By Eyal Hareuveni
For most musicians, feedback is the ultimate nightmare. But not for
Belgian, Berlin-based experimental composer and electronics player
Stefan Prins whose recent collection of compositions, inhabit, has
elevated feedback to a principal compositional method. He says that he
is fascinated by feedback’s uncontrollable danger and uses feedback as a
metaphor for our interconnected ecological systems. Berlin-based,
eight-musician Feedbackorchester (FBO) works exclusively with feedback
and released a live album documenting its distinct aesthetics.
Stefan Prins – inhabit (Sub Rosa, 2024)
Prins began his music studies after graduating as an engineer
specializing in photonics. He envisions the musical art form beyond the
safe confines of the ‘scene’, and his music reflects on contemporary
technologies and new media, thematizing its relationship with the
physical, performing body and the environments it inhabits. The double
album’s compositions, which combine traditional instruments with
feedback, electronics, and field recordings, are large-scale.
The first, short composition, “Inhibition Space #1” (2020) is for an
amplified bass flute, bass oboe and bass clarinet of the Berlin-based
Ensemble Mosaik and feedback. The musicians produce a wide range of
feedback nuances through subtle key manipulations, pedal usage, and by
varying the distance between their instrument and the speaker, creating
an elusive electro-acoustic ambiance filled with mysterious, resonant
overtones. This composition demands a razor’s edge precision to avoid
getting too close to the speaker or too far with the pedal, so things
would not escalate quickly. Prins imagine that kind of unpredictability
as parallel with the current ecological crisis. Processes like climate
change and loss of biodiversity are also characterized by tipping points
and feedback loops. If we cross a threshold, we may encounter the
danger of creating an uncontrollable runaway effect. “Inhibition Space
#1” transposes this looming threat into the sonic realm.
The 47-minute “inhabit_inhibit” (2019-21) is for four spatialized
quartets, six feedback soloists and live electronics for
EnsembleKollektiv Berlin, conducted by Max Murray. This composition
expands Prins’ feedback-based sonic palette, now with four feedbacking
solo woodwinds (a baritone saxophone is added to the woodwind trio from
“Inhibition Space #1”, all using special mouthpieces that produce
noisier sounds), and a piano and harp that participate in the feedback
process through a setup of contact microphones, transducers, speakers,
and custom-built software, plus four quartets consisting of strings,
woodwinds, brass, and percussion. Prins asked the violinists and
cellists to play with soda cans and key rings between the strings. The
percussion section was equipped with electric toothbrushes and metal
socket wrenches, and the trumpeters and trombonists used toy reeds and
so-called ‘pizza mutes’. Prins also arranged the musicians in a spatial
manner that is inherent in performing with feedback. The soloists and
quartets were positioned along the walls and in the corners, with the
audience interspersed among them. In the center of the space, the piano
and harp acted as a feedback chamber for the sounds of the soloists that
leaked into their resonating strings. Prins created a highly immersive
yet unsettling web of living sounds that embrace the listener and force
the listener to feel part of this fragile, resonating sonic fabric. This
composition may serve as another warning call about the vulnerability of
our ecosystems.
“Under_current” (2020-2021) is for electric guitarist, Yaron Deutsch
(who performs with Prins as the Ministry of Bad Decisions duo), and the
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Ilan Volkov. This
provocative composition makes the orchestra perform as an acoustic
meta-amplifier for Deutsch’s expansive electric guitar playing, enhanced
by a range of effect pedals and extended techniques. The orchestra
translates and reflects impressively on the unpredictable, raw and
ear-splitting electric guitar feedback and other roaring outbursts.
The last composition, “Mesh” (2022-23) for the Belgian Nadar Ensemble
(which Prins co-directs), with five musicians playing the bass clarinet,
euphonium and trombone, percussion, electric guitar, and cello, expanded
by an electronic layer of feedback, live electronics, and a soundtrack
of electronic sounds and field recordings from Berlin and Italy and
rainforest soundscapes from the Amazon and Borneo. Prins wanted this
provocative, deeply illuminating composition to deconstruct the
traditional boundaries between humans, technology, and nature and
highlight their ever-evolving relationship. He enhanced the spatial
effects on its premiere performance by dispersing the live electronics
and the soundtrack through both speakers on stage and headphones
distributed to the concertgoers beforehand, allowing the audience to be
immersed in a sonic ‘in-between space’, where outside was simultaneously
inside, distant was simultaneously near. In his idiosyncratic,
unorthodox and thoughtful manner, Prins emphasizes the close
interconnectedness of sonic spaces as a strong ecological symbolism and
concludes the sonic mirages of this composition with a radically
slowed-down ‘dawn chorus’ of forest creatures resembling a choir of
lamenting human voices.
Feedbackorchester – Live at Zwingli-Kirche (MirrorWorldMusic, 2024)
Feedbackorchestra (FBO) was founded in 1999 and consists of 7 electric
guitarists and one bassist and focuses on the meditative but physical
and massive sonic presence. The eight musicians – guitarists Herman
Herrmann, Günter Schickert (who alternates on conch), Zeppy Haus, Giles
Schumm, Hendrik Kröz, Dirk Dresselhaus and Ansgar Wilken (guitar) with
bassist Kerl Fieser, are arranged in a circle to ensure close dynamics
while the audience can move freely and listen to the music from
different positions.
Live at Zwingli-Kirche is the third album of FBO and it was recorded at
KulturRaum Zwingli-Kirche, now an art space, in August 2020, using the
unique acoustics of this space, as another kind of feedback. FBO
produces minimalist walls of sounds, a powerful stream of vibrations and
frictions that methodically accumulate power and volume. It is quite an
experience to surrender to the massive waves of feedback caressing your
most stubborn cells, even in the safe environment of your home.