VARIOUS ARTISTS – moreover mödling

(CDR/download, 12rec.net)

the following text was used as liner notes for the compilation, reprinted with permission from 12rec.net:

Focus is an interesting thing. What the mind sets itself to inspect further and what to leave aside is usually just as unknown as what a society gets up to discuss and decide. Setting a regional topic for a compilation of music is just as welcome as it is arbitrary (but nevertheless welcome, even if it only helps to reduce the complexity of things in general) and the results are often wondrously wonderful. Where would the rich and blooming scene of musicians in Mödling, who are exploring the fringes of music and of their own understanding of harmony, structure and sounds, come from? Is it, by all definitions, a scene yet? The economically well off suburban centre of Mödling is rather known for snootiness, drug dealing at one of Austria’s largest technical schools and reckless drivers in expensive cars than it is for being open-minded about avant-garde music. The SUV-centre of Austria suddenly discovered as the place to look out for in interesting music, but shouldn’t great art be born out of an urging desire to create and this desire born from desperateness? Clichés and prejudices – two more factors that play important roles in how society and the mind work.

What the artists on this record have in common is a mindset that drives them to identify clichés, prejudices and focus and then to divert, dissect and rename them in a widely subconscious method. The results might be songs leaning towards pop or free form noise experiments or subtle yet glistening drones or walls of sound leaning threateningly over the listener. The background of the musicians ranges from autodidacts to learned, but you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference, because the strategies and intentions used on this compilation aren’t taught in any school in the world. Their aim mystifyingly elusive yet obviously important: to lay bare the wondrous rules the mind and society work on, or at least some of them, refigure and reform them and set them to use anew right away. If you want to discuss the differences between analogue tape hiss and emulated electronic noise hiss in its political impact, you have come to the wrong place. The artists on here might tell you have already been trapped in a superficial place.

This adventurous mindset is about the only thing the bands on this record have in common. They draw their influences and ideas from a diverse array of areas that range from the serious to the absurd and from the pragmatic to the highly complex. From an outside point of view the various parts of this compilation may seem like a concise and tightly woven section of a tiny fraction of all the music on this planet, but diving into the contents offered herein, you’ll find whole worlds opening to you. For instance The Clonius brewing memories to Pharao Sanders’ late phase with Coltrane while spinning those echoy drums in a truly mental fashion. Alexandr Vatagin gives a little glitch goes drone excursion, nothing big, but with lots of soothing effect on the mind. Peter Holy is taking his songwriting to a completely new level of emotism, mocking classical piano and then rocking it as if his heart depended on it. David Schweighart uses field recordings of birdsong and voices in the park to brighten his guitar-chords. Applicator 120 forage into some short but equally effective nullsonic-noise of electric interference on their “Flug der Todessonde Omega”. Ippolit introducing a clarinet into a majority of the Tupolev fracas resulting in the loosest Masada you’ll ever hear. Yes, the whole town riding the range and everyone having a good time while exploring the fringes of what they know. Mödling, the frontier town?

“Moreover Mödling” ends with the enormous Tupolev and their “opus”, which fits because Tupolev might be the best known band from the ones introduced here, the starting point for many music lovers to explore further (just like this compilation) and also seems to be a central point for the various players in the Mödling-scene. Peter Holy, Alexandr Vatagin, David Schweighart and Lukas Scholler all appear solo as well on the record, mostly with one or more of the others playing along. This kind of incest is a great thing as long as the closeness and intimacy is held up.

If their regional closeness is but a coincidence, that is for you, the listener, to decide. But beware, as soon as you start to question your own judgements, you’ll step up into air. Maybe you’ll find, that the nothing underneath you will give you better hold than the ground far below.