Two Dogs are two Swiss individualists who are based in Berlin, both share a great love for strange hats and have a sacred mission, to shake up the noise world. Meet guitarist Beat Keller (playing on feedback electric and acoustic guitars, known for his collaboration with vocal artist Saadet Türköz) and turntables wizard and vocalist Joke Lanz (aka Charles Testa, known as the founder and leader of the post-punk-dada cult trio Sudden Infant). The title of the debut album of Two Dogs, Songs From The Trash Can, captures the dadaist-surreal-punkish aesthetics of this duo – stripped-down instruments, DIY production (Keller recorded and mixed the album), and a subversive language somewhere between pavement poetry and free improvisation.
Keller and Lanz are kindred spirits who enjoy experimenting with noisy sounds. Lanz employs his turntables to weave fragmented sound sources into new pictures, and his work spans improvised and experimental music, noise and turntablism, performance art and musique concrète; Keller has been experimenting with his feedbacker guitar for years and plays avant-garde jazz, experimental and improvised music. And Both Lanz and Keller are restless sonic explorers with open minds and wild imaginations. Songs From The Trash Can was recorded at Lager Studios Winterthur in Switzerland in October 2021.
The thirteen short songs oscillate between perfect dissonance and intelligent harmony and address the urgent, daily issues that interest Keller and Lanz, mostly visiting the local pub, watching «office ladies» or English football, exchanging observations («…Prince Andrew is a strange guy, he’s not sweaty…») and drinking too many pints of beer that would make them fucking drunks or the troubles of musicians who tour too much. «Tom Cora» uses samples of the great late cellist and transforms his music into a noisy-surreal one.
Two dogs string these rough diamonds together on a ritual shaman chain, with an intentionally inflated pathos and healthy doses of irony and humor, coming from a similar source to Mary Shelley’s Flash of Inspiration, or a holiday in Fukushima as two of the pieces are titled. Shelley receives her thanks from Two Dogs, alongside Jean-Luc Godard, Jim Jarmusch, Meredith Monk, Jimi Hendrix, Jello Biafra, Captain Beefheart, Agatha Christie, René Magritte and the English Football Premier League. Well, Shelley wrote the Gothic novel Frankenstein, and Two Dogs add some dadaist, friendly manners to its smoky Frankenstein-ian brew of sounds spiced with some noises from post-apocalyptic Fukushima.
Eyal Hareuveni
Beat Keller (feedbacker el.g, ac.g), Joke Lanz (turntables, v)
