Touring Route 3 for "in the fields / Feldaufnahmen" (21st September - 11th of October).

Staalplaat Soundsystem: Live at Musikprotokoll 2007

Stage 1: GRAZ
First I went to Graz to do an interview with Justin Bennett and to see him perform with BMB con. as part of "Closed Enough" by Staalplaat Soundsystem at Steirischer Herbst 2007 / Musikprotokoll.

Justin & his BMB con. partner Roelf Toxopeus opened "Closed Enough" in the entry hall of the Helmut-List-Halle controlling a swarm of acoustic bees and fishing with sound-generating fishing rods (maybe in the muddy waters of the aged avantgarde festival Steirischer Herbst).
An excellent opener dealing with nature and human stood opposite to the Staalplaat Soundsystem performance driven by machines from the tool shop expanded with a flying helicoper, car-hifi, race car, trains and truck. What shall I say: "Excellent lights, stunning sounds, a perfect floorplan and organic structure of the timeline: A hymn to a 100-year tradition of noise-making machines."
Justin and Roelf finished "Closed Enough" clearing the space with dangerous looking electric wires making noise when the closed the contact. At all a great evening refreshing a young or already old tradition of avantgarde music.
PS: I made a nice recording with my Soundman mics. I'll try to get the OK of Staalplaat that I can present the recording at BikeMike.

Carolyn Connors: Live at the 5th edition of the Gruenrekorder soundart-festival (Sunday 23rd of September) in Frankfurt at Exzess-Halle

Stage 2: FRANFURT/MAIN
Grünrecorder (Lasse-Marc Riek & Roland Etzin) presented their 5th edition of the Gruenrekorder soundart-festival at Exzess-Halle (Sunday 23rd of September). Lasse was sick when I was in Leipzig on August 3rd so I took the opportunity to show up in Frankfurt not only to do an interview with him but also with his Grünrecorder-partner Roland Etzin and Camilla Hannan who tours Europe after a residency in Mooste Estonia.
The evening of the festival started with the "Ukulele Diva" and extrem singer Carolyn Connors who changes from guttural sound into song within a moment. Brillant performance in spite of jet-lag and a little cold.
Camilla Hannan is a sound artist working with field recordings as the source material for her work. Cammilla likes as she said to me in the interview "the microphon close to the sound-source" and "loud machines" but also "sources from nature" which afterwards get digitally processed into abstract representations of site and memory. Grünrecorder prometed Cammilas show as "…a dark immersive journey with many turns and a few twists…" or as "a liquid architecture of industrial audio waste" and they did not lie. A great performance with the only deficit: IT COULD HAVE BEEN LOUDER!!!!
The evening ended with Suspicion Breeds Confidence aka Tobias Schmitt from Frankfurt/Main subtitled his perfromance with "Kraut concrete". First I was sceptic because of this too good sounding slogan, but Tobias created a trippy analog sound-journey which opened up meta-stages in my tired brain drifting away in spheres of filled emptiness :).
A great night.

Stage 3: Again GRAZ
Francisco Lopez will perform on October 3rd at Musikprotokoll 2007 / Steirischer Herbst in the Dom im Berg and Jacob Kirkegaard will perform at Ehemalige Medienfabrik on October 10th.
See you there, maybe!

Wolfgang Dorninger

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