Cindy, Loraine & Hank

Black Magazin:
Jetzt ist es soweit – ich kann COLUMN ONE nicht mehr folgen! Das Experimental-Kollektiv aus Berlin war bisher mit seiner speziellen Mischung aus Cut-Up, Industrial, Avantgarde, Ambient, Click & Cuts, Field Recordings, Trance etc. sicher nie Easy Listening, aber trotz aller Dekonstruktion irgendwie immer atmosphärisch bzw. fließend oder verstörend. Stellvertretend sei hier das Album „Doubt“ genannt, welches 1997 auf Moloko+ erschien und einfach nur zeitlos ist! In den letzten Jahren war jetzt allerdings ein deutlicher Trend zur willkürlichen „Geräuschmusik“ und zum Dadaismus erkennbar, dessen negativer Höhepunkt für mich der absolut langweilige wie uninspiriert wirkende Auftritt beim X. Morphonic Lab 2011 in Dresden war. Eventuell liegt es ja nur daran, das ich kein Mitglied ihrer „Sibirischen Zelle“ oder nicht intellektuell genug für die „Idiotenmusik“ auf „Cindy, Loraine & Hank“ bin. Natürlich kann es auch gut sein, das COLUMN ONE einfach nur mal austesten wollen, wie weit sie gehen können und das Publikum die Kunstscheiße frisst? Mit der „The Last One Is Dead“-Box bzw. den darin enthaltenen Exkrementen gingen sie ja 1998 schon sehr weit, dafür war jedoch die „besudelte“ Platte letztendlich sogar richtig hörbar! Das kann ich von „Cindy, Loraine & Hank“ leider nicht behaupten, denn die insgesamt 11 Tracks sind ein wirrer Mix aus verschiedenen liegengebliebenen Aufnahmen der letzten Jahre und beinhalten unter anderen Arbeiten mit dem ZEITKRATZER-Ensemble oder von der Split-Kollaboration mit Ditterich von Euler-Donnersperg. Diese „Resterampe“ klingt über weite Strecken wie eine Feldaufnahme von Bühnenarbeitern beim Kulissen schieben im Theater oder die Entrümpelung einer Messi-Wohnung. Es kann natürlich gut sein, das der eine oder andere Hörer darin einen Sinn oder Konzept sehen mag – ich jedenfalls nicht! Dass das Ganze dann sogar parallel in den Tonträger-Formaten CD und Vinyl veröffentlicht wird, finde ich allerdings schon erstaunlich und ich wage zu bezweifeln, das sich jeweils 300 potentielle Käufer für die Doppel-CD auf Zoharum und die Doppel-LP bei 90% Wasser finden werden. Wenn doch, dürfte die Rechnung von COLUMN ONE aufgegangen sein und das hätte dann ja auch schon wieder was! Überraschender Nebeneffekt von “Cindy, Loraine & Hank” ist bei mir auf jeden Fall ein verstärkter Konsum der alten Veröffentlichungen von COLUMN ONE… (Marco Fiebag)

ChainDLK:
After a long hiatus, this Berlin-based art collective returns with a long release that was in the works from almost 10 years. This album is presented as “a museum of small, lovely bastards” which means that they aims to describe that kind of people “hidden in the dirt, covered with garbage”. So this is a release that asks the will to understand the small choices that create a sound palette asking from a visual counterpart to fully realize his evocative nature.
An oscillator opens “Warsaw Part 2”, and this release, and it remains until the instruments, played in an unorthodox manner, create a sense of increasing dialogue until the sudden end. “Idiotenmusik” is a divertissement of synth. “4”, that is the third track as a symptom of the jokes which are the center of this release, features the Zeitkratzer Ensemble whose recordings are played by this collective and include also the beginning of the session, not only the music. “Antiphona #2” is a sequence of small noises that exalts the fragmentary nature of this musical concept. In an opposition of the use of a contemporary ensemble, “Cherokee” opens with the play of an old vaudeville records which evolves in the construction of a sound palette which perhaps mocks this kind of sound but reveal his property of being transformed in something else. “Not” closes this release with static drones acting as introduction from the final recording from an old movie.
