Viennese Wolfgang Mitterer is a much-in-demand innovative composer of operas, concertos, film scores, and theatre music, and a two-time recipient of the Austrian Film Music Award. He has studied organ, composition and electroacoustics in Vienna and Stockholm, and composed music for organ and orchestra, a piano concerto and an opera; he has produced electronic pieces, conceptualized sound installations, and engaged in collective improvisation with diverse groups, developing a language of extremes, tension and complexity.

Mittener’s new project, «temp tracks», distills his experimental ideas into a series of 37 brief, unpredictable and often puzzling musical events, most of them dozens of seconds long, that serve as the preliminary soundtrack to film sequences until the so-called proper music arrives. He juxtaposes elements from classical and contemporary music, operatic songs, pop music, electronic soundscapes and field recordings and creates spellbinding and moving imaginary soundtrack(s) that push forward genre boundaries.

«temp tracks» offer a wild, hallucinogenic ride. One minute you are in a fast car chase, spinning in impossible turns, and a few seconds later you are drawn into a collage of nightmarish sounds, and then lost in a deep space dance club. And this roller-coaster pastiche keeps mutating and evolving and suggesting kaleidoscopic and surprisingly tangible and sensual sonic images as if the listener visits the dreaming mind of Mittener in one of its most hyperactive times. These temporary yet seductive sonic images correspond with epic and iconic themes by Nino Rota, Ennio Morricone, Bernard Hermann, Ryuichi Sakamoto and Vangelis but putting them all inside Miyttener’s most colorful blender. The outcome is exotic and delicious.

Eyal Hareuveni

Wolfgang Mitterer (comp, arr)