Kontraste 09

September 25th - October 3rd

 

KONTRASTE—the festival of strange music in its most shimmering facets: contradictory and curious, rare and precious, odd and diverse, brand-new and age-old, noisy and silent, bright and dark, hot and cold, bitter and sweet, and open for the virtual sounds, lyrical at times, or brutely raging … a festival for original and witty musical and otherwise sounding expressions. Incredibly Strange Music!

This year we are starting off with a mad, crazy and pert invasion of the Mäuse including Tex Rubinowitz and special guest mouse Max Müller from the legendary Berlin formation Mutter, to be followed by the still fresh, actually incompatible duo combo of Blixa Bargeld, the chief smasher of the Einstürzenden Neubauten, and the cool engineer musician and multi-designer alva noto alias Carsten Nicolai. Last but not least the senior-legendary, notoriously rehearsal-lazy, anarchist post-Dadaist Nihilist Spasm Band from Canada at their home-made instruments.

One day later the musical power and creativity cell Josef Klammer demonstrates that drumming is an elastic notion by beating the hyperdrums and having them electrically modulated by the congenial Seppo Gründler. With her blend of noises, Free Music and traditional Korean sounds, cellist and composer Okkyung Lee leads us into a unique musical world. In Krems, she will be part of the trio with the innovative British guitarist Keith Rowe—with AMM a pioneer of new improvisational music—and the Norwegian master of video image noise Kjell Bjørgeengen. At this point, the night is all but over: Lappetites, a trans-national open source platform around the musicians Kaffe Matthews, Antye Greie-Fuchs aka AGF and Ryoko Akama unveil the present state of research in their multi-autobiographical opera “Fathers”.

The first October weekend is launched open-air at Minoritenplatz with “Galileo”, a musical performance installation by the doyen of “rational music” Tom Johnson, who Kontraste is dedicating a little homage to for his 70th birthday. And now, the spectacular highlight of KONTRASTE 2009: tour kick-off and European premiere of Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Trio. The recently founded band with Lou Reed at various guitars, Ulrich Krieger as expanding saxophonist and Sarth Calhoun as fingerboard player and real-time sound processor plays both lyrically and massively, improvises but still follows strict rules. MM3 are moving in the tracks of the experimental noise and feedback project Metal Machine Music from 1975, by which Lou Reed once created his completely anti-mainstream image in a way that initially, he totally fell on deaf fans’ and critics’ ears and still managed to advance to the pioneer of noise and ambient. But note: ABSOLUTELY NO SONGS!

Finally, Tom Johnson, take two: a performative expression of his admiration for Galileo Galilei’s discoveries. For the logically and mathematically educated, attentive listeners, the exceptionally gifted drummer Adam Weisman plays, walks and counts Tom Johnson’s “Nine Bells”. Warp artist and electronics magician Mira Calix features New Music-proficient pianist Sarah Nicolls and her famous hyperpiano—an exciting and actually impossible encounter of two concepts far apart: musique paradoxe. The combination of the alchemist and musical shaman Charlemagne Palestine at the puppet-draped piano with the highly subtle and latently ironic real-time musical trio Perlonex not only guarantees pulsating cascades, but also unpredictable cult acts in front of, together with and against the audience.
Let’s listen and watch – until we take leave of our senses!


Jo Aichinger (Krems),
Gottfried Hattinger (Linz),
Matthias Osterwold (Berlin)