The field recordings of “Warsaw Part 1” opening the second cd are suddenly doubled by a synth line that is slowly submerged by the resonances of the metallic objects which fades for the closing samples. While the first part of “Reverend Black” is focused on object’s sound and still tones, his second part juxtaposes drones as the sound of first part were blurred. “Die Truhe im Fluss #5” sounds like a sonata for small samples, noises and voices as they were the audio recording of a theatrical performance with his almost silence final part as his end. “Der Fluss in der Truhe” is the path of this form and its use field recording is really evocative as the speaking words. “Stufe” closes this release as a commentary on child’s play while the final part with the sound of a ping pong match creating, in a some way, a nostalgia for those times.
This is a complex release based on a narrative plan which seems to underline the almost obscure freaks that surrounds our life almost unseen. There’s also a sense of nostalgia from old times, as many samples are taken from old films or are related to childish play, or so they sound. For all fans of weird music this release is a must, the others could enjoy this weirdness but a their own risk.

FYH!:
Niemcy powrócili i mają się dobrze. Długo Column One kazali fanom czekać na nowy album, ale gdy go w końcu nagrali, nie da się narzekać. No bo jakie można mieć pretensje, gdy berlińczycy w tak udany sposób katują swoje instrumenty, maltretują różne przedmioty i wplatają w to wszystko samodzielnie zarejestrowane nagrania terenowe? Klasa sama w sobie, ale od początku.
Ostatni długogrający materiał Niemcy wydali w 2011 roku (box No One w 90% Wasser, który prezentował prace Column One z lat 1991 – 2011), ten na Cindy, Loraine & Hank pochodzi z krótszego o dekadę okresu, bo zespół tym razem zaprezentował, razem z Zoharum, utwory zbierane przez ostatnie dziesięć lat. Co znajdujemy na tym dwupłytowym wydawnictwie?
Łącznie jedenaście kompozycji, bo o utworach w przypadku Column One nie możemy mówić, w których najważniejsze jest wykorzystanie pełni dźwięku otaczającej muzyków przestrzeni. I szczegółów, malutkich odgłosów, które pojawiają się i znikają pod płaszczyzną syntezatorów czy innych elektronicznych lub elektroakustycznych melodii. Niemcy grają na emocjach słuchaczy i robią to bardzo pomysłowo. Cisza przeplata się z nagle pobłyskującymi zgrzytami czy nagraniami terenowymi, których CO wpletli w swoje nagrania skutecznie. Weźmy „Stuffe”, choć to pozycja zamykająca płytę numer dwa. Berlińska formacja bazuje w niej na długich partiach wyciszenia, niemal pozbawionych dźwięku płachtach, na których co jakiś czas widnieją dźwiękowe plamy. Te z czasem narastają, a to pod postacią urywanych wokaliz, a to przy rozciągniętych piskach lub nieregularnej, wystukiwanej rytmice. Weźmy „4” z CD numer 1, gdzie rządzą pogłosy i niemal mrożące krew w żyłach dźwiękowe szepty i – w końcówce – rozbestwione, masywne smyki. Popatrzmy na „warszawskie” pozycje, improwizowane partie nagrań terenowych w duchu totalnie futurystycznym, nieokiełznanym wręcz w swojej i prostocie, i agresywnym wydźwięku.
„Idiotenmusik” to kolejny mocny akcent Cindy, Loraine & Hank, choć raczej pełniący rolę takiego oddechu przed kolejnymi kompozycjami. Chodzi przede wszystkim o „Antiphona #2”, zlepku sampli, nagrań terenowych (czy tam wybrzmiewa motyw przesuwanej płyty, klapy studzienki?) i odgłosów wplecionych w ten wszechobecny industrialny pogłos, chodzi też o „Cherokee” z iście swingowym wejściem, które przechodzi w impro-noise na bogato. Drone’owe tło, nerwowa perkusja, pojedyncze frazy wygrywane na klawiszach, strzelające struny(?), to buduje atmosferę i samego nagrania, i całej płyty.

Nowa Muzyka:
Awangarda nadal w awangardzie.
