| achim zepezauer // slotmachine |
 featuring: Jaap Blonk (NL) - Voice John Chantler (AU) - Modular Synth Serge Corteyn (DE) - Guitar Rhodri Davies (GB) - Harp) - Harp Émilie Girard-Charest (CN) - Cello Gaile Griciute (LT) - Prepared Piano Florian Hartlieb (DE) - Computer Richard Lerman (US) - Piezo, Hydrophone Seán Mac Erlaine (IE) - Woodwinds Bart Maris (BE) - Trumpet Jérôme Noetinger (FR) - Tape Machine Pablo Paredes (CL) - Keyboards Carolin Pook (DE) - Violin Michael Vatcher (US/NL) - Drums Simon Whetham (GB) - Field Recordings Marta Zapparoli (IT) - Radio Waves Achim Zepezauer (DE) - Drumcomputer, Electronics, Acoustics, Words, Animals |
| About
the slotmachine: The Slotmachine is a project by Achim Zepezauer, based on a picture of a crayon-painted slot machine. Clicking the start button activates the machine to randomly combine pre-produced recordings (of 45 seconds length) within three slots. Instead of typical fruits in the display, you would see photos attached to the specific sounds by the artists responsible for content. Even the names of the "songs" are put together by the single names each artist had chosen for their recordings. The vinyl release on Gruenrekorder documents the project with a selection from 13 artists and 158 recordings, that offered a possibility of 3.944.312 combinations. The online-slotmachine has the ability to grow and contains at the date of the vinyl release (february 1st, 2019) four more artists and a total of 225 recordings, providing some 11.390.625 possible titles. Visit slotmachine.kuhzunft.com to discover the project yourself. You can either simply press start and get surprised or deactivate auto-play to make a selection. There are four ways to support the project. You can (1) write a sweet mail to Achim, (2) share it with others, or (3) donate via paypal at the donate-button or you can (4) purchase a 10“ vinyl copy of some best-of combinations, picked by Achim. The record is available at Gruenrekorder or right here, per mail, elsewhere or elsewhere. SLOTMACHINE special track bei the WIRE !!!! |
Das Webseiten-Projekt "slotmachine" von Achim Zepezauer basiert auf dem Bild einer gemalten Slotmachine, auch One-Armed-Bandit oder Spielautomat genannt. Per Klick auf den Startbutton werden in den drei Spalten via Zufallsauswahl vorproduzierte Aufnahmen generiert und stets neu kombiniert. Anstelle der typischen Symbole auf den Drehrädern erscheinen dazu Fotos, die jeweils für eine Aufnahme stehen. Sogar die Namen der "Songs" werden durch die einzelnen Titel zusammen gefügt, die die Künstler ihnen gegeben haben. Die Vinyl-Produktion via Gruenrekorder dokumentiert dieses Projekt mit einer Auswahl von 13 Künstlern und 158 Aufnahmen, die 3.944.312 Kombinationsmöglichkeiten bieten. Die Online-Variante hat die Fähigkeit zu wachsen und verfügt jetzt sogar über vier weitere Künster und insgesamt 225 Aufnahmen, die 11.390.625 Kombinationen ermöglichen. Besuchen sie slotmachine.kuhzunft.com und entdecken sie das Projekt. Dazu genügt ein Klick auf Start, um sich überraschen zu lassen oder sie können "Auto-Play" deaktivieren, um händisch zu selektieren. Es gibt vier Möglichkeiten, dieses Projekt zu unterstützen. Man kann (1) eine nette Mail an Achim schreiben, (2) die Slotmachine weiterempfehlen, oder (3) über den Donate-Button per Paypal spenden oder man kann (4) eine Schallplatte erwerben, die es bei Gruenrekorder, hier, per mail, or anderswo gibt. |
Jaap Blonk: "I just listened to it and I really like it. Good job!" Richard Lerman: "Looks and Sounds Great....And I won 10,000€ !" Seán Mac Erlaine: "I kept trying but couldn't find one combination that didn't work amazingly well!!!" Philippe Petit: "One of my favorite recent albums" NM in ElectronicSound: "Visit slotmachine.kuhzunft.com for hours of fun." Hi-Fi-Forum: "Der Typ mache jede Menge kranken Sch**ß (...) - sowas muss man unterstützen." REVIEWS: Brian Morton (The Wire 421, March 2019): Achim Zepezauer is a relatively recent member of German ensemble The Dorf, the most interesting big band in Europe. His electronics are always vividly detailed and atmospheric, but their most striking characteristic is how neatly and they fit into the band’s sprawlingly exuberant aesthetic. The is something different, a programme of 30 collaborative pieces, all of them approximately three quarters of a minute in length, programmed into an online 'slot machine‘ that allows the user to play simultaneous combinations of three. It’s compelling stuff and could become a dangerous habit. Zepezauer has assembled a network of collaborators, including sound poet Jaap Blonk, woodwind master Seán Mac Erlaine, harpist Rhodri Davies and drummer Michael Vatcher (just the best known of the dozen participants) to create the basic sounds and textures. Track titles are derived from the musicians’ own labelling: hence „Chicago Glysophat Cheeks“ which sounds like the reviving of a dysfunctional garage band, „Raw Women Emerge“ which is plinky strings and drum rolls, and „Wheezychords Instead Trioledad“, a minxy backbeat over what sounds like cracklebox and organ. The sound library effect is sometimes mitigated by something that sounds like it might be fighting its way towards a song, like „Hoppla Drum Schlepp“, but it doesn’t make more than