Austrian experimental guitarist Burkhard Stangl was asked by Canadian sound artist Steve Bates to donate a 3’40» soundscape for his upcoming project. Stangl booked studio time at his friend and fellow guitarist Martin Siewert’s recording studio and planned to record the desired miniature in twelve attempts. But an annoying back pain has forced Stangl to borrow from Siewert – the guitarist and electronics player of Radian, Trapist and efzeg – a guitar amp and electric guitar from his famous equipment and instruments arsenal.

Siewert equipped Stangl with a rare Tone King Meteor amp and even more rare TV Jones electric guitar and arranged special microphones and an unusual microphone set up. Stangl played and recorded for 45 minutes without any interruption, stopping only for short breaks between the miniature attempts.

Stangl sounds as he was totally possessed by the magical sonic atmosphere, offered and carefully prepared by Siewert, clearly enjoying his own playing even said later on that that «the divine spark had hit me». In his hand the rare electric guitar becomes a vivid, talking entity with a powerful, tangible presence and a rich, imaginative language. You can easily succumb to this guitar highly nuanced ringing and resonating tones and overtones and Stangl’s inspired soundscapes and suddenly find yourself meditating with «Zwölf» suggestive sounds.

The unique atmosphere of «Zwölf» – with no cuts, no edits, no volume correction, Dogma style – correspond beautifully with Bates ideas about the sonic as a starting point for his projects. Such magical sonic atmospheres are evocations of communication networks and systems, or expressions of spatial and temporal experience.

Eyal Hareuveni

Burkhard Stangl (g)