Niemiecki kolektyw Column One jest dobrze znany w Polsce z licznych występów. Działając ponad ćwierć wieku dał się on poznać z rożnych odsłon swojej muzyki. Generalnie jest to awangarda – ale raz wywiedziona z klasycznego industrialu, innym razem stawiająca na plemienną rytmiczność, a kiedy indziej czerpiąca garściami z musique concrete.
Największą popularność przyniosły formacji dwie płyty z początku minionej dekady – „Electric Light” i „The Audience Is Sleeping”. Muzykom udało się z niewielką pomocą duetu Rechenzentrum przenieść swe eksperymentalne doświadczenia na teren zainfekowanego glitchem ambientu, house’u i techno. Mimo artystycznego sukcesu, nigdy więcej Niemcy nie wrócili do tego typu muzyki.
Dowodem tego nowy album Column One z pierwszym premierowym materiałem od 2011 roku. „Cindy, Lorain And Hank” jest owocem dziesięciu lat zbierania dźwiękowych artefaktów przez członków projektu – w tym niedokończonych sesji ze słynnym zespołem muzyki współczesnej Zeitkrazer, specjalizującym się w przekładaniu na akustyczne instrumenty elektronicznej awangardy w rodzaju Whitehouse czy Terre Thaemlitza.
Większość kompozycji zamieszczonej na dwóch kompaktowych krążkach skoncentrowana jest wokół terenowych rejestracji. To przede wszystkim splecione ze spreparowanych dźwięków otoczenia słuchowiska wieńczące całość – „Der Fluss In Der Truhe” i „Stufe”. Śladów tego typu działań można się doszukać również w „4” – zostają one jednak zdominowane przez manipulacje taśmami pozostałymi po współpracy z Zeitkratzerem. Podobnie dzieje się w „Warsaw Part 1 & 2”, gdzie Column One ocierają się o muzykę improwizowaną w stylu AMM.
Druga strona kompozycji z albumu jest mocniej nasycona elektroniką. „Idiotenmusik” to syntetyczne pulsacje wywiedzione ze szkoły Stockhausena. W „Antiphona#2” odnajdujemy ślady groteskowej zabawy samplami i loopami w stylu wczesnego The Residents. Z kolei „Cherokee” i „Not” przywołują ducha dawnego industrialu, koncentrując się na dronowych wyziewach i fabrycznych odgłosach. Pokłosiem surrealistycznych doświadczeń Nurse With Wound są natomiast psychodeliczne eksperymenty w „Reverend Black” i „Die Truhe Im Fluss#5”.
Pozornie wydawałoby się, że muzyka ta natchniona jest duchem przypadkowości. Nic bardziej mylnego. Przy zachowaniu spontanicznego podejścia do zabawy dźwiękiem, kompozycje z „Cindy, Loraine And Hank” zaskakują przemyślaną strukturą. Nie pozbawia to nagrań zawartych na obu krążkach świeżości i odwagi typowej dla improwizacji. Column One potwierdzają w ten sposób, że nieprzewidywalność podporządkowana konkretnemu konceptowi to jedna z największych wartości awangardy, niedostępna dla wielu innych gatunków muzycznych.

Polyphonia:
Niemiecki kolektyw Column One zaczynał tworzyć w 1992 roku. Początkowo było to trio: Robert Schalinski, Rene Lamp i Eike Bölling. Później dołączyli do nich Andrew Loadman oraz Jürgen Eckloff. W kolejnych latach z Column One współpracowali m.in. Jürgen Ploog, Frieder Butzmann czy Rashad Becker. Niedawno pojawił się ich długo wyczekiwany podwójny album „Cindy, Loraine & Hank”. Muzycy pracowali nad tym materiałem prawie dziesięć lat. Wiele fragmentów powstało w trakcie współpracy z berlińską grupą Zeitkratzer. Trzeba przyznać, iż Niemieccy artyści powracają w świetnej formie. W mojej ocenie, twórczość Column One nadal utrzymuje się na niezwykle wysokim poziomie. Z ich nagrań nie ubyło awangardowej mocy, dzikości i radykalizmu. Aby się o tym przekonać, posłuchajcie choćby kompozycji „Warsaw Part2”, „Cherokee” czy „Die Truhe”, gdzie elektroakustyczne szaleństwa, musique concréte, cut-up’owe techniki kłębią się wokół instrumentalnych wariacji i field recordingu.

