BOOK
VIRTUAL COWWS
Rüdiger
Carl & COWWS-Quintet |
Preis
/ Price :
40.39 € (Tripel CD)
Bestell-Nr.
/ P/O No. : FMP CD OWN-90007/9
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| Rüdiger
Carl |
accordion,
clarinet, percussion, piano |
| Irène
Schweizer |
piano,
percussion |
| Phil
Wachsmann |
violin,
viola, electronics |
| Stephan
Wittwer |
electric
guitar |
| Jay
Oliver |
double
bass |
| Arjen
Gorter |
double
bass |
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| Mayo
Thompson |
voice
& drum machine (CD 1:4, 6, 11, 18, 23; CD 2:4) |
| Lars
Rudolph |
guitar
(CD 1:1, CD 2:9) |
| Joe
Sachse |
guitar
(CD 2:2) |
| Shelley
Hirsch |
voice
(CD 1:3; CD 2:13, 15, 21) |
| Hans
Reichel |
guitar,
daxophone (CD 1:13, 20, 24; CD 2: 1, 13, 15, 21) |
| Han
Bennink |
drums
(CD 1:4) |
| Louis
Moholo |
drums
(CD 1:21) |
| Günter
Baby Sommer |
drums
(CD 1:15) |
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Book |
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CD
1: Tracks # 1 - 24 |
58:31 |
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CD
2: Tracks # 1 - 22 |
60:36 |
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Recorded
between 1979 and 1996 |
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Virtual
Cowws |
53:51 |
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CD
3: Tracks # 1 - 7 |
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All
music composed by Rüdiger Carl
Recorded by Roland Häberli (Radio DRS Bern) on November
1-2, 1996
Production: Swiss Radio DRS
Produced by Rüdiger Carl and Jost Gebers
Cover-design: Günther Förg Photos: Fred Burkhart,
Dagmar Gebers, Walter Kranl, Matthias Osterwold, Benjamin
Katz, Konstanze Binder, Hans Reichel, Pablo Otin
Layout: Rüdiger Carl
Liner notes/Booklet CD 1 + 2: Andreas Kallfelz
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| First
published in November 1998 |
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Excerpt
from the booklet:
(...) The combinatorics of BOOK folloe the rule of mutual
proportioning and overt ambiguity. Against the expectation
of a self-contained musical system it presents a tableau beyond
´good and evil´, a collection of relative motifs, with a tendency
to linking together, on the quiet, with a mixture of innocence
and impudence.
At first sight, we are dealing with a musical family album,
with group excursions into the wilderness, concentrated exchanges
of thought, amusing-raving parties, contemplative moments
with pets by the fireside and so on, the hours you spend alone
and the ones spent in the company of others. A collection
of fragmentary stories from a period of more than 20 years.(...)
In fact, this is about communication, negotiation, possible
levels of communication and contact. But the principle of
authorship (composition) and the one of the closely-knit-community
(improvisation) united by a blind understanding, two possible
models for clear-cut relationships, dissolve in favour of
a third, in fact impossible or at least non-linear principle
where the communication partner is subject to a definite structured
system (…) without really being governed by it and without
complying with it in a restrictive sense. (…)
The interplay of the controlled framework and what emerges
from the control within this framework marks a free space
between the participants where the (confidential) communication
happens through taking on different possible locations. (…)
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Andreas
Kallfelz
Translation: Isabel Seeberg / Paul Lytton
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VIRTUAL COWWS
AK: What was the intention, the idea behind the project VIRTUAL
COWWS?
Rüdiger Carl: Over a period of almost ten years we had tried
out the sound spectrum of the quintet in a wider variety of
directions and had also sorted out the potential of the various
musicians pretty well in order to get closer to the things
we had in mind. (…) This meant finding an approach to translate
it into action. (…) I was interested in combining Improvised
Music with a ´cool´ head and a certain feeling of distance.
(…)
I had the intention of doing eight pieces, four times eight
minutes and four times ten minutes; this represents roughly
the length of a CD. (..) At the end I had a collection of
pieces with numerical values which were supposed to determine
phases of activity for the various instruments. Subsequently,
everything was put down graphically, the voices were superimposed
on top of each other, some things were rearranged and turned
around, and this became the point of departure.
Later I thought of offering such a work to two friends who
are number specialists which led to two things Ludwig Gosewitz
and Meuser did. Meuser worked out numerical series which were
logical but in the end turn out peculiarly clumsy. Ludwig
Gosewitz who has been dealing with numbers in the area of
Astrology used the sine curve calculation of a six-sided star
as a base and then sent me his figures and the corresponding
drawings. (…)
AK: And then the various musicians went into the studio with
the respective instructions for these eight pieces.
Rüdiger Carl: Yes, those were two days of studio at Radio
DRS in Bern. (...) Each musician was singly in the studio,
without anybody being there apart from the sound engineer,
the others didn´t know what had been played and I gave the
begin and the end signs with the Stop watch. The situation
was strange for all of us, to be motioned in separately and
then to work with extreme concentration without knowing what
was to come. (…)
Basically, it was strictly a job for Improvisers; you can´t
expect that of just anybody, to play ´icy´ for two seconds,
then play rumbling sounds for 27 seconds and so on. (...)
AK: More or less arbitrary directives leaving quite a lot
of space for the musicians is something already John Cage
used as the basis for many of his pieces.
Rüdiger Carl: I already mentioned to you (…), before I called
the project VIRTUAL COWWS , it was called ´50 Jahre Absichtslosigkeit´
(50 years without intention). It has been half a century noe
since Cage began making decisions on music by throwing dice
and using the pendulum. (...) My things are different, with
more connection to the history I am involved in which means
that the whole project and its realisation had absolutely
to do with the people who played the music and with my relationship
to them. (…) |
Interview:
Andreas Kallfelz
Translation:
Isabel Seeberg / Paul Lytton
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