Sharp / Lang

War Zones

Label: NEOS Music Country: Germany

"War Zones" is a project by Elliott Sharp and Bernhard Lang with a band including Hans Koch, Fredy Studer & Philip Jeck, dark and amazing music for a dangerous age.

BERNHARD LANG ON "PARANOIA"

Paranoia is a sequence of eight semi-improvised blocks that were extracted from the sketches to Act III of the music theatre work Der Alte vom Berge and developed further. Three text groups are used:

- 'Justifications', a cut-up from Internet researches on paranoia as a political function.

- The 'CIA Protocols Of Political Assassination', a collection of various strategies for political murders.

- The contents page of the American magazine 'Paranoia'.

The improvisations are based on scratched loops and 'damage beats', which make reference to the turntable art of Phil Jeck and the films of Martin Arnold as well as to my series of compositions Differenz/Wiederholung. Both parts lie above the loop scenario as contrapuntal rap poetry.

The work was inspired by the book Conspiracy Nation: The Politics Of Paranoia In Postwar America (ed. Peter Knight): paranoia as a new feeling in our lives, paranoia as a political instrument.

ELLIOTT SHARP ON "RIPPLES FROM THE BANG"

Ripples from the Bang is a set of reflexions on causality. The perception we each have of a chain of events remains extremely personal and varies greatly, sometimes being dependent on factors beyond our individual vision. These events may be a personal journey, a state of war, or a cataclysm of cosmic scale.

The score that allows the musicians to surf the sonic fall-out produced by the big bang includes through-composed parts, algorithmic strategies, graphic performance directions, pre-prepared electronic sound files, and improvisations.

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