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The Saturday night programme at the Kiasma
Theatre takes the listener deeper and deeper into the indefinable
layers of experimental music. The headlining act is the British
duo Comae whose debut CD has just been released in Austria. However,
Comae’s Robert Hampson and Janek Schaefer have long been
renowned masters in their field. Schaefer started out by making
sound installations and got his breakthrough in the late 90's
by playing self-built turntables with many special features such
as several tone arms, records revolving eccentrically, etc. In
his own way, Schaefer carries on the avant-garde turntablism traditions
of Otomo Yoshihide, Christian
Marclay & co. by producing new sounds on his decks instead
of actually playing them. Robert Hampson, who belongs to an older
generation, used to play in the legendary drone rock band Loop
in the 80's. In the 90's, he took the deconstruction of the electric
guitar much further than the minimalist repetition Loop became
famous for, and started to produce, under the project name Main,
a kind of anti-ambient, beatless electric guitar music that, in
accordance with the traditions of musique concrète, totally
managed to obscure the origins of the sounds. Hampson is an important
figure who has paved the way for artists like Circle
and Fennesz, who is featured on this year's Avanto compilation
CD.
As Comae, instead of playing guitar and
the turntables, Hampson and Schaefer have abstracted their sounds
a degree further by transferring them into the memory of their
individual machines, which they then use to improvise. Schaefer
and Hampson are united by their common interest in the spatial
perception of sound. Although this kind of statement is often
associated with the rhetoric of ambient music, their compositions
force one to listen with utter care - something that only a few
ambient classics manage to achieve. Comae’s sophisticated,
quiet soundscapes are filled with details, unexpected turns and
optical illusions. Experimental sound film at its best - without
the actual film! AN
Saturday 10.11.2001 - Kiasma Theatre
20:00 - Live: Comae
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