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Holy Water Whisper

CD / Limited edition of 100 copies

Release date: March 2019

https://entracte.co.uk/projects/volker-hennes-e236/

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Ore Talks

(2x Vinyl + 20 Pages Booklet)

Four sides of vinyl: this has served as a time constraint from the very outset of the project. With around 18 minutes
per side giving an overall run time of 72 minutes, these time slots are designed to offer recordings of four sets of historical,
technical processes and their devices. Each of the four chapters is conceived in two parts and realised in a number of actual compositions.

A. VALVES / ROEHRE:

1. Their Electrons. The developement of De Forest‘s Audion.

2. Noise as signal and the power of redundancy.

B. PIEZOS:

1. Reversibility; Loudspeakers as Microphones and The Transmitting Ear.

2. Mercury Acoustic Delays Lines.

C. RECORDERS:

1. Wax Cylinders, Hill ’n Dale, Voices of the Dead.

2. Magnetic Oxide and Memory Machines, Storing Time.

D. CRYSTAL SETS:

1. Waves; The Air as One Vast (negentropic) Library.

2. Farewell to AM, Fades to Infinity.

» buy on A-Musik  

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*** now out on makiphon:

ASTRO CAMPING   by   THE KNOB, THE FINGER & THE IT

(12” Vinyl)

Tracklist:

Don‘t Snoozle While / Hot 5’42
Come to Ping as Ra / 3’18
Eisenblechmen / 4’37
F. F. Erde / 4’58

Astro Camping / 4’23
When Pluto was a Planet / 7’37
Our Passports / 3’37
Grasebene 3 / 3’52

» more info here

https://youtu.be/NO3fgwN4g28

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*  ANTHONY MOORE & THE MISSING PRESENT BAND - THE PRESENT IS MISSING (LP)

https://a-musik-official.bandcamp.com/releases

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* * * Sammlung Prügel - teils geölt  
» Prügel #1 - Prügel #21 erhältlich auf https://volkerhennes.bandcamp.com/merch       

Prügel #7 - nicht geölt

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Emperor Ambassador

An exciter slowly glides down a tilted and unstretched drumhead which is affixed with a contact microphone whose signal is sent back to the exciter. Each kind of drumhead determines the distinct motion and response of the exciter, resulting in particular gliding speeds, feedback frequencies, dynamics and tonal progression. The gliding procedure on each drumhead is repeated and superimposed up to 20 times.

Edition of 200 copies
Mastered by Jacques Beloeil

get it here on Entr’acte
or here via A-Musik

REVIEWS:

Julian Cowley in The Wire:

“Accordion, trombone, clarinet, cello, double bass — all part of a phantom ensemble that doesn’t perform on Emperor Ambassador, although timbres and  textures might tell you otherwise. The cover carries minimal information but an allusive title gives its secret away: Cologne based sound artist Volker Hennes has taken two different types of drumhead and attached a device that glides across and agitates their surface. And an attached contact mic sets up and sustains  a feedback loop. Dynamic shapes are dredged up by the looped exciter’s frictive slide; clearly defined forms emerge from the raw physical event. This might be the  spectral soundworld of Iancu Dumitrescu. Here too you are confronted with sound at its material source and propelled into attentive reception. Embodied sound- generating action meshes with active listening. Hennes has had a neat idea and produced a remarkable  recording.” 

Simon Cummings on 5against4:

“It’s quite rare to be truly surprised by new music, but that was entirely the case with Volker Hennes‘ Emperor Ambassador. The principal is relatively simple, an exciter traversing the surface of a variety of drumheads, repeated numerous times and the subsequent recordings then superimposed on each other. This doesn’t in any way prepare you for the, frankly, incredible results, sounding akin to a huge array of brass instruments improvising at length through an extended sequence of vibrations and pulsations. A sense of coherence is strong, these entirely imaginary ‘instruments’ guided by Hennes into vast slabs of constantly-changing colouration and texture, sometimes bearing all the hallmarks of a direct assault, elsewhere dissolving into spacious dronal episodes of near-stasis, and even a strange kind of gruff dialogue between alien strings and woodwind. Throughout, timbral qualities are nicely ambiguous, at the cusp of sounding acoustic or electronic, reinforced by the untempered nature of its pitch relationships, and there’s a fitting sense of tension permeating everything, suggesting that at any moment the entire music could tilt on its axis into something entirely different. Genuinely some of the most exciting and beautiful music i’ve ever heard.”

Boomkat (CD already out of stock!):

'Emperor Ambassador' is a remarkable and beguiling enquiry from the avant-garde. Volker Hennes' follow-up to the sensory investigations of 'Ewok Poltergeist Revelation' again subtly yet acutely challenges our perceptions, this time with particular regard to percussion. Generating feedback from a exciter repeatedly glyding down a tilted, un-stretched drumhead affixed with a contact microphone, Hennes creates a bewildering myriad of tones sounding uncommonly close to a orchestra, rather than anything you might expect from such a minimalist set-up. Using a number of different drum heads results different glyding speeds, feedback frequencies, dynamics and tonal progression. This enables him to create the illusory depth of field which mimics, to us, at least, something approaching a whole avant-garde ensemble of woodwind, strings and electronics conducted by Iancu Dumitrescu, or, perhaps more uncannily, his near-namesake - the pioneering German composer Volker Heyn. Highly recommended.

metamkine:

"Excellent travail de cet artiste allemand aux croisements de l'électroacoustique et de l'installation sonore. Il s'agit ici de peaux de batterie excitées par divers moteurs et le tout est repris par des micros-contacts eux-mêmes reliés à ces moteurs ! Bref un système de feedback qui fait résonner (on pourrait même dire chanter !) ces peaux dans une large palette sonore. Superbe ! "

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Ewok Poltergeist Revelations #17 – Total Fluxed Antidote  (10’38’’)

selected for performance at Frontiers Festival
Frontiers Festival is a two-week celebration of bold, new music and is recognised as one of the UK’s most ambitious festivals of contemporary composition and interdisciplinary practice.

selected for Ars Electronica Forum Wallis 2015 / Festival für Neue Musik Forum Wallis
https://www.musikzeitung.ch/de/resonance/klassik/2015/04/ars-electronica-wallis.html

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New quadrophonic electronic work

Ewok Poltergeist Consolidations #17 – Total Fluxed Antidote Sweep Expansion   (34’25’’)

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