CD – Agxivatein

A pair of headphones, a couple of active speakers, a DVD player, a digital frame with a USB memory stick – all set in a sound space activated each time for a single listener. “Apparatus” can be enjoyed from two different sound sources; on headphones and at different volume levels in the Phonebox – a small booth in which the volume of the speakers is higher than the headphones, creating complex sound and spatial dynamics in which many layers and levels blend, overlapping each other indistinctly and producing an unusual auditory confusion. The fusion in the listening happens asymmetrically, even if the continuum leads back to a single formal construction, rendered in parallel in the fullness of the experimental caesuras. The work is rich in clicks, bugs, eddies and resonant granularities, in an odd fusion of organic and synthetic, where every track is juxtaposed with an alternative recording in a sort of technologically simple but sophisticated anti-dichotomy. Marc Behrens organizes the “Hum/Bells”, “Rain/Compressor”, Trumpet/Clarinet” polarities in a very suggestive way, as with the final track “Mamori”, where the squeaking of birds peeks out together with unidentifiable field recordings, thick pounding, micropulses, crackles and assorted screeching. All the compositions were originally designed for four output channels, while the audio materials used – all dating between 2005 and 2010 – were recorded in Austria, Brazil, Germany, Italy, Namibia and South Africa.