter Ulbricht, 2018), Dia-Logos... marks Evapori's 4th full-length album, on which Peters explores and busts the boundaries between concrete music, sound poetry and contemporary classical music. Involved in the creation of this album were his fellow artists Martin Lau, Peter Schlewinski, Markus Wettstein as well as his longtime co-conspirator Ditterich von Euler Donnersperg. Oliver Peters is living and working north of Hamburg.
All music written by Oliver Peters 2014-2019, mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi, artwork by Nicolas Wiese. Released in an edition of 300 copies on black vinyl, including download-code.
After the quickly sold out »Ggràn« cassette, released on Fragment Factory in 2016, we are very happy to welcome back the Italian sound artist Mauro Diciocia aka Torba for his 2nd contribution to the FF label catalogue. »Musique Inconcrète« is the follow-up to »Musica Conventionale«, released earlier this year on his own Edizioni Aaltra imprint, and marks the second installment in a trilogy of related recordings, informally named »Le Musiche«. While being active in the field of contemporary sound art and noise music for more than a decade, Diciocia has produced a whole lot of mostly small run cassette releases. This LP is Torba's first and long overdue full-length album for the vinyl format.
While Diciocia's latest work is far from being composed in classical terms, the concept behind the album revolves around the idea of sketch or annotation. Or better still: The inconcrète. A semi-false (or semi-correct) french word, used to undermine the consistency of the french Musique Concrète tradition in a rather light-hearted manner. During the conception of this album, MD was strongly influenced by the work »Incompiuto - The Birth of a Style« by the Italian contemporary art collective Alterazioni Video. They loudly claim that Incompiuto – the unfinished – is the only Italian art style of some significance in the past 50 years: "The term ‘incompiuto’ refers to the architectural and infrastructural works whose construction has been halted, and which can be witnessed throughout the entire Italian peninsula. They are all publicly funded, and for a variety of reasons (design errors, political decisions, inaccurate cost estimates, contractors' bankruptcies, evident disregard of building regulations, the disappearance of funds, etc.) their construction has been interrupted, leaving behind a series of ruins in reverse.” (Alterazioni Video)
Far from any reference to post-architecture or mafia-political controversy, the final output of »Musique Inconcrète« is a macro cut-up of sound-screens reorganized as quasi-organic narration: Fragments of unfinished compositions, roughly assembled according to a mere aesthetic criteria. Beyond the sporadic use of oscillators and a few inserts of other people's music manipulated on ¼-inch tape, the whole LP is made out of field recordings collected in the region of Salento in southern Italy, where Diciocia is currently living. All environmental sounds were captured with common consumer electronics (walkman and mobile phones) in order to give back the domestic feeling of an abandoned opera. Speaking of geography, the first track Lapjèdr Fòr is the only exception. Intended as an introduction to the whole narration, it testifies MD's emotional and non-linear journey back from Germany, where he spent about eight years, to Southern Italy: It contains a clashing mix of recordings made in Berlin and around the seaside of Torre Lapillo.
The pictures for the artwork of the album were taken by the photographer Gabriele Albergo, whose perpetual-in-progress project »Salento Death Valley - A Black Diary of the Most Beloved Italian Peninsula« aims to deconstruct the touristically idealized image of the region through the serial production of what he calls anti-postcards.
Edition of 300 copies on black vinyl.
"Motor" is the second part in a trilogy, preceded by "Das Baank" (Fragment Factory/Rekem Records) in 2016. The Motor started a long time ago with small basic fragments used for different steps (phases) like installations and performances. Those fragments were put together over the years into a longer piece presented on this LP. Motor is now a 32 minutes long continuous piece of sounding matter. Autonomous and free in itself. Like an homunculus it can now leave its birthplace and head for the future, for something else. The initiative (the basic source) was taken already in April 1949, as an inevitable starting point.