Heathen Harvest:
Column One’s Cindy, Loraine, and Hank beam from a take on Black Depths, a John Hilliard print. They sport ghoulish masks that are ill-suited for their bodies. The three are divided into four rectangles. The Berlin art ensemble are afoot before the music begins, placing Dadaist tropes over what a listener might assume is just another musique concrete album. Not so, as Cindy, Loraine & Hank—while heartily experimental—is indeed serious “Idiotenmusik.”
In 2013, Column One played Warsaw wearing cream-colored faces with bright red lips and sloping eyebrows that were held on by thick black bands. Each wore a powder blue shirt, black tie, and black pants, stumbling around while playing singing saws and skewed recordings. It was Jürgen Eckloff, Robert Schalinski, and Rashad Becker—only a few cast members—performing what would go on to become Cindy, Loraine & Hank.
Formed as a multimedia art ensemble in 1992, Column One shares a policy like Genesis Breyer P-Orridge’s Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth: “…more an idea than a permanent ensemble of people.” Column One applied a triple-cross symbol to their work: one large central cross linked horizontally to two smaller crosses (again, note Column One’s kinship with Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth’s psychic cross). An open cast meant many different Column Ones
They have bounded from early industrial ambiance with W. Transmission 1-2 (1992, 1993) to acid house on Freedom is a Sickness (1996). Then there was Dream Time (2005), with its provocative pink cover encircling a young girl in her underwear—cover art that was curiously similar to Nicole 12’s Nippon Ballerina Voyeur. But Dream Time’s sexed dub was left for Entropium (2015): Column One’s collaboration with Zeitkratzer, a group binding Iannis Xenakis and Whitehouse. Entropium’s severe improvisation still commands Cindy, Loraine & Hank, as does the project’s inherent humor and love of the cut-up technique. Forever provocateurs, Cindy, Loraine & Hank steps away from the absurd while also embracing it. It’s no surprise, however, because the album spans recordings from 2001 to 2015. Hiding under disc one is a thesis:
“‘Cindy, Loraine & Hank’ is a collection of incestuous figures, a museum of small, lovely bastards. Products of passion and weakness, disorientation and dedication, of dull instincts and narrowness. Twins, triplets, octuplets, dyslexic, presidents, beginners, criminal citizens, sacred Neanderthals, expert idiots. Begotten in haste, hidden in the dirt, covered with garbage. A contourless, monstrous void in the cardigan of the great-grandmother.”
Cindy, Loraine & Hank is no retrospective; rather, it is a blending of Column Ones. The songs, described as children, were born from original members Jürgen Eckloff, Andrew Loadman, and René Lamp, as well as other collaborators from Antoine Chessex to Tom Platt. Yet, the “contourless, monstrous void” is what Cindy, Loraine & Hank sounds like.
Studio song or recorded live performance, Cindy, Loraine & Hank is both. By the end of the second disc, “Der Fluss in der Truhe” (“The River in the Chest”), the listener arrives at a swimming-pool sample. The water churns, children frolic, and the sample creates a structure that Column One manipulates. This aural space is only interrupted through the gurgles of a child trying to swim. The pool recording is sped up, reversed, and stops. “Der Fluss in der Truhe” begins anew with the sound of running footsteps and ends in monologue. Column One seizes the recording, turning it into song rather than pure experimentation, at times with mixed results. By the end of the droning “Reverend Black,” for example, the artists behind the record appear to remember that these are instruments, recovering a sense of musicianship. These moments sound strongly of Morton Feldman’s “Rothko Chapel.”
Pulling the album together into a cohesive effort is “Cherokee”—a cut-up Charlie Barnet concert that contains a beautiful dichotomy wherein musicianship fails somehow successfully. In rapid change, a toy-like guitar mimics Column One’s fragmented standard. Inept guitars join their piano and percussion counterparts, playing with and without the cut-up approach. This track could, frankly, have been composed by a band of children; there is a juvenile style occasionally present on Cindy, Loraine & Hank; that is, until this song specifically verges on scraping dissonance.
