Hartmut GEERKEN
“Orpheus”

Fantastic sound poetry piece by Hartmut Geerken restringing the Sun Harp, the Ukranian bandura that Sun Ra gave him in 1971 when he visited Egypt for the first time. The acoustics of his manual workings emerge without any esthetic intention: the bandura’s voluminous resonating body forms the reverb of the room. Each manual action and each contact of the tuning key with the wooden body is “reverbed”. The instrument creates its audio space. A mythic dream play is evoked: the myth’s space of reverb. An ear ready to absorb, hears the labor pains of voice and string ahead of language and music. A human voice in search for language and thus for communication. A string instrument in search for sound and thus for music. Based on this phonemic pre-space, words do rise only sporadically. Through certain techniques of vocal chords the phonemes move close to the meditative Indian Dhrupad-singing, as well as to lunacy and disturbance. Animal languages, signals, shepherds’ calls, silvered drum-language, hamboning, calls, litany, subconscious voicings, sirens: the search for Eurydike and the search for the origin of letter and syllable, out of the breath. Besides one single ‘superimposition’ no further mounting, no computer-generated sounds, no digital gimmicks, no remix or art mix do exist in this live-recorded dream play.
pressing info: 200 copies on black