The experimental duo of Austrian, Oslo-based vocal artist Agnes Hvizdalek and Viennese electronics player was founded in 2009 but Bore is its debut album, recorded in September 2021 in Vienna by Lercher, who also mixed and mastered the album. The album is released by the Scottish Scatter archive label who has a name-your-price policy on its Bandcamp page.

Hvizdalek and Lercher share a musical vision where everything is possible and nothing an obligation, and both engage in many cross-disciplinary collaborations. The music of Bore is free improvised but Hvizdalek’s unprocessed voice with her abstract approach to the human voice is organically woven into the electronics of Lercher, creating a coherent whole. Often it is difficult to know what is human and acoustic and what is processed and manipulated, as Hvizdalek experiments with textures and tones that teeter the line between both human and non-human sound and Lercher’s electronics often sound vintage and tangible.

It is clear that Hvizdalek and Lercher have developed a high degree of flexibility and mutual trust that allows them to switch between otherworldly fragility and earthly brutality with ease. The opening title piece sounds like an urgent but friendly transmission by some alarmed earthlings to Star Wars futurist versions of Droids while the following «hebel» sounds like an enigmatic and cryptic ritual somewhere in deep space, with sudden noisy overtones that collide with Hvizdalek’s chirping vocals. «innvik» is the most abstract, sparse piece here but with the fascinating, conversational dynamics of Hvizdalek and Lercher and their suggestive and unsettling voices and sounds. «thixotropie» is a gentle industrial texture with a few subversive melodic touches. This sonic journey ends with «nebensatz»,  suggesting another sci-fi texture, but is much more comprehensible now, after following the bold and explarotory sonic excavations of Hvizdalek and Lercher.

Eyal Hareuveni 

Agnes Hvizdalek (v), Daniel Lercher (elec)