Other:M:other is a Viennese trio featuring drummer Judith Schwarz, who plays on an extended drum set, known from the local quartet chuffDRONE, and her duo with sax player Lisa Hofmaninger, Swiss sound poet Jul Dillier, who plays prepared piano, and also plays in chuffDRONE, and sound designer, composer, and audio engineer Arthur Fussy, who plays modular synthesizer. This trio creates percussive networks of impulses that draw their inspiration equally from experimental music and beat-based club music.
The studio recording, Material, is the sophomore album of Other:M:other, following the live debut album, MetaMorph (Klanggalerie, 2023). The new album deepens the trio’s electroacoustic polyrhythmic symbiosis, relying on extended percussive techniques and an open and unpredictable, free improvised approach. Other:M:other keeps blurring the boundaries between abstract, experimental contemporary music, minimalism, electronic music, free jazz, and beat-driven, techno-like music.
Material sounds more futuristic, experimental, and complex than MetaMorph, with its inventive, cinematic, and resonant timbral explorations. Other:M:other synthesizes the acoustic drums, the prepared piano, and the modular synth masterfully into a massive but layered percussive entity, and finds the distinct inner logic and organic momentum for each piece, and the whole seven pieces as a cohesive, powerful sonic statement.
Material faithfully captures the incessant, information-packed rhythm of consumer society in the 21st-century, with its abrupt and radical trendy changes. The music swings constantly between the composed and the spontaneously improvised. This time, the music is not directed at dance floors (unless you are gifted with extraordinary acrobatic skills), but it mirrors the accelerated, restless pace of urban life, including which materials really matter, and which ones stay with us.
Beyond the Beat features two-thirds of Other:M:other – Schwarz on extended drums and Fussy on modular analogue synth, and Where It Starts, Where It Ends is the debut album of this duo, relying on the deep camaraderie of Schwarz and Fussy and the commanding control of their instruments, especially Schwarz’ extended percussive techniques. Beyond the Beat suggests a minimalist, precise, and investigative approach to the essence of rhythm by exploring abstract pulses, the melodic and groove possibilities of rhythm, and its resonant symbiotic options of acoustic and electronic sounds. Each of the six pieces imagines a distinct, succinct web of beats acting like a live rhythmic organism with an inner logic and momentum of its own. Often, it feels like a tripped-down version of Other:M:other.
Eyal Hareuveni
Judith Schwarz (drums), Jul Dillier (piano), Arthur Fussy (synthesizer)
