Phirnis – Culinary Delights [Cassingle #15]

Author: bleed Air
Date: 15. April 2021
Categories: Releases

Oops. A maxi cassingle. Phirnis aka Kai Ginkel’s super dark, noisy and haunty tracks are awesome, but impossible to squeeze into two minutes and thirty seconds. So for once I break the otherwise strict rule. Further info on the BC release page …

Sinusoidal Frequency Modulations by Robin Barnick

Author: bleed Air
Date: 16. February 2021
Categories: Releases

A minimal synth EP, garnished with harsh noise, composed entirely on a Yamaha DX7. Despite the minimal setup, it creates an intense, sometimes uplifting, sometimes eerie atmosphere.. We believe that you’ve rarely heard the DX7 like that before. 

Artist Robin Barnick sold his DX7 a long time ago – it was a rocking DX7IIFD in excellent shape… and yes, he regrets it, a lot. There was just too little space in his apartment and he thought the NI FM7 would do too. Far from it. Here’s what he has to say about the album: 

“At the time, I guess it was around 2001, I was trying to program the DX7 and accidentally deleted all of the presets when I started to experiment with emagic’s SoundDiver. Every single patch was reset to the “Init” sound, a simple sine wave. 

OK, never mind, I thought, and then got hooked when I started manipulating this ultra simple patch live, with the help of Sounddiver’s quite impressive capabilities. 

I was fascinated by how easy it now was to elicit experimental sounds from this otherwise difficult-to-operate machine. I didn’t care about sequencing, so this is just me, playing simple chord progressions and notes with the left hand and manipulating them with my right hand on the mouse, twiddling SoundDiver’s faders. All was recorded live on Minidisc (in mono). 

At the time I really wasn’t sure whether the music was good at all, so I put the MD aside … and forgot it. When I remembered it again some time ago, I spent endless hours searching – all my MDs were there, just not this one. When I was about to give up, I rediscovered it, edited the material and subsequently processed the tracks with some few effects.” 

Robin Barnick resides in Niederkassel-Lülsdorf-Ranzel, in the lovely rural-industrial no one’s land between Cologne and Bonn, in the wild, wild western part of Germany and at the heart of Europe.

Cassingle #3 – Harald Sack Ziegler [SPT05]

Author: bleed Air
Date: 26. October 2020
Categories: Releases

25 Artists. 25 C-5 (that’s 2:30 per side) cassettes with two tracks (exclusive B-side). Strictly limited to 10 hand-dubbed copies each. Custom design. 

superpolar Taïps proudly presents the third release of its Cassette Single series.  superpolar.org/2020/10/20/the-spt-cassingle-series/

The number of his entries on discogs is 49 – in reality there are innumerable and probably half of them are cassettes or other obscure formats such as a (CD-sized 5″) vinyl single called “See Dee”. To keep it short: Harald Sack Ziegler – or simply “Sack” – is a lo-fi experimental trash pop/punk legend. He is by no means just a solo artist, as he has already worked with musicians like E*Rock (Sack & E*Rock), FS Blumm (Sack & Blumm), Mouse on Mars and many more. Harald studied orchestral music and is a master of French horn, guitar, drums and toy instruments – but rarely uses them as inventors usually intended. 

With Ahornschraube (“maple screw”) and Blechriff (“brass riff”), Harald provides two tracks which have his main instrument – the French horn – at the centre, albeit heavily processed and sometimes literally chopped up. And, as always, to listen with pleasure.