splitter orchester/felix kubin: shine on you crazy diagram

Triggered by the 2015 edition of the Labor Sonor Festival "Translating Music" in Berlin, this split album between the Splitter Orchester and Felix Kubin offers two sides of the same coin, sometimes appearing like the rendering of an identikit picture. Taking up side A of the album, the Splitter Orchester remains faithful to its trademark technique of improvised composition. Their sound carries the spirit of artists like Jani Christou, John Cage, Franco Evangelisti, and the Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza, taking it further to the 21st century and strictly avoiding any scores. Specially built and prepared instruments add to the complexity of sound layers that slowly unfold, filling both an imaginary and physical space. Starting with a short piano loop, "Diagram 1" turns into a darker drone cut by crashing glasses, giving it an almost Hörspiele-like character. "Diagram 2" is a piece about transformation and metamorphosis which starts with airy highest tones that unravel into a sort of chanting before slowly descending downwards, reaching deeper realms of rumbling which culminate in brutal noise. On side B, Felix Kubin reinterprets these tracks, creating a physically closer and blunter atmosphere, which turns the distant dreamlike atmosphere of side A into a state of awakening. His two versions present a more systematic technique, counteracting the subconscious swarm composition of the Orchester. For his take on "Diagram 1", under the title "Lückenschere", he uses a sequenced sample of the piano loop which generates different dynamics, spiraling over sequencer variations. Much rawer and with aspects of minimal music is "Lichtsplitter", a pure electronic blueprint of "Diagram 2", that involves a black and white score drawing turned into sound with an eight-channel light scanner. The Splitter Orchester, founded in 2010, is a Berlin-based collection of internationally respected composer-performers which draws inspiration from many genres, most noticeably contemporary/improvised music. Splitter Orchester originates from the "Echtzeitmusik" scene, which emerged in Berlin in the mid-1990s - a locally based and globally networked experimental music scene and long-term platform for the exchange of artistic ideas.