Kern und Frage

“Kern und Frage” was the title of a joint painting/photo exhibition by Hans Castrup and EMERGE. This album was recorded on the opening night of the exhibition at abraxas, Augsburg, 20 September 2024. Painter Hans Castrup and photographer EMERGE took on their musician roles and played at the opening, supported by another duo, namely N and licht-ung. The cover art shows examples from EMERGE’s black and white photography and Hans Castrup’s painting, offering a small glimpse of the visual work that created the frame for the concert.

The evening, and the resulting album, form a diptych showcasing two different approaches to experimental music. Castrup and EMERGE improvised an instant composition based on a pre-defined set of sounds including piano, violin, and more noise-type ‚objets sonores‘. A sort of live-electronic musique concrète, ‚covalent radii extended‘ (extending their collaborative studio album of the same title, which is based on the same sound material) forms a dialogue between musical and noisy vocabularies, interspersed with long pauses for thought – not so much ‚call and response‘, but rather ‚question and counter-question‘.
Drone guitarist N and drone violinist licht-ung, on the other hand, created an immersive roomful of harmonic string drones, relying not only on amplification, but also on the acoustic properties of the concert space. The live recording beautifully preserves their play with volume and dynamics and offers an immersive listening experience even in a home environment. For N, it was the second live recording collaboration at the same venue: At the 2020 re:flexions sound-art festival, he recorded the album ‚abraxas‘ in collaboration with now-defunct bass drone duo Deep, available (also on vinyl) from attenuation circuit as well.

File under: experimental, drone