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LP
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FAITICHE 029LP
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"Faitiche presents Groupshow's Greatest Hits: The ten tracks on this first vinyl album by Groupshow (Hanno Leichtmann, Andrew Pekler, Jan Jelinek), recorded between 2005 and 2018, document concert recordings and studio improvisations by the trio. In improvisation there are no mistakes, only missed opportunities. Groupshow found their first opportunity in the routines of live performance and they used this opportunity to break with these routines. The trio consisting of Jan Jelinek, Hanno Leichtmann and Andrew Pekler came together in the context of Kosmischer Pitch, playing live versions of the music from Jelinek's 2005 studio album of that name. During this project, the musical interaction between the three participants quickly emancipated itself from the original program, departing from fixed roles and finding a distinct form in constant change. Groupshow sessions -- rehearsal, concert or recording -- are always improvised. The interplay of the various sound sources, converging from the directions of 'electronics', 'percussion', and 'guitar', does not follow the krautrock wave logic of crescendo and morendo. Jelinek, Leichtmann, and Pekler have established a method of transparent density in which links and breaks are not concealed but remain audible. The music works through attraction and repulsion, with a loosely organized structure that always leaves enough room for the next intervention. The principle here, repeated even in the smallest units, is that of duration. Groupshow think of their music in terms of an installation: no starting point, no dramaturgy, and ideally no end. Concerts take place not raised up on a podium, but in the middle of the room on a level with the audience, who only enter the space with the musicians and instruments once their interaction is already underway. In 2008, Groupshow used this approach to create a live soundtrack for Andy Warhol's film Empire, over the full length of eight hours and five minutes. Recordings in general and the 'Greatest Hits' format in particular are another key aspect of this ongoing work on a collectively modulated continuum. The ten tracks on this first vinyl album by Groupshow, recorded between 2005 and 2018, document the ephemeral capturing of opportunities that were not missed. Extracts and essences of an endless movement of searching. The sprawling form of the whole, suspended in succinct, separate units. To paraphrase Lao Tzu and Roland Barthes, one might say: 'Once their work is done, they are no longer attached to it. And because they're not attached to it, it will remain.'" --Arno Raffeiner, 2022 Includes download code.
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LP
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STAUB 122LP
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Jan Jelinek, Hanno Leichtmann and Andrew Pekler have formed a trio that can truly be called a supergroup. As solo artists, all three members are among the most renowned of Berlin's electronic musicians. When playing together as Groupshow, the three instrumentalists -- themselves largely informed by minimalist sensibilities -- engage with the idiom of free-form collective improvisation, which has a long tradition in Germany dating back to the days of Fluxus and Krautrock. Consequentially, the individual members' roles are not entirely fixed. Jelinek uses a sampler, effects and a mixer. Leichtmann plays drums, cymbals and synthetic drum pads. Pekler manipulates a tabletop guitar, synthesizer and effects pedals. The results are at once radical, otherworldly and intensely hypnotic. Groupshow performances do not recreate previously rehearsed or recorded music; instead, they attempt to make an open-ended aesthetic process both audible and tangible. Wherever possible, Groupshow position themselves and their equipment in the middle of the performance space, avoiding the use of a stage, risers or any kind of spatial separation between performer and audience. The lighting remains static and clinical throughout the performance while real-time video, filming from directly above the musicians and projected onto a wall or screen, shows the three members playing and manipulating their tangled pile of equipment. Whenever possible, Groupshow begin playing before any audience members enter, thus deliberately avoiding the dramaturgical imperative of an opening from which the rest of the musical narrative is expected to unfold. As the intensity of the music and degree of the audience's attention are both subject to flux, Groupshow set no time limit to their performances and members of the audience are free to come and go, engage and disengage with the music as they please. Live At Skymall was recorded live in Berlin and Lisbon in 2010, 2011 and 2012.
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