klingt.org
(a wordplay in German that means sounds weird) is the website and the
collective of Viennese experimental musicians that celebrated its 25th
anniversary in January 2025 with a one-day festival, and with, among
other acts, the rarely-heard “nine-musician improvisation hydra” klingt.collective”, on its only third performance. This electro-acoustic
ensemble represents musicians-improvisers from a wide spectrum of
musical activities – sound art, noise, free jazz, free improvisation,
contemporary music, reductionist music, and art-rock. The ensemble was
put together by turntables wizard dieb13 (aka Dieter Kovačič) and its
first performance was during the 2022 edition of the Wien Modern
festival.
The king.collective features drummer Martin Brandlmayr (of Radian,
Christof Kurzmann’s El Infierno Musical, and Mats Gustafsson’s Fake The
Fact), recorders and tapes player Angélica Castelló (of Disturbio duo
with Revox tape wizard Jérôme Noetinger, and the duo Chesterfield with
guitarist Burkhard Stangl), dieb13 (of Fake The Facts and Gustafsson’s
NU Ensembles, and TWIXT duo), ppooll software player Klaus Filip (of
sonic luz and Kurzmann’s Orchester 33 ⅓), bass clarinetist Susanna
Gartmayer (of Vegetable Orchestra, GBK and So Sner), cellist Noid (aka
Arnold Haberl, of sonic luz), electronics player and bassist Billy Roisz
(of The Elks and RWIXT), guitarist and electronics player Martin Siewert
of (Radian, Georg Graewe’s Sonic Fiction Orchestra, Also and Fake The
Facts and in-demand sound engineer) and guitarist and electronics player
Oliver Stotz. These musicians collaborated on countless other projects,
bands, performances, and albums.
variable densities is the first album of klingt.collective, “composed ex
ante and in real-time” and recorded live during its second performance
of the ensemble at Festival Denistés in Fresnes-en-Woëvre, France, in
October 2023. True to DIY spirit of the collective, the album was mixed
by Siewert and Kovačič, mastered by Siewert, and its ironic cover
artwork was made by Kovačič with advice by Roisz and Gartmayer.
The music moves between pre-defined structures and free improvised parts
and between the resolute opening of massive waves of disorienting, noisy
sounds that demand total surrender to highly nuanced and conversational
improvisations that its enigmatic, suggestive sounds have a strong,
hallucinatory quality, mirroring the diverse stylistic influences and
the various backgrounds of the musicians. Obviously, the dynamics of the
ensemble stress the many years of common musical work and profound
aesthetic history. The album is divided into two extended pieces,
fitting the vinyl release. Side A with the title piece is more sparse
with a mysterious, dream-like cinematic quality while Side B, “dense
variations” deepens this mysterious, psychedelic vibe but slowly
gravitates towards an explosive, cathartic maelstrom. As with all the
works of
klingt.org
’s musicians, variable densities promise that its attentive listeners
would be equipped with a much better, recalibrated sensory consciousness
of their environments – real, imagined, and dreamt of.