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AKERLUND, LARS & ZBIGNIEW KARKOWSKI - Aware Not Aware/Radio Enemy

Format: LP Label & Cat.Number: Fylkingen Records FYLP 1037 Release Year: 2016 Note: the last album project that KARKOWSKI planned and finished before his death (12.12.2013), together with long-time collaborator LARS AKERLUND, finally sees the daylight: actually a split LP with two side-long solo-tracks by each composer, they spread different approaches to work with blocks of concrete noise and high dynamics (AKERLUND) and slowly evolving noise combined with vocal material (KARKOWSKI).... Price (incl. 19% VAT): €16.00 More Info "This split LP is one of several collaborative projects between Zbigniew Karkowski and Lars Åkerlund, which took place during the years 2012–2013. The collaboration between Karkowski and Åkerlund goes back to the 1980s, with projects like P.I.T.T. and the Dreamers and Onge-4-X. They continued during the 90s with an opera setting of Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot and a trio with Dror Feiler, among other things. Collaborations during recent years include the CD Horology, which Karkowski and Åkerlund made together with Jean-Louis Huhta. The three of them also made a couple of live performances during 2012 and 2013 in the re-unioned 80s group Mental Hackers. It was after their acclaimed concert with Mental Hackers at Fylkingen in May 2012 that the idea of this LP was born, whereafter Karkowski and Åkerlund each began working on one piece for it. The record proved to become Karkowski’s last one – at least the last that he, himself, took part in the planning of. Zbigniew Karkowski died on December 12th 2013, after having been diagnosed with cancer only two months earlier." [label info] www.fylkingen.se "The other new release by Fylkingen Records is a split record by Zbigniew Karkowski and Lars Akerlund, who started working together in the 1980s, with projects like P.I.T.T. And The Dreamers and Onge-4-x, then in the 90s on an opera project around The Idiot (that's the Dostoyevsky play, not the Iggy album) and with Jean-Louis Huhta as Mental Hackers, in 2012 and 2013. As you know Karkowski died in 2013, two months after he was diagnosed with cancer. The last work he was working on was this split LP with Lars Akerlund. Karkowski's piece is called 'Radio Enemy' and is a noisy beast, and that's probably no surprise. It's not, however, one of those over the top Merzbowian blasts of noise, but it opens up with a voice fed through an amount of distortion, but it has still a commanding, strong presence. It then moves to a repeating, high-pitched sound to which a slowed down voice is added. Listening to this right after the 'Text Sound' compilation, it makes perfect sense; Karkowski is here updating the notion of voice/text within the realm of some highly powerful music. Even if noise can be a bit much for you, I recommend this piece for you. This is the variation of noise that is loud but not for the sake of loudness. Akerlund on the other side has no text, or at least nothing that we can see as such, and starts out with noise that would suit Karkowski pretty well, but his piece 'Aware Not Aware' moves over a much more dynamic range. The noise is powerful and short and through the twenty-three minutes of this piece Akerlund moves from the very quiet to the reasonable loudness. His build up is slow, minimal and yet dramatic. It is hard to say if these tools are all analogue and modular or much more part of the world of software. Somehow I think the latter. His piece is quite intense; blocks of heavily treated sounds and it works really well as a piece of modern musique concrete." [FdW/Vital Weekly]