Sound Journeys: Switzerland - selected by Nick Luscombe
Sound Journeys: Switzerland focuses on artists engaged in the Swiss experimental music scene. It has been compiled by producer, broadcaster and Nonclassical A&R Nick Luscombe following a visit to the country and research into the current activities of Swiss academic music.
“The aim of this compilation is to highlight the depth of creative approaches by experimental music artists and communities across Switzerland - from solo percussion and vocal based pieces, to ensemble compositions and electronics, ambient metal and data driven work. This is just the tip of a very substantial iceberg of incredible and innovative music being made throughout Switzerland today.” – Nick Luscombe
The CD features all of the music from all three Sound Journeys: Switzerland EPs, plus two exclusive tracks by Martina Lussi and Insub Meta Orchestra.
Track listing
1. Cyril Bondi/d'incise/Ruiz - U pî lèvâ
Cyril Bondi has been a drummer and percussionist since 1994. A key figure of the Swiss music scene, he is a founding member of the band La Tène and of the duo Cyril Cyril. In the field of experimental music, he has worked with projects such as diatribes, Bondi Martel Schiller and many other collaborations. Bondi is also a composer, mainly in collaboration with d’incise, but also under his own name. He leads the Insub Meta Orchestra, a large experimental ensemble of 50 musicians, and is one of the coordinators of the label/collective INSUB. He played until 2018 with the jazz trio Plaistow.
Geneva’s Laurent Peter, also known as d'incise is a drifting musician, who grew up in between dub sound system and experimental electronic music. A sound explorer, he has no particular instrument, using whatever can be considered as such: softwares, recordings, objects, percussion, harmonium, etc. He's interested in radicalism, reductionism, repetitions and conceptual approaches, building specific set-up for each new occasion, in improvised or composed context. He tends to extract the most tiny details of the elements, appreciates slowness and obsessive explorations of simple processes. He's, since many years with Cyril Bondi, behind the INSUB. label & orchestra, the Diatribes duo, and many other things, and also does graphic design.
Vincent Ruiz, born in 1990, is a Swiss musician and composer. Ruiz is known as a double bass player who has been active in the field of jazz, free improvisation, experimental music, and is a regular member of the Insub Meta Orchestra. He studied upright bass in 2015 at the Hochschule für Musik in Basel, and was awarded the Leenaards Cultural Grant the same year. In 2018, he completed a Master degree at the Rhythmic Music Conservatory in Copenhagen. Ruiz is more known for being the former double bass player of the minimalist/post-jazz group Plaistow. He has also performed and worked with a vast array of musicians and composers such as a.o, Nicole Hogstrand, Nicolas Masson, Jacob Sacks, Basel Rajoub, Emanuele Maniscalco, Cyril Bondi, Greta Eacott’s G-Bop Orchestra, Gamut Kollektiv, Ryota Miyake, Michael Pisaro, Magnus Granberg, Kresten Osgood.
2. Ensemble Batida - L'amour à la maison
Ensemble Batida is a collective of five musicians wishing to devote themselves to quality contemporary music, regularly commissioning and performing new works. Currently, nine works by Swiss, French and Russian composers are being written for the group.
The group is made up of a combination of percussionists and pianists, Alexandra Bellon, Anne Briset, Raphaël Krajka, Jeanne Larrouturou, and Viva Sanchez Reinoso. Their sound is centred around combining the acoustic power of percussive instruments with the broad sound spectrum of electronic music. They frequently curate concerts and transdisciplinary stage performances, interweaving contemporary music and improvisations.
3. Martina Lussi - F/A-18
Lucerne’s Martina Lussi feels home in the intersection between fine arts, music and performance. Within her work she challenges dichotomies such as conscious/unconscious, power/powerlessness and inside/outside. On top, the body of the spectator always plays an essential role in her pieces. Martina has presented her work in various art spaces and in clubs throughout Switzerland.
