Continents documents a commissioned piece of Serbian keyboardist Marina Džukljev, playing here on a church organ, and Viennese extremist cellist Noid (aka Arnold Haberl), developed during a small residency in Nickelsdorf in July 2019 and performed during the free music festival Konfrontationen at Protestant Church in Nickelsdorf, Austria, in July 2019.

Džukljev and Noid collaborate also in the trio Flowers we are… with the fellow Viennese sound architect, bassist and electronics player Matija Schellande. Džukljev is an active performer and educator in the fields of free improvisation, classical and contemporary composed, and applied music, and has played and collaborated with Szilárd Mezei, Mia Dyberg, Manja Ristić, dieb13, Vasco Trilla, among many others. Noid is a sound artist who understands his work as a never-ending research, leading to a wide range of contradictory outcomes, spanning from solo cello performances and tape pieces to compositions for ensembles, improvisation scores, or performances with electronic or hybrid instruments, and from sound installations to videos and imaginary music.

Continents is an arresting sonic journey in a unique space and in time, with a most elusive sense of time. It blurs the distinction between sound art and music and employs beautifully the acoustic qualities of the space of the protestant church in Nickelsdorf. It contrasts the restless attempt to extend the sonic range of Noid’s amplified acoustic cello, with its accumulations of delicate, multiphonic tones and overtones, and the unsettling, quiet and almost static drones of Džukljev’s church organ, with its clear and sometimes distorted tones, and varies its fragile dynamics with subtle changes in density and fine adjustments in microtonality.

Eyal Hareuveni

Marina Džukljev (church org), Noid (c)