|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
2LP
|
|
KEPLARREV 011LP
|
Ekkehard Ehlers's seminal plays series was originally released on three 12"s (Staubgold) and two 7"s (Bottrop-Boy) in very limited runs. The entire series was previously only available as a CD compilation. Keplar finally presents it on double vinyl for the first time, featuring a new artwork. Domestic ethnology: Ekkehard Ehlers plays. "Play" is a word in English with many meanings attached. Each one sends you down a different cognitive pathway. When Ekkehard Ehlers plays, he is very much on his own. Or, at least, alone but at the same time keeping intimate company with the artistic innovators named in his titles. Robert Johnson. John Cassavetes. Albert Ayler. Cornelius Cardew. Hubert Fichte. Is he playing with them, against them, about them, for them, to them? This can never be known. It is certainly a mistake to try to hear the "work" of these originals in the sounds played by Ekkehard. They're not cover versions. They're hardly tributes in the conventional sense. Cassavetes and Fichte are not even musicians, although music played an important part in both their careers. Sure, there are little nods and flashes of recognition -- tiny guitar licks among the minimal beats of "Robert Johnson 2"; rich bowed instruments in "Albert Ayler", recalling the violin, cello and double bass arrangements on Ayler's 1967 Live in Greenwich Village LP; the elongated organ lines of "Cornelius Cardew 1" gesturing towards passages in Paragraph 1 of the British composer's 1971 Marxist monolith, The Great Learning. Ekkehard is not so much playing these figures as allowing himself to be played by them. Playing as an activity also suggests freedom. Maybe the only thing all five named persons have in common is that they were all quiet radicals. In music, literature and cinema, they all stepped, without self-promotion or fanfare, into unmapped territories. Once there they found it necessary to invent new languages in order to survive. Necessity was the mother of their inventiveness. They were also uncomfortable avant-gardists. Lonely types, fighting their corners out on the margins, with little reward, often misunderstood, ridiculed or ignored. All died unfairly young. The deaths of Johnson, Ayler and Cardew have never been satisfactorily explained, and remain shrouded in myths and conspiracy theories. The pioneering expeditions of all five began in that spirit of playful freedom, but inexorably drew them towards the heart of darkness. Ekkehard Ehlers's intuitive electronic portraits are a form of domestic ethnology in themselves. Invoking another of Ekkehard's musical aliases, they are portraits of cultural "autopoiesis" -- creators whose works were strong enough to have their own self-regenerating life force. Featuring Stephan Mathieu, Joseph Suchy, Anka Hirsch. Mastered by Rashad Becker. Cut to vinyl by Lupo, Berlin, 2022. Redesigned by Sandra Kastl, 2022. Photos by Ludger Blanke. Gatefold sleeve; includes download code; edition of 500.
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
CD
|
|
HEMK 028CD
|
Ekkehard Ehlers' essential electronica opus sees a breathtakingly warm analog revival. Before lo-fi tape hiss and filter murk became the preferred ways of fucking up your music, all we had to rely on was the glitch. The early 2000s were the swingin' glitch years, when clicking, skipping, beat-repeat and buffer-delay seeped into every ontological stratum of music-making. But it wasn't just flashy winks teased into indie pop-dance, facile quasiclassical crossover, and bookish sound art. Glitch was a grand, sweeping sea-change in how people listened to recorded music. The idea that the act of editing was now elemental, unconcealed; that seems to be the legacy of experimental electronica's golden years. And at the heart of it all seemed to lie this curious little album by Ekkehard Ehlers, made of nothing more than mash-ups of two of the previous century's musical sea-changers, Arnold Schönberg and Charles Ives. A high concept, even for haughty times. Not exactly the stuff of poetical dreams, right? But in the decade to follow, Ehlers would become well-known for balancing the heart precariously upon the intellectual sword. In his follow-up to Betrieb, the Ekkehard Ehlers Plays series, the mere thought of Cornelius Cardew and Albert Ayler were brought to bear upon a new tradition that had yet to figure out how it felt about feeling. And as any proper first album should, Betrieb could have no better stated this mission of pitting concept against intuition. To this day, Betrieb continues to articulate the epistemology of its era, as much as it offers timeless auditory delights. HEM's 24bit remaster represents a significant update to the original sound. The original masters were transferred to 1/2" tape, and then treated to a remarkable journey through hand-wound patch cables, bespoke acoustics and humming transistors. Ehlers' music not only stands up to the analog treatment, it shines: clicks and pops have become fuzzy, glowing points of starlight, while once-foggy atmospherics have become layered, multidimensional skeins of strings and smoke. Betrieb was once the thinking-man's feeling-music (or the feeling-man's thinking-music). But it is now, simply, a transportive listening experience: finally the monument it always aimed to be.
