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CD
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STAUBDIG 006CD
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Armchair Traveller was founded in Berlin in 1999 by Hella von Ploetz (glass harp), Silvia Ocougne (prepared and traditional guitars), Werner Durand (self-made wind instruments) and Sebastian Hilken (percussion and cello). Their pieces, structured improvisations, are based on the music of different continents, new music and minimal music, combining the special tuning of the instruments with unusual sounds. Armchair Traveller plays it inside out and twists notions of structured music, thus finally bringing forth perhaps the real, the authentic, the ethnic music of our time. It is real, because everything about it is unreal; it is authentic, since it has just been totally invented. But it sounds archaic because it has been created by musicians who have developed specific playing techniques, mostly on their own, for handmade instruments built from everyday materials and for conventional instruments they have specially prepared. It is ethnic because chance providentially brought these musicians together at the same time in a big city like Berlin -- metropolitan centers have become homelands for quasi-ethnic groups. The individual pieces, imaginally located on various meridians of the globe, sound like tribal music that somehow is simultaneously experimental and (post-)industrial. Much of it sounds electronic, even though everything is acoustic. Travellers in their armchairs, at once alienated and fascinated, discover the foreignness in themselves.
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LP
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STAUBANA 001LP
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LP version, limited to 300 copies. Armchair Traveller was founded in Berlin in 1999 by Hella von Ploetz (glass harp), Silvia Ocougne (prepared and traditional guitars), Werner Durand (self-made wind instruments) and Sebastian Hilken (percussion and cello). Their pieces, structured improvisations, are based on the music of different continents, new music and minimal music, combining the special tuning of the instruments with unusual sounds. Armchair Traveller plays it inside out and twists notions of structured music, thus finally bringing forth perhaps the real, the authentic, the ethnic music of our time. It is real, because everything about it is unreal; it is authentic, since it has just been totally invented. But it sounds archaic because it has been created by musicians who have developed specific playing techniques, mostly on their own, for handmade instruments built from everyday materials and for conventional instruments they have specially prepared. It is ethnic because chance providentially brought these musicians together at the same time in a big city like Berlin -- metropolitan centers have become homelands for quasi-ethnic groups. The individual pieces, imaginally located on various meridians of the globe, sound like tribal music that somehow is simultaneously experimental and (post-)industrial. Much of it sounds electronic, even though everything is acoustic. Travellers in their armchairs, at once alienated and fascinated, discover the foreignness in themselves.
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