The Squid's Ear Magazine


Agnel, Sophie / Joke Lanz: Ella (Klanggalerie)

An exciting meeting of French pianist Sophie Agnel, known for her extended and prepared piano techniques, and Swiss turntablist Joke Lanz, renowned for his work in noise, experimental music, and performance art, presenting a dynamic and playful duo of spontaneous improvisation blending percussive textures, sonic collage, and energetic interaction revealing a sense of humor and awe.
 

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product information:

Personnel:



Sophie Agnel-piano

Joke Lanz-turntables


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UPC: 5052571215425

Label: Klanggalerie
Catalog ID: GG492
Squidco Product Code: 35812

Format: CD
Condition: New
Released: 2025
Country: Austria
Packaging: Digipack
Recorded by Benjamin Pagier and Martin Siewert.

Descriptions, Reviews, &c.

"With solid training as a classical musician, Sophie Agnel took a close interest in modern jazz before committing in the early Nineties to the shifting, deliciously uncertain ground of free improvisation, thanks to her fascination for the powers of expression displayed by a few great keyboard-heretics such as Keith Tippett, Fred Van Hove or Christine Wodrascka. She began reworking the prepared piano techniques imagined by John Cage and transformed her instrument into a sort of extended piano. Coming from a Punk music background

"With solid training as a classical musician, Sophie Agnel took a close interest in modern jazz before committing in the early Nineties to the shifting, deliciously uncertain ground of free improvisation, thanks to her fascination for the powers of expression displayed by a few great keyboard-heretics such as Keith Tippett, Fred Van Hove or Christine Wodrascka. She began reworking the prepared piano techniques imagined by John Cage and transformed her instrument into a sort of extended piano.

Coming from a Punk music background Joke Lanz started in the mid 80s to play Experimental- and Noise music. Best known for his internationally acclaimed project Sudden Infant, Lanz is presenting his work since 30 years all over the world. Born in Switzerland and currently operating out of Berlin, he is one of the most prolific and profound artists working in the border zones where performance and body art meet Improvisation and Noise.

Agnel and Lanz have performed stunning live shows as a duo, now their debut album is now out on Klanggalerie. Turntables and piano, a unique combination that is a lot of fun!"-Klanggalerie

Lanz started in the mid 80s to play Experimental- and Noise music. Best known for his internationally acclaimed project Sudden Infant, Lanz is presenting his work since 30 years all over the world. Born in Switzerland and currently operating out of Berlin, he is one of the most prolific and profound artists working in the border zones where performance and body art meet Improvisation and Noise. Agnel and Lanz have performed stunning live shows as a duo, now their debut album is coming out on Klanggalerie. Turntables and piano, a unique combination that is a lot of fun!"-Klanggalerie


Artist Biographies

"If it's in Paris that Sophie Agnel was born in 1964, it is towards other sounding islands in the heart of a reinvented temporality that she dwells today, at the stern of a grand piano, an instrument that she turns into a real living & vibrating organism.

Classically trained, escaped from jazz (drawn away by the too strict treatment of harmony), Sophie Agnel boards the piano from every sonic angle this musical vessel can offer : keys, strings & board are simultaneously apprehended, in a mixed procedure (as we say of painting techniques) that would be understated if it was reduced to the cagian definition of the prepared piano. Considering the instrument - that she extends with several accessories, paper cups, balls or strings - as a poetic supplier of anamorphic textures, the musician takes it to be an equal match to the wider diversity of musical systems, whatever the craft they where conceived in (from physiological to electro-acoustic) ...

We would then no longer be surprised to notice her understandings with Michel Doneda and to find her to the side of the wet saxophone of Alessandro Bosetti, of the acoustified electric guitar of Olivier Benoit, of the voices of Catherine Jauniaux and Phil Minton, or the keyboard of Christine Wodraska...

The same seal of esthetic evidence marks all of her musical companionships, with this same taste, beyond the narrative, for the delicate sonic quests and blossoming of dimensions to which the auditor takes part through an active listening : in the heart of Jean Pallandre's phonographic worlds, of Jerôme Noetinger & Lionel Marchetti's small scale cinema, John Butcher or Axel Dörner's crimpy tissues, by the lovely machines of Erik M or Ikue Mori, the harmonico-stratospheric rustling of Stéphane Rives...

The originality of the research conducted by Sophie Agnel today leads her to develop, in solo or with significantly chosen companions, a most refined and highly poetic approach to sound that makes each of her concerts a moving construction filled with chiseled musical gestures, a soft and sumptuous irradiation."-Guillaume Tarche

-Sophie Agnel Website (http://sophieagnel.free.fr/biographie.html)
4/28/2025

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

"Turntablist Joke Lanz creates autonomous sound-cells that melt into a language free of any function. He combines ritual reductionism with anarchistic playfulness, atmospheric soundscapes with cut-up noise and physicalness with unpredictability.

Best known for his international acclaimed Noise project 'Sudden Infant', Joke Lanz is presenting his work since 25 years all over the world. Born in Switzerland and currently operating out of Berlin, he is one of the most prolific and profound artists working in the border zones where performance and body art meet Improvisation and Noise.

Joke Lanz has released his works on some of the most prominent record labels in the noise underground i.e. RRR, Schimpfluch, Tochnit Aleph, Blossoming Noise, Entr'acte, Artware, SSSM, Klanggalerie, Some Bizarre, iDeal Rec and performed with the likes of Peter Kowald, Christian Marclay, Rudolf Eb.er, Z'EV, Carlos Giffoni, Daniel Menche, Christian Weber, Charlotte Hug, Christian Wolfarth, Astro, The New Blockaders, GX Jupitter-Larsen and many more."

-Ausland Berlin (https://ausland-berlin.de/joke-lanz)
4/28/2025

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.


Track Listing:



1. Elevator For Alligator 01:08

2. Rehearsal For Retirement 05:11

3. The End Of Handwriting 00:45

4. Wittgensteins Hand 04:12

5. Looking Into The Valley 02:05

6. Sporadic Bursts Of Sympathy 03:12

7. Her Foot In The Swamp 02:00

8. Alone With The Clock 01:39

9. Illusion Of The World 02:28

10. Tulips And Chimneys 06:29

11. 21st Century Humans 08:51

Related Categories of Interest:


Improvised Music
Free Improvisation
Electro-Acoustic
Electro-Acoustic Improv
Piano & Keyboards
Turntablists
New in Improvised Music
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