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
LP
|
|
STAUBANA 012LP
|
LP version. Ekkehard Ehlers' Adikia is phenomenal -- a scattered, moving dissembling of a moment. With music like this, there seems to be an obvious marriage between composition and improvisation, where the composer creates a set of moments, or rules, or an environment within which each musician is free to fill spaces accordingly. This group does this masterfully, which is to be expected. Alongside long-time favorites like Kai Fagaschinski (clarinet), Werner Dafeldecker (double bass), and Paul Wirkus (percussion), are revelations like Eva Reiter (viola di gamba, sub-contrabass recorder) and Björn Gottstein (viola). Todosch's performance on voice, especially, is flooring. Whatever Ehlers set in front of each of these musicians, each brought ample personality and a mastery of their moment. Adikia has twin structures, at least initially. Each moment leads to the next, free of signposts but pregnant with a growing sense of unified direction, of pattern. Imagine, if you will, a slow-motion film in reverse, which starts with a shattered window, the spider webs stretching from side to side, small, jagged holes in the glass. From this brief still comes motion... the catalyst for this destruction enters the frame, a bullet moving steadily backwards, returning into the glass, spider webs receding to their points of origin, air pulled back into the cabin until the glass is once more whole, capable of reflection, transparency. These twin beginnings are the instinctual understanding of the geometry of such an impact. Once we see the bullet, we see the impact forwards and backwards, we can trace the relationships of lines to lines. This is how sound works in Ehlers' work. These pieces don't build so much as reconstitute themselves. Each half of this piece ends where it began. There is no slow scaling, there is no ascent. There is only retracing steps, a move towards an indentation in the ground from which someone, or something, lifted off, only to suddenly scatter. The first half's conclusion is stunning. Its understated rejection of a cathartic finish also eschews the strict aversion to melody so common to works stitched together from aural ennui. Melody, dour, bitter, perhaps mournful, pours out from the speakers. Each line feeds an ear eager for tone, texture, and consistency. The strings sing, every rub of the bow evokes frantically dispersed dust, and pressed fingers, and sadness. As quickly as this song appears, it disappears into the piece's second half. Yet something remains, both in the retained perception of emotion in the listener, but also structurally. The second half of Adikia more readily provides low-end swell. The sound spectrum is fuller, the strings and bass provide a floor... it could be, just as the first half's beginning is a postmortem on its origin, the second half is a fuller realization of what is to become the first half. While the structure is similar, there is a more palpable sense of aggression from the ensemble. Sounds come and go, but the first half has alerted the listener to a potential second burst, and that burst does come.
