CD – Bocian

You might remember Reinhold Friedl in his role as director of the classic ensemble Zeitkratzer in the remake of Metal Machine Music by Lou Reed, but the eclectic composer has many strings to his bow, having also collaborated with Lee Ranaldo, Merzbow and Helmut Oehring, studied piano with renowned teachers, as well as mathematics and musicology in Stuttgart and Berlin, and graced the stages of most international institutions devoted to experimental and sound research (STEIM, Podewil , ZKM, Eurocréation Paris, Recombinant Media Labs and several others). Friedl’s approach leads him to analyze the classic in an unconventional way and so too in his role as a pianist he is always more interested in the internal mechanics of the piano than in its traditional applications. The neo-Bechstein, is the first electric piano, equipped with electronic pickups, a kind of forerunner to the famous Rhodes and Wurlitzer. Here the instrument is the subject of a sort of spatialisation, enrichment and development in a work developed throughout the past decade. We won’t venture into too much technical description here, but suffice to say that many parameters of this instrument can be adjusted, including velocity and direction of the rotations, jittering and angle of width. Of course, unlike in a digital piano or electronic keyboard, the electric piano has no electronic components, but electromechanical analogue sounds are transformed into electrical impulses from the pick-ups placed near the natural source of the sound. So in this instance, perhaps we might also talk about the fetishisation of the offline.

 

Impakt: Reinhold Friedls, Neo Bechstein