d’incise: objects, laptop
ludger hennig: laptop
jonas kocher: accordion
sciss: laptop

1. so zahlreich, daß man sie nicht zählen kann mp3
2. einen einzigen Schuß abfeuern mp3
3. flach auf den Boden, um Maß zu nehmen mp3
4. daß die Kruste der Erde sich anschickte, ein Gemenge von disparaten Formen zu werden mp3

Download in MP3 (complete album in a zip)(42m53 / 75Mo)
Download in FLAC (complete album in a zip)(42m53 / 246Mo)

CDr, hand-made digisleeve,  sold out.

Recorded at Dachboden, L129, Leipzig, 07.05.2011

You’ll usually find d’incise behinds is laptop, doing one thousand things in the same time. Uncontrollable noise maker, engages battles without compromise with objects of every kind, mistreating them through digital elements. Working with textures, breaks, tensions and spectral atmospheres, he is looking to play in a reactive manner, pushing the limits of his machine, trying to break the distinction between acoustic and treatements. Loves to share and spread its albums and creations on the web, he’s the founder of improvised music Insubordinations Netlabel and deeply rooted into the free culture thinking.

Since beginning/middle of the 90`ies, Ludger Hennig is engaged in experimentally generated sounds on objects and diverse materials. through the studies on film and camera @ university of applied sience in dortmund (1997-2000) and art & media-design @ bauhaus university and SeaM (studio for electroacoustic music) weimar (2000-2004), he started to work with sound-installations and development of electroacoustic and live-electronic software-instruments and computer music. as a technician, programmer and sound-engineer he has been working for hans joachim hespos, gary hill, robin minard, jill scott, bill viola …

Accordionist dedicated to improvisation, Jonas Kocher collaborates regularly with musicians such Michel Doneda, Christian Wolfarth, Christoph Schiller, Olivier Toulemonde, Alfredo Costa Monteiro, Luca Venitucci, Joke Lanz, d’incise, Jacques Demierre, Christian Kesten, Gaudenz Badrutt, Christian Müller, … . Jonas Kocher’s work explores the relationships between tone, noise and silence and the processus of listening. As composer he realises projects which are situated between composed theater, installation and concert pieces. His compositions has been played at Biennale Bern 2010, Theater Basel, Zentrum Paul Klee, Festival Encuentros Buenos Aires, KlangKunstBühne Berlin, Centre Dürrenmatt Neuchâtel, Festival Concentus Moravie, Zagreb Biennale. He composes also for hörspiel and theater.

Sciss is the artist name of German composer, performer and software developer Hanns Holger Rutz. Born in 1977, he has studied computer music and audio engineering at the Technical University Berlin, during which period he started to work on what can be roughly termed ambient, noise and electroacoustic music. His current interests are mainly in sound installation and live improvisation.


Another free download tonight then, that is also available as a limited edition CDr from the Insubordintions netlabel should you wish for one. This recording in question is a four track album by a Swiss/German quartet made up of three laptop improvisers; D’Incise, Ludger Hennig and Sciss, the performance name of Hans Holger Rutz and the accordion of Jonas Kocher. I have listened to quite a lot of improvised music in my time, but I am quite sure that this is the first three laptops plus accordion quartet I have heard. The interesting arrangements of sound then, between the three digital sources and the acoustic accordion gives the music its first point of interest. Given that any of the computers could instantly swamp Kocher, and considering that three of them fighting for space could easily see the music dissolve into a noisy featureless mass, the musicians manage to keep things suitably well balanced throughout these four pieces.
The sounds we hear across the untitled album very between the wheezing tones of the accordion and a variety of digital sounds, ranging from field recordings, some more processed than others but none really obviously identifiable, to digitally synthesised sounds, and probably other stuff in between.It is impossible to tell any of the computers apart, and almost as difficult to work out how many are producing sounds at any one time, leaving just Kocher as something familiar to focus our ears upon. None of this matters of course though, and it is in fact quite liberating as a listener to take in this music without having to concern yourself with who is doing what. The music all becomes one, or at least three quarters of it does, and you are able to just listen into it without concerns about ego or personality getting in the way.
The music is good, occasionally very good indeed- often quite darkly tinted, full of brooding, shadowy sounds but involving a wide array of textures and dynamics from pure tones to digital sounding scribbles to industrial roars and clatter. Nothing stays static for very long at all, and there is no hint of a drone. The overall finish is nearer a slightly slowed down John Wall than anything else I can think of, with sudden rushes to cliff top chasms, deep wells of churning moans and small collections of little chattering, fidgety abstraction strewn about on top. There is a strong sense of story telling and progression in the music though, it doesn’t feel as if these sounds were all just thrown together to see what develops. When the music settles into quiet lulls it takes carefully listening and considered responses to keep the music together, with all four combining nicely to keep any particular moment full of detail and yet also to keep a sense of structure rather than chaos in place.
This is a very nice listen then, an unusual palette of sounds utilised very well indeed, and given that it is available for free anyway why not just go and listen for yourselves? the Insubordinations project is one of many excellent examples we have these days of online labels set up purely with the aim of distributing music for free but that do so with a great amount of care and attention, underlining that the love of the music shown by the musicians as they create it flows on into how it is distributed. Grabbing the FLAC folder from the website delivers several image files as well, so if you wanted to print and fold up your own physical sleeve for the music you can. The attention to detail and amount of care is admirable for a free product. They aren’t alone in how they do things, but certainly Insubordinations, which is run by D’Incise is as good a model for how the CD label could potentially continue to operate in the digitally driven future.
Richard Pinnel / the watchful ear