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
CD
|
|
STAUBDIG 020CD
|
Ekkehard Ehlers' Adikia is phenomenal -- a scattered, moving dissembling of a moment. With music like this, there seems to be an obvious marriage between composition and improvisation, where the composer creates a set of moments, or rules, or an environment within which each musician is free to fill spaces accordingly. This group does this masterfully, which is to be expected. Alongside long-time favorites like Kai Fagaschinski (clarinet), Werner Dafeldecker (double bass), and Paul Wirkus (percussion), are revelations like Eva Reiter (viola di gamba, sub-contrabass recorder) and Björn Gottstein (viola). Todosch's performance on voice, especially, is flooring. Whatever Ehlers set in front of each of these musicians, each brought ample personality and a mastery of their moment. Adikia has twin structures, at least initially. Each moment leads to the next, free of signposts but pregnant with a growing sense of unified direction, of pattern. Imagine, if you will, a slow-motion film in reverse, which starts with a shattered window, the spider webs stretching from side to side, small, jagged holes in the glass. From this brief still comes motion... the catalyst for this destruction enters the frame, a bullet moving steadily backwards, returning into the glass, spider webs receding to their points of origin, air pulled back into the cabin until the glass is once more whole, capable of reflection, transparency. These twin beginnings are the instinctual understanding of the geometry of such an impact. Once we see the bullet, we see the impact forwards and backwards, we can trace the relationships of lines to lines. This is how sound works in Ehlers' work. These pieces don't build so much as reconstitute themselves. Each half of this piece ends where it began. There is no slow scaling, there is no ascent. There is only retracing steps, a move towards an indentation in the ground from which someone, or something, lifted off, only to suddenly scatter. The first half's conclusion is stunning. Its understated rejection of a cathartic finish also eschews the strict aversion to melody so common to works stitched together from aural ennui. Melody, dour, bitter, perhaps mournful, pours out from the speakers. Each line feeds an ear eager for tone, texture, and consistency. The strings sing, every rub of the bow evokes frantically dispersed dust, and pressed fingers, and sadness. As quickly as this song appears, it disappears into the piece's second half. Yet something remains, both in the retained perception of emotion in the listener, but also structurally. The second half of Adikia more readily provides low-end swell. The sound spectrum is fuller, the strings and bass provide a floor... it could be, just as the first half's beginning is a postmortem on its origin, the second half is a fuller realization of what is to become the first half. While the structure is similar, there is a more palpable sense of aggression from the ensemble. Sounds come and go, but the first half has alerted the listener to a potential second burst, and that burst does come.
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
CD
|
|
STAUB 066CD
|
This is Frankfurt-based Ekkehard Ehlers' (Autopoieses, Marz) seventh release for the Staubgold label. A frontrunner in electronic experimentation and electroacoustic composition, Ehlers has reinterpreted Schoenberg, produced an album of folktronica, and paid aural indietronic tributes to Albert Ayler and Cornelius Cardew on his acclaimed Plays series of EPs. Anomalous in the best sense of the word, A Life Without Fear is as unexpected as Jim O'Rourke's embrace of John Fahey's music a decade ago. Ekkehard Ehlers once again harnesses the genius natural resource that is Joseph Suchy's go-for-broke attitude towards the guitar, and the "electric blues" are given yet another definition. A Life Without Fear occasionally strays into Maher Shalal or 21st century Red Krayola Blues, Hollers and Hellos turf, but wait -- Franz Hautzinger's at the door. Droning, guitar-picked porch blues blend with whiskey-soaked vocals, voodoo jazz, and throbbing electronics while low hums rub up against scraped strings and a buzzed-out harmonica heard through a tin-can. This is rough-hewn experimental bluestronica mixed with graveyard dirt.
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
CD
|
|
STAUB 041CD
|
"With his new album after the highly acclaimed Plays series in 2002, pop musician and sound artist Ekkehard Ehlers presents his first fully composed works. 'Mäander' and 'Blind' are based on manipulated bass clarinet and cello recordings which Ehlers arranges like an orchestra in his laptop. Opposed to the pop music he produces with Albrecht Kunze in März, this is avant garde music put into dreamlike states and finally looping in endless circles of magic fragile sound. coming in a foldout digipak with accompanying poster, Politik Braucht Keinen Feind is Ehlers' both musically and visually most advanced artistic statement to date. Ekkehard Ehlers lives in Frankfurt/Germany. His large discography includes releases with autopoieses (La vie á noir, Mille Plateaux, 1999) and März (März, Karaoke Kalk, 2002) as well as his debut CD Betrieb (Mille Plateaux, 2001) on which he put samples of Arnold Schönberg and Charles Ives into new perspective. Last year's CD Ekkehard Ehlers Plays was a musical homage to free jazz legend Albert Ayler, blues singer Robert Johnson, filmmaker John Cassavetes, composer Cornelius Cardew and writer Hubert Fichte. His project März successfully realized his idea of new electronic folk pop. Ekkehard Ehlers also teaches time based media at Stuttgart's Merz Academy for Design."
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
LP
|
|
STAUB 026LP
|
"Third and final part in the acclaimed series of mini albums, dealing with German beat poet Hubert Fichte (following Plays Albert Ayler and Plays John Cassavetes), feat. liner notes by Thomas Meinecke."
|
|
|
|