4. Julian Sartorius - Kleinlützel – La Caquerelle
Julian Sartorius is a drummer, percussionist and artist, who trained at the Jazz schools in Berne and Lucerne by instrumentalists including Fabian Kuratli, Pierre Favre and Norbert Pfammatter. Julian Sartorius has released numerous solo albums, creates audiovisual art works, collaborates with musicians, writers and artists and performs live in intimate venues and on festival stages. He creates projects like the 12-LP-box set «Beat Diary» (Everest Records, 2012), consisting of 365 beat tracks and an accompanying photo book; the daily 8-seconds loop series «Morphblog» (from 2013 to 2019); or «Depot», an audiovisual installation for 16 loudspeakers and 16 screens that was shown at Kunstmuseum Thun. For his last album «Hidden Tracks: Basel – Genève» (Everest Records, 2017), Julian hiked over 200 km with his drum sticks and recording equipment, playing and recording a multitude of sounds and textures on objects found on the journey. In recent years, Julian Sartorius has collaborated with numerous musicians including Sophie Hunger, Sylvie Courvoisier, Gyda Valtysdottir, Dimlite, Shahzad Ismaily and Dan Carey. His distinct percussion work is featured on the current albums of Kate Tempest, Matthew Herbert and James Zoo. Julian Sartorius has toured and performed live in North and South America, Asia and in Europe sharing the bill with artists like Marc Ribot, Deerhoof, Faust, Jaki Liebezeit and Arto Lindsay.
5. Tobias Meier - Another Microscopic Thought
Tobias Meier is a musician and artist based in Zurich, Switzerland. He regularly performs internationally – highlights have included performing with Silvan Jeger as "Cold Voodoo" and with singer Dalia Donadio or as Through States of Matter in various settings. Tobias has written and performed various works for solo saxophone, as well as composed music for contemporary music ensembles and performed various scenic sound-performances. As a composer and improviser, he is interested in architectural gestures: the scenarios and methods of design, the setting of tonal coordinates, along which, the music gradually develops. For him, this process entails an irreducible experience that is to be re-engaged with again and again.
6. Franziska Baumann - Rumors
Franziska Baumann is a singer, improviser, composer and sound artist and works mainly with voice, gestural live electronics and sampled sounds. As a vocal artist and vocal performer, she draws on archaic, experimental and stylistically wide-ranging expression of the human voice. In her research for new sounds, vocal techniques and vocal forms of expression, she creates original, touching, singular concert experiences beyond any stylistic concept. In the border area of an unfathomable vocal universe she unites traditions of different styles and transcends them into the present.
7. JMO - Take A Break
JMO, also known as Julie Semoroz is a singer, sound artist and head of artistic projects. Semoroz shapes sound using several sources such as field recordings, live microphones and her own voice with software and hardware. She offers sound pieces like inner journeys into the subconscious that penetrate into the darkness. Her work focuses on people’s individual relationship with mechanical and organic time. Her creations address new technologies and our post-industrial consumerist society. In her ecology-based research, in the sense of “habitat”, Julie Semoroz raises the question of how to experience our bodies and lives in society.
8. Insub Meta Orchestra - Uro-Uro
The Insub Meta orchestra (IMO) is a large ensemble gathered around the experimental and electroacoustic practice. It was founded in 2010 by the Cyril Bondi and d’incise duo. It consists of about fifty permanent members that form the thirty international musicians present at each concert. Born from questioning improvisation in a large group, the IMO built with time a strong collective and typical background where the individual gesture get lost in the production of global sonic states. Thus subtle matters emerge and interact with silence. The notions of improvisation or composition become confused in a constant research of a specific development in the context of this orchestra. Its axes are the place of silence, an electroacoustic and extensive listening, the work on durations, the mimetism, low volumes, non-hiérarchical relations, the circulation of informations.
9. Rahel Kraft - No Borders
Rahel Kraft is a musician, performance and sound artist based in Vienna and Zurich. In her distinctive work, organic sounds merge with electronics, text and visual media. A recurring question is the physicality of sounds and the fragile limits of perception. Her creative process includes graphic scores, field recordings, improvisation and experimental recording techniques, which often result from an intensive examination of a place, its acoustics and atmosphere.
10. Tobias Reber - Urge
Tobias Reber is a musician, composer, performance artist and teacher with a body of work ranging from electronic, electroacoustic and algorithmic composition to free improvisation, intermedia performance and sound installations.
11. Sum of R - Law of Three Stages
Sum Of R consists of artists Jukka Rämänen (Dark Buddha Rising, Hexvessel, Waste Of Space Orchestra) and Reto Mäder (Ural Umbo, RM74). Sum Of R was initially created in 2008 by Reto Mäder and has been through several states of metamorphosis from atmospheric doom into ritualistic drone rock into dark ambient and experimental music. Their slow moving instrumental music is supported by a subliminal, unconventional metal atmosphere that leaves its listeners immerses in darkness, light and its reflections.
Related
Listen to Nick Luscombe discuss practice and influences with the artists featured on EP1 in New Ratio.
