Quecksilber Labelnight

No more than a few months old and already a handful of exciting releases. The electro outprint, »Quecksilber«, marks the launching by the internationally successful label, Staubgold, of a new outlet designed to document the whole range of contemporary »minimal music«. The many facets of the term »minimal« [and the very wide-ranging tonal scope of the parent label] are matched by the musical spectrum of »Quecksilber«, which is staging three live acts for the first time outside its home city of Berlin.

The Australian, Scott Horscroft, presents classical minimalism in the tradition of Riley and Reich. His first work, 8 Guitars, is a fascinating study in which the signal given by eight guitarists, all of whom play a fixed rhythmic pattern, is manipulated live at the computer and fused into a psychedelic overtone orgy. Appearing himself at the laptop, Scott Horscroft is joined in this performance at the ZKM by his fellow-Australian and guitarist, Oren Ambarchi, whose explorations of the sound of the guitar have opened up a completely new approach to this »icon of rock music«, as is demonstrated by his performances and recordings with John Zorn, Otomo Yoshihide, Martin Ng, Christian Fennesz and others.

The minimalism of [#/TAU] flows in electro-acoustic radio play miniatures. Boris D Hegenbart’s soundscapes are everyday poetry driven, beset and transported by electronic impulses and shimmering spaces. An orchestra tunes its instruments [a Japanese woman wishes it would never stop], the sound head is lowered onto the tape and the insects sharpen their shells. Hong Kong roars. A woman lets pages from a book slip through her hands. 25 pastilles beat against each other. An audio journey through cut-ups, field recordings, purely synthetically generated waves and 9 kHz atmosphere.

Finally, the duo, Klangwart, reveal the musical side of the label’s boss, Markus Detmer, who is joined by his colleague, Timo Reuber, in producing a dense, flowing collage of electronic sounds and rhythms, natural and everyday noises, voices and samples. After over 50 shows in Europe, Klangwart latterly made guest appearances at festivals in Tokyo [»Binary Soup«] and Australia [»What Is Music?«].