covalent radii revisited
by CASTRUP I EMERGE
Hans Castrup's first album for attenuation circuit, “The abarian point”, already showed a strong penchant for titles from physics. This collaboration with EMERGE also draws on this field. Paraphrasing Wikipedia, the covalent radius is a measure of the size of an atom that forms part of one covalent bond, which is a chemical bond that involves the sharing of electrons to form electron pairs between atoms. This is a metaphor for the way this album was created: The 'atoms' Castrup and EMERGE shared 'sonic electrons' consisting of piano and violin sounds respectively, which were then electronically processed and 'paired' to create five tracks that belong to both atoms/artists.
The album forms the sonic counterpart to an exhibition of Hans Castrup's and EMERGE's visual art and was released with a collaborative concert on the occasion of the opening of said exhibition. While Castrup has been active as a painter for many decades, complementing his visual art practice with writing and sound art/experimental music, Sascha Stadlmeier only emerged as a photographer in recent years from his musical work as EMERGE and as head of the label attenuation circuit – after years of taking photographs for concert flyers and album covers, his photographic production has now become a field of artistic practice in its own right. In the exhibition, Stadlmeier's photographs and Castrup's drawings shared one space, creating unprecented 'bonds' between different visual 'atoms', much like the musical elements on this album do in acoustic space.
File under: ambient, sound art
ACU 1074
factory-pressed CD in DVD super jewel case
Released in 2024
limited to 100 copies
price: 8.00 EUR (excl. postage)
Hans Castrup: piano, electronics, painting
EMERGE: violin, sound recycling, photos, design
hans-castrup.de
emergeac.wordpress.com
EMERGE is also & always der Bund des dritten Auges
Also available here: http://www.discogs.com/seller/dependenz?sort=price&sort_order=asc&q=attenuation+circuit&st
BAD ALCHEMY
Nach dem literarischen „Lucilia oder Der Fliegenträger“ begegnet HANS CASTRUP hier gleich wieder bei Covalent Radii Revisited (ACU 1074, CD in DVD case) an Piano und Electronics im Bund mit Violine und Sound Recycling von EMERGE. Mit dem „halben Abstand zweier Atome desselben chemischen Elements“ als Überschrift verweisen sie auf etwas, das die Welt im Innersten zusammenhält, und auf die elektroakustische Chemie zwischen ihnen beiden, die durch eine gemeinsame Ausstellung von Fotografien (Stadlmeier) und Foto-Collagen (Castrup) auch noch visuell vertieft wurde. Was erklingt, ist derart entschleunigte Blasenkammermusik, dass man die atomaren Teilchen mit bloßem Auge driften 'sieht', träumerisch aufgeladen mit romantischen Resten und modernistischen Hoffnungen. Als hauntologisches Desiderat, teils wie durch Mehltau gedämpft und melancholisch, teils kristallin erstarrt mit vernarbten Brüchen, das Piano windschief und rührend, die Geige verwaschen, mutiert. Doch weiterhin in dissonater und trotziger Querstellung gegen impulsive Windstöße und dräuende Dunkelwellen, mit Kontradunkelwellen und Kontraimpulsen. Doch vor allem in hör- und sichtbar gemachter Kollegialität und Solidarität.
www.badalchemy.de
VITAL WEEKLY
Here we have more music from Sascha Stadlmeier, better known as EMERGE (see also elsewhere, a very busy bee as a musician and a label boss. His Attenuation Circuit has a massive catalogue of releases, and the latest addition is this music he created with Hans Castrup as part of an exhibition of their visual work. For Castrup, that means drawing, and for Stadlmeier, photography, which he always did a lot, but in more recent years, taking it to a more artistic level. They created the music using piano, electronics (Castrup), violin, and sound recycling (Stadlmeier). As with Castrup’s solo work, the title comes from the world of physics and means “The covalent radius, rcov, is a measure of the size of an atom that forms part of one covalent bond. It is usually measured either in picometres (pm) or angstroms (Å), with 1 Å = 100 pm”. Individual titles don’t have titles. I’d be curious to learn more about the artistic process; for instance, do they pick up each other’s sounds in the respective sound processing, or do they restrict themselves to their own instruments? The music provides no clues. I wasn’t overly enthusiastic about Castrup’s solo music, finding it too much of a mix of various interests and styles, played through improvisational, without head or tail. That’s different on this CD. Maybe it’s because he plays with somebody, maybe there has been some talk beforehand. The electronic side of the music plays a more significant role here, forming drones and patterns in which the piano desolates and moves around. There is a plink here and there and some bass chords, adding some delicate atmospheric melodic touches to the music. When plucked, the violin does the same; if EMERGE uses a bow, it’s all part of the drones. The improvisational element remains present, especially in the second and fifth pieces, but with all the electronics used, it’s part of the overall atmospherics. The third piece I enjoyed the most, because there was a lot of tension, which went missing in the fifth piece, which came across as a bundle of sounds rather than a composition. At 31 minutes not a very long CD, but quite nice overall.
https://www.vitalweekly.net/number-1453/
brezenstudio engine