«Fink» is a solo album of MS Mutt (aka Johanna Forster), Viennese experimental guitarist, sound artist, graphic designer and co-founder of the local queer-feministic label Unrecords. MS Mutt plays in the local trio Mutt/Mayer (aka Birgit Michlmayr)/Hackl (aka Aurora Hackl) and in Orchester 33 ⅓, founded by Christof Kurzmann and Christian Fennesz.

«Fink» offers two pieces. The 19-minute, title piece features MS Mutt employing the electric guitar as a sound generator for producing layers of noisy, dissonant and sometimes harmonious riffs while attaching percussive objects to the guitar strings or playing with a bow and using different effects. All the time, the distorted and harmonious electric sounds of the guitar are contrasted with field recordings of bird calls, recorded in the town of Lindabrunn in Lower Austria. This unavoidable tension within this unpredictable yet hypnotic soundscape of noisy electric and melodic natural sounds neutralizes the electric guitar from its common masculine roles and can be experienced as a sonic allegory to the way that human noises resonate but also contaminate our natural surroundings.

The second, shorter piece «Vogelstimmen» (roughly translated as bird trimming) is a field recording of four kinds of bird calls – red-backed shrike nestling, barn swallows, spotted woodpecker and goldfinches. MS Mutt does not interfere with these innocent and playful bird calls. This harmonious, sparse and leisured choir of bird calls only deepens the impression of the tension that the title piece suggested.

Eyal Hareuveni 

MS Mutt (el.g, field recordings)