ANTJE VOWINCKEL – Hier Und Da

Künstlerhäuser Worpspede

From 2009, Hier Und Da comprises four pieces by Berlin electroacoustic composer Vowinckel, who is concerned with the dislodgment of snippets of vocal secretions – standard speech, dialects or unclassifiable remarks – within frameworks that emphasize their inherent musicality. The best account of such a curiosity is to be found in the initial “Phone Home”, constructed on voices conjugating different verbs amidst suggestive location recordings in which cars and peripheral noises appear as unearthly symptoms of a metropolitan anguish. “Amourirederire” (based on rhythmically circumscribed chattering-and-screaming children) and the subsequent self-explanatory “Saxx” (an exploration of modified hissing and blowing too similar to many commonplaces heard in today’s EAI) are shorter episodes whose artistic value is definitely lesser, though both tracks are agreeable enough to listen to; intriguingly, a toddler’s shrilling shrieks in the former piece recall John Zorn’s raucous stabs in Fred Frith’s The Technology Of Tears. The longest and finishing episode is “Colle E Cantieri”, a more complex permutation featuring the involvement of Michael Thieke and Kai Fagaschinski’s clarinets. Semi-consonant reluctance, clustery caginess, the highlighting of selected frequencies and processed reminiscences from some building site are critical in defying pedestrian definitions.