Lichtung (clearing in German) brings together two exceptional musicians who are also imaginative sound artists. German, Berlin-based prolific experimental pianist Reinhold Friedl is known as the artistic director of the contemporary ensemble zeitkratzer, respected as it is feared for its radical approach to music, an expert on the music of Iannis Xenakis and the curator of the Perihel series on Karlrecords. German, Viennese prolific experimental guitarist and electronics player Martin Siewert is known for the trio Radian and the duo Also (with drummer Katharina Ernst), is also in demand recording engineer, who mixed and mastered Lichtung.
Lichtung was recorded in Vienna in June 2021 and offers how the distinct and quite diverse approaches of Friedl (who plays most of the time inside the piano) and Siewert sketch nuanced and dramatic textures that stress the adventurous and uncompromising spirits of these gifted musicians. The three pieces shift between musique concrete to abstract, electronic music and reductionist, contemporary music, playing cleverly with elements of deafening noise and unsettling silence, and at times even flirts with explosive interplay and echoes krautrock. Lichtung highlights the poetic sonic sensibility of Friedl and Siewert as well as their arresting yet organic sonic architectures and rich imagination
La fin des Terres (the end of the Earth) is a double album documenting Friedel’s meeting with French experimental composer-bassist-sound artist Kasper T. Toeplitz, whose music is highly influenced by what he calls «electronic thinking», even the music composed for acoustic instruments. The album was recorded at Art Zoyds Studios in Valenciennes, France, in October 2022. The two-hour-long, studio and live pieces «fin des terres_Z» and «fin des terres_Ω» are hypnotic and highly immersive textures that were structured with careful thought of the destabilizing architecture of the time, and of the creation, disappearance and mutation of abstract, unworldly and uncompromising sounds of the acoustic piano and the electric bass. Friedel and Toeplitz sound as one, organic and massive entity that never ceases to surprise with its constantly shifting, subtle yet rich and refined sonic wonders, always pushing beyond the known boundaries of our planet Earth. The beautiful cover artwork is by Gabriela Morawetz.
Eyal Hareuveni
Reinhold Friedl (piano), Martin Siewert (guitar, electronics), Kasper T. Toeplitz (electric bass, electronics)