“A collection of incestuous figures” is a mixed bounty. Cindy, Loraine & Hank is a swirl of electro-acoustic compositions embracing the inane and witty, structure and mess. Cindy, Loraine & Hank may sound directionless at first, but “Cherokee” successfully conveys the patchwork of years. Column One’s inventions remain interesting despite the confused pace.

Santa Sangre:
The Berlin-based creators of Column One had been involved in short films and underground media projects before choosing to incorporate sounds and noises in their artistic medium. With the help of other guest members Rene Lamp, Robert Schalinski, Jürgen Eckloff and Andrew Loadman operate as a multimedia collective experimenting in the field of industrial music. On this record they had Nada and Rasmus Schalinski together with Reinhold Friedl and Zeitkratzer Ensemble.
In their rich discography, which might be a curious and destabilizing adventure for everyone open to taste it, “Cindy, Loraine & Hank” is dated from 2015 and appeared on the Berlin label 90% Wasser. Music-wise this double album, displays the complicated relations between allegedly heterogeneous sounds and noises. Its great strangeness should alienate many of the unfamiliar listeners to the extent that one could consider it mainly mumbo-jumbo. On the other hand, a simple-minded hipster psychoanalyst would greatly enjoy this very sound extension of his desires and Freudian slips.
In fact, the amalgam of musical geometry has maintained a discernible, lovely narrative, especially due to a great mastering of the devices employed for releasing it and to the light and diamond-like cut production of the album. “Cindy, Loraine & Hank” is a wonderful dadaistic record with a hue of surrealist imagery.
The music is organized or convoluted around figures of paralytics, those that popular opinion would call monsters, ogres or idiots depending on perspective. Like in Michel Tournier’s book, The Earl king, where the ogre is the bearer of innocents, the sounds are soft and delicate, in keeping with the electro-acoustic style premiered by Pierre Schaeffer and quite popular in post-war Germany. The usual combination between recorded sound and processed sound is not so visible as Column One prefers a live acoustic materialized by an uncommon use of the most uncommon instruments, cut-ups and collages.
“Cindy, Loraine & Hank” stretches along 90 minutes and disorientates at every moment. Words escape their etymological prison so that every now and then you seem to taste and regurgitate a surprising meaning. In our fragmented world, such ambiguities of liquidity are perhaps the type of music an alien lifeform would hear coming out from Earth.

Musique Machine:
Column One’s “Cindy, Loraine & Hank” is a sprawling double album of patient, vintage feeling musique concrete and freeform noise texturing, with a sound palette ranging from the dusty heated circuits of analog synthesizers to field recordings of clattering, shuffling and fragments of speech.
Several tracks could be described as the sounds of kicking around junk in a warehouse. This is not a bad thing, as the cold, reverberant concrete brings with it a very specific ambience. My friends and I once made a recording inside an abandoned military bunker, capturing the sounds of pieces of decayed metal as hit by sticks and limbs. Thick metal doors kicked, rusty old hinges groaning, resounding footsteps. The 4th track of the first disk here sounds much the same as what we came up with.
The pacing of the music is slow and deliberate, theatric in its diverse unfolding of gestures. Long periods of uneasy calm are broken by thunderous motor noise. Abstractions are encapsulated and humanized by the whispers which signal the endings of stanzas. Rarely returning to any place previously seen, each piece brings an entirely new palette of sound sources.
I was quite surprised to hear the sounds of trumpet, piano and drumset introduced more than halfway through the album. Later on in this track, “Cherokee”, we listen to the bending of wood, a reed splitting, and then are cast off into a howling lonely wind for “Not”, the end of the first disk. It is cavernous and not unlike Lustmord’s “Heresy”.”Antiphona #2″ brings new realms of clever electroacoustic ambiguity. Such deep, fascinating textures of unknown origin. Here, we modulate between flavors of noise with the radio dial. There are brief of moments of sped up chipmunk radio broadcast, brightly cold gongs and chimes, helicopter whirr. Later, we are dunked in the water.
This album requires some patience, but is a wondrous mental journey, with a deep and rich selection of ever-changing textures. With textures sourced from metal and desolate industrial locations as well as close mic’d studio improvisations, it evokes a haunted yet soothing air of solitude. It’s some of the listenable and inventive music I’ve ever heard from the musique concrete idiom, and recalls many of my favorite moments of Thighpaulsandra or 80’s Nurse With Wound. Its 2 disk length is well justified, and is quite worth repeated examining and deciphering.

