Label: Penultimate Press

重鎮の強靭な表現を詰め込んだ2CD大作!!多くの説明は不要、伝説的エクスペリメンタルバンドP16.D4の核であり、現在もRLW名義で活動を続ける重鎮Ralf Wehowsky。本作はパウル・シェーファーが率いるチリのドイツ人宗教植民地"コロニア・ディグニダ"の闇の歴史をコンセプトした非常に濃密な実験録音。当時の目撃者らによる一連のドキュメンタリー録音をもとにコロニアに関連する恐怖や緊張の印象をMIDIファイルで制作、手回しオルガン、ピアノ、ギター、サックス、ターンテーブルといったバーチャル楽器を即興で演奏した、絶妙な緊張感のコンクレート/コラージュ。メチャクチャ良いです。



6 panel digi pack with suitably unsettling artwork

Colonia Dignidad was the settlement of a German evangelical sect.

After being prosecuted for child abuse in Germany, the group fled to Chile in 1961. Like similar religious sects, it was characterized by the outward appearance of a unified, godly community with well-tempered cultural activities and social welfare, but inwardly and in its environment by oppression, sexual abuse, and exploitation. In the 1970s, it unquestioningly inserted itself into Pinochet's regime of terror, aiding in the imprisonment and torture of political prisoners, weapons production, etc. Since the end of the 1980s, there has been a legal reappraisal of the C.D.'s crimes in Chile.

Its successor organization makes a living from tourism.

The C.D. project uses, on the one hand, a series of documentary recordings of contemporary witnesses, and on the other, a set of melodic improvisations (MIDI files), improvised in the spirit of the impressions of terror, tension, claustrophobia and fear associated with the Colonia. CD 2 (Knochenstückchen) directly reflects this atmosphere. CD 1 (Reue?) on the other hand, is characterized by the contradictory breadth of the statements found after the dissolution of the sect: Denial of atrocities to glorification of the C.D. by leaders who returned to Germany against the professed traumas of formerly abused inmates and exploited community workers.

For this purpose, the eyewitness recordings were sound-modified to a considerable extent. The MIDI files were played back with a variety of virtual instruments (piano, guitar, sax, turntable, lung machine, barrel organ, synths, etc.) in a multitude of modifications (speed, pitches, loops, harmonic and tonal variations), so that the 11 pieces from CD 1 and the 16 pieces from CD 2 each represent a closely interwoven overall composition.

Ralf Wehowsky is one of the most respected practitioners of radical music of our day. He was the founding member of the seminal German group P16.D4 and ran the legendary experimental label Selektion whose ground-breaking releases influenced many working in today's experimental music scene. Previous releases have seen him collaborate with such well known and diverse artists such as Merzbow, Andrew Chalk, Jim O'Rourke, Achim Wollscheid, Lionel Marchetti, Kevin Drumm, Kouhei Matsunaga and Bruce Russell.