JANEK SCHAEFER – Migration

(CD, Bip Hop)

Janek Schaefer is a name that I have come across off and on a lot of times over the last few years but never really gotten in touch with. No wonder, his highly varied work and vast output comes from labels as varied as Fat Cat, Mutek, Rhiz, Audiosphere and a whole bunch of others. This is his debut for Bip Hop and unfortunately it is such a hightly contracted and conceptual piece, that I guess, it is not at all representative for his work. Unfortunately for me, that is. Moreover, I wonder if – regarding all I know about Schaefer – if there could ever be such a thing as a representative recording of him, in the sense that you could boil down Jimi Hendrix to “Foxy Lady”, Bruce Springsteen to “Born to run”, Akufen to a microspec sample or Marcel Duchamp to that one toilet. On the other hand, I wouldn’t know where to start with Nick Cave (“The Mercy Seat”?) or Tom Waits (“Tom Traubert’s Blues?”) which are already questionable sources. I’d be completely out of answers for John Cage, Bela Bartok, The Melvins or any old classic composer. Whereas it is almost impossible to find a CD by Merzbow that doesn't give you a clear impression of what Masami Akita is about. Anyway, I guess I’ll have to take a walk to my favourite store for electronic goods to get a handful of ideas of what could be representative. Any excuse is good enough. But it is late night right now and tomorrow is work, so that’ll have to wait. In the meantime I’ll try to give you the take on “Migration” as a singular piece of art.

Because definitely “migration” is more art than music, more installation than ambient soundscape and more theory than rock show. It is nevertheless a pleasant and intriguing listening experience. Scapes of sounds and noises evolve from out of nowhere, while other frequency ranges invade the listening space and leave again almost unnoticed. Like watching the world fly by from a train window there are no abrupt changes, at times the world feels at a complete standstill; then things seem to speed up quite a bit. The thundering sound of rain mutates into a high pitched flex. At other times silence is the sound you’ll hear most. Or a crackling drone of pristine beauty. Or like standing in a crowded public place.

The official lowdown has this as a soundtrack to a site specific dance performed on window ledges opposite Grand Central Station on 42^nd Street, NY (USA) on May 4^th 2005. In this performance the dancers were attached to a bungee cord above the people walking down in the public sphere below them. Considering this kind of noisy or at least high volume surrounding for the music, it is interesting to realize that Schaefer does not try to get the attention of passer-by’s by confronting them with raw volume and harsh bursts or eruptions of noise (city officials would have protested against such an approach anyway, afraid to lose votes by startling too many commuters and good citizens), but his music blends in with the atmosphere of the place. At times consisting of nothing more than slow waves of white noise, I wonder how many people realized that the soundworld of a place they may be passing every day has changed.

Moreover, Janek Schaefer has expanded the concept to a more global and album-specific arrangement for this release, for instance by giving the tracks names of destinations and titling the album “migration”. Thereby the release associates with a whole slew of interesting concepts, which are all reflected in the music here and there. Movement has become a central part of our society, where mobility is heralded almost dogmatic in business, career, communication and lifestyle. More people are on the move over longer distances for longer times than ever before. The same time borders both geographical and social are being closed down. The promise of freedom induced by the trainstation, the airport or the shipport has been belied by the official issues of homeland security and passenger safety. The individualist approach of cars and trucks has killed itself off by becoming a mass phenomenon. Nowadays people see danger in the concept of migration. Apart from some “elite” groups (either as artists, managers or refugees from war or economic plight) the regular folks have stayed within their homeground – with the excusable exception of holidays or commuting.