ARBEIT
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Memory work far-removed from musical-linguistic rules'
(Frankfurter Rundschau, 04/05)
Sense and nonsense flow together, electronic interference becomes a symphony
of rustling, crackling and screeching
(Frankfurter Neue Presse, 03/05)
Material from romantic music and literature, spoken rubbish of the group
dynamic, contemporary self-finding seminars, personal memories, computer-
generated sounds…exquisite!
(Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung 03/05)
"Uncensored field of sound"
Bayrischer Rundfunk (about "MARX")
"In the realm of symbols"
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
"Important, contemporary, highly imaginative and brilliantly produced text
and sound work"
DeutschlandRadio (about "MARX")
"A cross between Udo Juergens, Iron Maiden and Christoph Schlingensief"
Stuttgarter Zeitung (about "MARX")
Submerged and highly processed vocals of Augst. If you're up for a challenging
listen, look no further!
Cadence
You know all the patterns, but you have never heard them like this before.
Distorted, blank, reduced and in each moment like created by irony,, fear,
humour and melancholy – the ancient tradition of German songs … Mahler’s
magic horn songs of 1892, Eisler’s New German folksongs of 1949 and
Augst, Daemgen and Korn’s "revised" German folk songs of
2001- all three are attempts to free the ordinary and the collective from
aesthetic restriction. One thing is sure: the latest attempt has hit the
mark exactly.
Frankfurter Rundschau (about "An den Deutschen Mond")
"A radical deromanticisation"
WDR, Studio for Acoustic Art (about "An den Deutschen Mond")
"Meticulously calculated sound-track."
Bayrischer Rundfunk (about "An den Deutschen Mond")
"Virtuoso mix of avant-garde pop and acoustic art"
DeutschlandRadio (about "An den Deutschen Mond")
"Brilliant"
az (about "An den Deutschen Mond")
The link between commerce and acoustic art which moulds this concept album
is deliberate and makes the outcome delightful. It stands out from the flood
of traditional work in Brecht and Eisler’s anniversary year.
Deutschland Radio
The trio does not so much follow the old Brecht-Eisler-Diseuse tradition,
but the Frankfurt trail specifically. After all, Heiner Goebbels and Alfred
Harth got to grips with Brecht and Eisler in a big way in "Four Fists
for Hanns Eisler" several years ago. Augst/Daemgen/Korn carry on in
this tradition and take the work in a new direction at the same time.
Frankfurter Rundschau
Avant-garde U-music with electronically reinforced hooks, which is catapulting
a supposedly dusty duo (Brecht/Eisler) to the forefront of the digital age.
Kultur News
The experience gives us a subtly arranged song cycle which is in keeping
with the times, free from nostalgia and full of unfettered "utopian
power" and sensuality. Wonderful.
Journal Frankfurt
The new interpretation has something chanson-like about it with all the sentimental
impact of that genre, bathe have come to terms with the fact that this can
tend towards trivialisation. There is a yearning for positive utopia which
is removed from but at the same time reminiscent of protest songs of the
sixties and seventies, distanced by the new digital and modern technical
possibilities of the generation and processing of sound.
Sender Freies Berlin (about "An den Deutschen Mond")
One of the trio’s points of reference of is the work that Heiner Goebbels
and Alfred Harth did on the same theme with some of the same materials at
the start of the 80s. It is also a synthesis of Brecht and Eisler’s
last material in the form of today's pop music. Once again it becomes clear
that Brecht and Eisler fit so well with the trash culture of today.
WDR
Paradoxically they cover the way that the "artless" singing makes
high art possible and a sparing, well thought-out instrumentation allows
a lot of spaces of sound and expressive arrangements to come into being.
Dreigroschenheft
The result is a music far-removed from well-worn new-music sound, it is a
free-associative journey on an uncensored plain of sound. This experimental
style is perhaps closer to Eisler than the material itself. He manifests
himself in a musical curiosity that creates a new vision … a constant
fusion of contrasting pieces, which form amazingly consistent structures
and a higher sensuousness.
Bayrischer Rundfunk
The work on Eisler does not aim to be an objective picture of the composer
as a historical figure, but a fully-formed entity, and the contributions
are not meant to make up a collection of separate pieces, but rather a single
piece of gold. The wonderful thing is that it works. Anyone who identifies
with Eisler and brings some knowledge about him to the evening will sense
his presence: it sparkles.
Frankfurter Rundschau
The five move in the realm of symbols; they create their universe of sound
under a glass bell in which each tone split up many times echoes back to
the place of its conception, erases it and makes it unrecognisable. Their
sounds, which are sometimes reminiscent of concrete music with horn-sounding
and traffic noise, otherwise play more with memories and resonances than
recognisable quotations …Hanns Eisler, his music and his time are constant
throughout the evening without being concretely identifiable.
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
It is not just about Eisler but also the theoretical correlation, which reaches
from the classical to his socialist contemporaries, about the ueber Eisler
if you like. The play does not try to over-expose this link, but it is always
present, represented by the repetitions, the hard, distorted voices shouting
again and again "Workers’ revolt, working world, working classes…".
But they no longer constitute a projection surface . The questions, and not
just the melancholic ones, are directed at a void; they not only remain unanswered – they
become increasingly unanswerable.
Jungle world.
A remarkable piece.
Epd medien
And sometimes questions suddenly appear: "Was that a cry of horror when
you heard that your friends are slowly being butchered?" All this happens
in the form of a superior, perfectly - structured dramatic use of silence
and by electronic interference and alienating sound effects which manufacture
a sense of distance.
Frankfurter Rundschau
The third is the perspective of both authors on Eisler in a blurred relationship,
a distance, which at the same time creates a subjective closeness because
it does not aim to "reconstruct" or "objectify", but
shows the empty spaces. The story is not told in the linear form of a biography,
but through the use of fractured pieces, time - leaps, superimposition, and
reversion the possible story of a "different" Eisler is told, an
Eisler looked back on from another age, adopted by a "distant" generation.
Dreigroschenheft
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"The song is the focus" by Hanno
Ehrler (DLF)
"Der heimliche Aufmarsch" -
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