Fine minimal blathery from Birgit Ulher and Gregory Büttner on their Araripepipra (HIDEOUS REPLICA HR4), which showcases eight cuts of them doing it in A Red Room studio in Hamburg in 2013. Birgit is mostly playing her trumpet when she’s not twiddling the dials on the radio and fiddling with objects scattered about the formica table, while Büttner is concentrating all his effort on his computer, objects, and fan. Clearly this is one of many interesting intersects where improvised music meets sound art, quite frequent in today’s landscape, and one happy outcome is that the two genres (if such they be) discover they have a lot of common ground. It’s also significant that both of them single out the loudspeaker as an instrument, pointing up the “acousmatic” qualities of this highly abstract music. And Ulher even uses the speaker as a trumpet mute on half of the tracks. Can you imagine wedging one of these micro-speakers into the bell of your instrument? Through this action, it’s as though she’s trying to forge some artificial bond between man and machinery, using her brass device as an interface. In all, a strangely compelling if rather samey set of tracks, with an extremely “clean” sound to the production, due to Bors Goeler’s recording and engineering skills. I also like the cover image (photo by Gregory) which suggests an old coaxial TV aerial and modern satellite dish yearning to make contact with each other across a void…a poignant reminder of the “transitional” state we are currently living through, where the digital may dominate but traces of the analogue are still to be found. From 8th September 2014. Limited edition of 200 copies.
