Instrumentarium . Boris Hegenbart
staubgold digital 22 . analog 13
2012. cd . dl . lp
The vinyl version is a double LP in silk-screened sleeves and limited to 300 copies. The CD version comes out on Monotype Records.
Boris Hegenbart with: Oren Ambarchi, Fred Frith, Felix Kubin, David Grubbs, Stephan Mathieu, Christophe Charles, Michael Vorfeld, Martin Siewert, Jan Thoben, Bernhard Guenter, Sascha Demand, Hannes Strobl & Hanno Leichtmann, Marc Weiser, Martin Brandlmayr, Christophe Charles, Ed Osborn, F.S.Blumm, Boris Hauf and Ulrich Krieger.
Instrumentarium is Boris Hegenbart's new focus on the formal coordinates and techniques of Dub music. It never sounds like this idiom is coming from the reggae tradition in Jamaica, but even if we leave aside the style considerations, it's the essence of Dub itself that we find here in all its transformative power.
Hegenbart used the exclusive recordings of 19 invited musicians and sound artists from several tendencies of the present creative scene (improvisers, electronicists and exploratory instrumentalists), and the results are not simply a remix or a processing of the material. He dissects everything in detail and brings the more obscure components to the foreground, like in a zooming operation. The most astonishing thing is that Hegenbart goes through exactly the same process in live, real-time performances. So, what we have here are the sketches resulting from instant reactions to the musicians' input. The contradictory nature of the sound sources keeps us alert and makes us smile with intriguing surprise. Nothing is forbidden, and the consequence is an incredibly rich concept and praxis, complete with the unique Boris Hegenbart mark.
(text by Rui Eduardo Paes)
Boris Hegenbart, born in 1969 in Berlin/Germany. Musician/composer of electroacoustic music and sound art since 1996. Establishes the project [#/TAU] with the CD release "hikuioto", Berlin 1996. Sound installations, electroacoustic concerts and performances.
Soundscapes for theatre plays, dance performances and experimental radio and video art. Workshops and lectures in Europe, Japan and the USA. Graduates from the Institute of Electroacoustic Music [ELAK], with an emphasis on composition, improvisation and live electronic, Vienna/Austria 2002. Collaborations with several artists, solo performers, contemporary ensembles, composers and improvisation musicians.
In his electroacoustic compositions, Hegenbart combines the aesthetics of 1950's musique concrete with our day's digital technologies of music production and sound synthesis, without being restricted by the contemporary software's limitations. For him, this software, as well as music samples and the sounds of his everyday life, become material to be molded according to his artistic intentions. This way Hegenbart creates the delicate and complex soundscapes, he is well known for.
www.soundblocks.de