Leif Elggren is a Swedish artist who lives and works in Stockholm. Active since the late 1970s, he is a writer, visual artist, stage performer and composer. He has many sound-works to his credit, both solo and with the Sons of God (with Kent Tankred), on labels such as Ash International, Touch, Radium and Firework Edition Records (which he co-runs with Kent Tankred). His music usually presents carefully selected sound sources over a long stretch of time and can range from quiet electronics to harsh noise. His wide-ranging and prolific body of art often involves dreams and subtle absurdities, social hierarchies turned upside-down, hidden actions and events taking on the quality of icons.
Together with artist Carl Michael von Hausswolff, he is a founder of the Kingdoms of Elgaland-Vargaland (KREV) where he enjoys the title of king.
Edition of 300 copies on black vinyl, incl. signed and numbered insert.
»Schall und Klang« is the result of Christina Kubisch's extensive fieldwork on the trail of Hermann Scherchen (1891-1966), conductor and key figure in 20th century new music. After moving to the village of Gravesano (Ticino/Northern Italy) in 1954, Scherchen established an electroacoustic experimental studio on his premises and created a meeting place for scientists, composers, musicians and sound engineers from all over the world. Among his guests were Iannis Xenakis, Luc Ferrari, Edgar Varèse and Luigi Nono, just to name a few. Originally commissioned and broadcasted by Deutschlandfunk Kultur, »Schall und Klang« is a personal portrait of Scherchen and his time in Gravesano. Kubisch brings together archival footage from the Scherchen estate and the Scherchen archive at Akademie der Künste in Berlin, tape recordings, recited texts from Scherchen's own quarterly »Gravesaner Blätter« as well as her own compositions and field recordings referring to her research made on site in 2016.
»I have built this studio for myself [...] as a direct activity for my existence. I live Gravesano« (Hermann Scherchen)
Production: Deutschlandfunk Kultur / Studio für Elektroakustische Musik der Akademie der Künste / Studio Hoppegarten 2017. Edition of 500 copies in Digipak, incl. 8pp booklet with photos and texts by Christina Kubisch.
Being in the making – or un-making – for the past 14 years, Stefan Roigk's »Suffering For The Promised« has gone through many stages, from being finished, revoked, left untouched, reworked, discussed to finally getting banned onto vinyl in its ultimate and irrevocable form. An atmospherically intense but yet utterly fragile piece, combining concrete sounds, field recordings and devotional vocal fragments to an eclectic and highly intimate composition, consolidating Roigk's position as one of the top players in the game.
Single side LP. Edition of 316 copies on black vinyl, incl. full-colour inner sleeve w/ text by Stefan Roigk.
Stefan Roigk (b 1974) is a multi-disciplinary artist living in Berlin. Roigk deals with the borders between sound collages, sculptures, installations, film and graphical scores. His artistic strategy lays in the combination of different types of media to one single composition. Roigk's previous musical works have been released by labels such as Tochnit Aleph and Senufo Editions.
Subjectivation is the new solo album from Swiss artist Antoine Chessex. Produced by Rekem Records (GR/UK) and Fragment Factory (DE), it features some of his most direct and developed work to date.
Using material from solo live performances in San Francisco, Berlin, Zurich and London between 2010 and 2015, the sides of this record distill the touchstones of Antoine's sonic language into two sharp and forceful statements. The first side opens with a formidable tour-de-force, a developing field of distortion in which tenor saxophone adds on a metal-tinged sludgy tonality, wedged through dense masses of sound.
Following on the second side, are some subtly executed sonics, documented at London's Café Oto. Here it is Chessex's multiphonics taking centre stage, a rapid-fire of voices from the horn that gets enveloped in a back-and-forth between electroacoustic structures, psychoacoustics, and pure tone. Connecting the two sides is a meticulous attention to the different levels that operate within sound, and a compositional hand that favours intensity and depth, making this one of Chessex's most definitive statements.
Antoine Chessex is a multifaceted composer and sound artist who works across a number of areas within adventurous sonic practices and art.
Edited and Mixed by Antoine Chessex
Mastered by James Plotkin
Cut by Flo Kaufmann
Artwork by Robert Schalinski
Edition of 323
19,00€Original price was: 19,00€.10,00€Current price is: 10,00€.