Darkroom:
La Zoharum ha l’onore di produrre il nuovo lavoro del collettivo tedesco Column One, il primo dopo un silenzio di tre anni dai tempi dell’EP “Antiphona” uscito nel 2013. Il progetto, nato come aperto a collaborazioni, muove da una concettualità che punta a riciclare gli elementi sonori della società moderna per poi concretizzarli in un flusso tonale continuo. Il collegamento al costruttivismo come idea artistica di fondo trova compimento nel cut-up audio (già operato dai più illustri Genesis P. Orridge e Nurse with Wound, giusto per citarne due), ma elaborato in questo ultimo disco esclusivamente con materiale ‘morto’, ovvero rumori sordi e in assenza totale di melodie captate dall’esterno. “Cindy, Loraine & Hank” si risolve in una personale “mostra delle assurdità” (parafrasando Burroughs) dove svariati elementi ricavati dal nulla contemporaneo trovano posto in un grande museo del riciclo. La società produce materia inutile, spazzatura acustica o note alla deriva rivisitate con uno stile che si ricollega anche alla pop-art, fatto di frammenti riposizionati, a cui viene fornita nuova linfa vitale in un contesto diverso da quello di origine. Il gioco del contrasto ad oltranza vede opporsi toni reali e sintetici, rumori naturali e meccanici in un puzzle immenso che punta al disorientamento costante, sottolineando la perdita di qualsiasi riferimento. L’opera è strutturata in due CD: il primo propone materiale da studio e il secondo tracce dal vivo, registrate in più location tra il 2001 e il 2014. In entrambi i casi viene mantenuto intatto lo spirito del progetto con un’improvvisazione forse ancor più marcata nei pezzi da studio, mentre in sede live emerge la decontestualizzazione di strumenti ‘ridotti’ a mero distributore di rumore. Lavoro estremo guidato da una logica integerrima e da un pizzico di autoreferenzialità. Edito in un robusto digipak a sei pannelli con tiratura a 500 copie. Disponibile anche la versione in doppio LP su etichetta 90% Wasser.

Ver Sacrum:
Berlino è sempre stata una città in cui i fermenti più creativi delle avanguardie hanno avuto sempre grande spazio: in particolare storicamente in ambito musicale la capitale tedesca vanta una grande tradizione che avuto uno dei suoi momenti più alti nella nascita della cosiddetta Berlin School dei primi anni ’70 dove artisti come Klaus Schulze, Tangerine Dream e Ash Ra Tempel hanno dato vita all’epopema della Kosmisiche Musik. Ma l’attitudine alla ricerca e alla voglia di sperimentare non si è in realtà mai assopita come dimostra lo storico collettivo dei Colum One di cui la Zoharum pubblica ora un doppio album intitolato Cindy, Loraine & Hank. Il disco esce dopo il box celebrativo del 2011 “No One” e l’EP vinile “Antiphona” del 2013. La musica che possiamo ascoltare nei 2 cd è all’insegna dell’avanguardia senza compromessi: è una sorta di collage in cui si possono rinvenire elementi di musica concreta: viene usata la tecnica del field recordings e del cut-up. Siamo quindi dalle parti della musica contemporanea: tuttavia queste registrazioni non sono poi così lontane da quanto proposto nei suoi innumerevoli album da un gruppo come i Nurse With Wound. Non è per intenderci musica industrial ma il risultato può essere accostato a certi sperimentatori che si muovono all’interno di quel genere. Il flusso sonoro è caratterizzato dall’utilizzo di strumenti come piano, synth, zither, flauto, gong e da svariate fonti acustiche: il magma che ne fuoriesce è bizzarro ma non privo del fascino particolare che possiamo trovare in qualche dipinto di avanguardia: la stessa raffinata copertina, disegnata da Robert Schalinski, è basata su un’opera dell’artista concettuale John Hilliard. La formazione dei Column One era composta da René Lamp, il citato RobertSchalinski, Jürgen Eckloff, Andrew Loadman più Nada e Rasmus Schalinski oltre ad altri ospiti.