What leaps out from this session is the solidity of the music–I daresay I would have suspected a single individual behind this, not a quartet. Given that it’s essentially, three computers and an accordion, I suppose, given sufficient sensitivity on the part of Kocher, that this shouldn’t be so very hard to achieve, but all I can say is that it certainly sounds like a singularly directed improvisation, and a good one. It sounds very think, always with several plies at hand, generally one or two occupying the lower depths, often with a rubbery feel, rubbed rubber if you will, usually offset by crisp, higher tones, crackling and staticking along, but taking different pathways on each of the four tracks. I’m guessing that it’s often Kocher’s accordion that glues things together, not that it ever sounds like one; there are several wonderful low squeaks at the very end where it sounds like he’s twisting the fabric of the instrument, a beautiful accent. A very strong recording, standing out from many in this area.
Brian Olewnick / just outside

Une musique d’attente, comme tissée de long fils – sinusoïdes ou souffles d’accordéon, suspentions et passages de matières bruiteuses au loin. Un sens du paysage, et plus – du temps qui passe.
Kaspet T toepliz / revue & corrigée

Étrange formation électroacoustique car on peut se demander ce qu’un accordéon vient faire au beau milieu de ces trois ordinateurs. Mais en fait, la distinction entre les sources informatiques et les sources acoustiques est la plupart du temps difficile à faire durant ces quarante minutes. Quelques objets (souvent percussifs, comme des cloches) sont triturés de mille manières par d’incise, l’accordéon joue principalement sur la dynamique des différentes textures possibles, et les différents traitements informatiques jouent des contrastes et des ruptures entre les couleurs. Le souffle des basses de l’accordéon, accords profonds et caverneux, s’opposent à des ondes sinusoïdales proches du larsens, tandis que des boucles surgissent et disparaissent. L’ambiance est étrange, souvent calme et linéaire, mais de nombreuses ruptures et fractures sont également là, le calme peut facilement être rompu par une boucle agressive, par un puissant accord d’accordéon ou par un traitement sonore virulent. Tout est affaire d’ambiance, d’opposition et de contrastes entre les textures et les dynamiques, affaire de narration et de fracture, d’interaction entre l’informatique et l’acoustique. Une interaction et un dialogue surprenants entre les différentes sources sonores, pas toujours passionnant, mais qui parvient bien un créer une ambiance et un univers originaux, et à explorer des territoires escarpés et frais.
Julien Hérault / Improv-sphere

C’est un de ces ciels bas et épais. C’est une surface gelée. Un lac .. Vous marchez de façon anodine, rêvassant. Vous êtes au centre de cette étendue lisse, brillante et fragile. C’est seulement à ce moment-là, lorsqu’un corbeau passe au dessus de votre tête, que vous vous arrêtez. Un long silence, un mouvement discret au niveau de la cime des arbres. La sensation de l’air frais s’abat comme une révélation sur votre visage. Vous regardez l’horizon puis machinalement vos pieds. Là, une fissure. Un crissement ferme de bout en bout cette pause temporelle. Vous isolant du reste. Du lieu, de la route lointaine, de la forêt. Une multiplication. Un parterre ridé se dessine.
La neige avait commencé enfin à fondre. Il n’en restera bientôt plus. De glace non plus. Un constat qui replie la journée sur elle-même. Cherchant dans le paysage un point d’accroche, quelque chose sur quoi fixer son attention. Au bout de quelques minutes, vous entendez une musique. Votre regard se porte à nouveau sur la lisière de la forêt. Dans les herbes jaunes et moisies par l’hiver, D’Incise, Hennig, Kocher et Sciss
Laurent Guerel / Essmaa

there is a connection between Switzerland-based musicians, and between accordion-induced music and nuance-filled live electronics. Three laptops and one accordion. There are 4 long-running compositions which comprise a shitloads of improvised tendencies and refreshing variegations. More concretely, this is a dialogue between organic sounds and more or less treated microscopic sonic explorations, between the acute washes of noise and barely perceptible silentful oscillations drifting between music and…mhh…physics. The album is a shift between the pixels and voxels of white and grey and black-hued minimalism. Or on the other side, this is an intricate and intriguing set of improvised tracks wrapped up in the electro-acoustic/acousmatic environment.
Recent music heroes / agier.blogspot.com

A group improvisation of three guys on their laptops and one playing accordion. The latter is provided by Jonas Kocher, the other three are D’Incise, Ludger Hennig and Sciss. I only know the (solo) work of D’Incise and Kocher. In May last year, this quartet played in Leipzig and the results are to be found on this CDR. Its obviously a work of improvisation, but as usual when people from the world of electronics start improvising, it hardly sounds like improvisation, so I guess that’s a good thing (if improvisation as such is not really your thing). These people on their laptops play sustaining sounds, producing sine wave like sounds, loops of crackles, processed field recordings and who knows what else. Kocher, the only man with a ‘real’ instruments, plays his squeezebox in very much a similar fashion. The accordion is a perfect instrument for that end. It can also produce sound that is sustaining yet it retains also a specific acoustic quality, as Kocher is using acoustic objects on his instrument to produce extra sounds. Sometimes this almost gets lost in the pieces – four in total – and a true fusion takes place. You could argue wether you would need three laptops to do this and if perhaps an additional other electronic instrument would not have been a bad idea – say an analogue synthesizer – but the results are indeed very nice.
FdW / Vital Weekly

Así que ya que no pudimos presenciar tal concierto nos conformamos de momento con este trabajo, colaboración también con tres artistas más y publicado en su propio netlabel insubordinations. Se trata de un trabajo muy experimental y un tanto indigerible para el no versado en estos temas. De todas formas es un gran trabajo con sonidos verdaderamente interesantes.
Oír para creer

This recordings are under a Creative Commons license. Copy, share, burn, P2P, offer, thank you for that, but please keep the whole record complete with all its elements.