Bellenger | Eisl | Wurzwallner | Zachariadis – One Hundred Thousand Copies Sold

bellenger-one-hundred-thousand-copies-soldok

LP – Moozak

The Austrian electronic experimenter Nikos Zachariadis and the French free form turntablist Alexandre Bellenger combined musical skills for this work. The first six tracks on the A side capture our attention with their extreme tonal elaborations, raw and intense, sometimes dilated and insistent in their flux, full of improvisational sequences and noisy interludes. The album was conceived and recorded in the autumn of 2017 during a short residency Bellenger spent in Austria. The eccentric sound compositions are combined with samples and complex manipulations. Even the artwork in this case is the result of complex alterations which consist in using old vinyl covers subjected to a careful manual laser cutting operation, the result of which is that each copy is unique. The geometric interweaving and the paper structures that derive from this meticulous cutting operation perhaps reveal something of the original covers, although the details have been deliberately altered in such a way as to make identification difficult, returning as vague reminiscences of certain moods and shapes. On the B-side of One Hundred Thousand Copies Sold, Zachariadis and Bellenger are joined by Patrick Wurzwallner on drums and Michael Eisl on bow saw, contraguitar (or schrammel) and electronics. The two new additions are both well-known musicians on the Graz experimental scene, and old acquaintances of Zachariadis. In this case the sonic blends become more intricate, free from preset forms, but full of tension and moments of deep, collective vitality. We are not far from free jazz. Maybe we should remember that “the improvisation cannot be improvised”, a funny paradox but also an accurate one, especially in this case, where the approach is softened and the tools used are less canonical than those normally used. Zachariadis and Bellenger deal with an unpredictable but also imagined “battlefield”, limited and simplified in order to stimulate the creativity of the musicians involved.

 

Bellenger | Eisl | Wurzwallner | Zachariadis – One Hundred Thousand Copies Sold