fleeting sense to think of these tracks in isolation. It’s when the barrels start to spin and they come together in ever more exotic combinations that the project begins to fly. Zepezauer has a great sense of humour. His various Knu! projects, including 2015’s brilliant My Horse Doesn’t Give A Shit (which is like a punk Brötzmann trio or Mats Gustafsson at his most unhinged) always leave a smile on the face, and not just because of the funny titles and covers. Zepezauer takes a palpable exuberance to his manipulations. They may not make a damned bit of musical sense, but they’re endlessly - in this case literally endlessly - entertaining. -- And now to something competely conceptual, a new way of interactive composition technique introduced by Achim Zepezauer and his Kuhzunft project which results in this 10" to be released on the Gruenrekorder-imprint on February 1st, 2k19. All 30 - sic !!! - under one minute tracks on this one have been composed as a collage using a virtual slotmachine of sorts filled with 158 45 second recordings provided by a set of 13 different artists including the likes of Jaap Blonk, Jérôme Noetinger, John Chantler, Zepezauer himself and many more which are then randomly layered with the program to create a full blown collage of three simultaneously played tunes. The results are, despite way too short to be characterized as tracks, a kind of slightly chaotic set of miniatures, in parts fully experimental and hardly comprehensible, of seemingly electroacoustic nature, resembling bits that could've emerged from early experimental music labs like the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, getting into PostRock, Future DarkJazz or pure feedback driven areas or even touch Ambient and Lo(west)-Fi Electronics realms at times, providing a demanding, yet defo fascinating listening experience for die-hard fans of full-on experimentalism and conceptual novelty music. -- Baze.DJunkiii for Nitestylez.de -- Achim Zepezauer collects 158 45-second recordings from artists as diverse as Rhodri Davies and Simon Whetham, and runs them through a Slotmachine. This is about as weird as it gets, a further expansion of Gruenrekorder, designed for the disorientation of Las Vegas' neon lights. -- Richard Allen for A Closer Listen -- An enjoyable spin is Slotmachine (GRUENREKORDER Gruen 186), a ten-inch vinyl record credited to Kuhzunft who is in fact the multi-media artist Achim Zepezauer. He appears here with a large number of guest musicians, supplying all manner of sound art, noise, electronic interventions and conventional musical accompaniment, in duo or trio combinations; in some cases, Zepezauer doesn't even appear on the track, but when he does he's playing electronics and drum computer. The next thing to note is that each track is timed at less than a minute, generally aiming I think for the 45-second mark; there are 30 tracks on the 10-inch LP, and in terms of durational minimalism this one ups the ante on The Residents Commercial Album, still for me the benchmark of this sort of exercise with its precisely-configured 60-seconds tracks. The guest musicians include a lot of our friends and favourites, such as Simon Whetham, John Chantler, Jerome Noetinger, and even Rhodri Davies, the Welsh emperor of post-modern harp improvisation. There are also numerous turns by Jaap Blonk, that zany Dutch vocalist, lending his penchant for absurdity to the high-jinks captured on vinyl. I should say there is evidently a large "fun" aspect to Slotmachine, as evidenced by the Dadaist titles such as 'Weird PTK Pachines", 'Ghostly Fireworks Scratch', or 'Long Hoghorn Commercials' - these titles are typically three-word salads, and they echo the wacky aliases chosen by the guest musicians for these let-your-hair-down styled contributions. Even this isn't the whole picture, though. If you want to get the full-on random experience of Slotmachine, you need to spend some time on Kuhzunft's interactive website, where you can create your own three-track combinations from the base resource of 158 separate recordings, and generate your own bag of pick-and-mix sweeties for 45 seconds of playful fun. To put it another way, this LP release sets in stone just 30 possible combinations out of a possible one billion. Zepezauer has a fascinating CV in fine art activities which includes film-making, paintings, a radio show, as well as his own electronics music performances; and he seems to have been preoccupied with vinyl records from an early age, hence this "virtual jukebox" high-concept idea. Even more intriguing is his "Cardtalk" project, a record player made of cardboard (???) which can play CDs with sound carved into them. From 18th December 2018. -- The Sound Projector Kuhzunft-slotmachine is the brainchild of Achim Zepezauer, a musician, composer and organiser of events. It originated as a website project, focused on an image of a childlike slot machine, painted with pastel colours. Clicking on the start button elicits combinations of prerecordings, each one lasting exactly 45 seconds and placed into three distinct slots. Instead of the usual images of fruits, stars and bells, we have photos of the artists and the titles of tracks. This vinyl document, released by Gruenrekorder, includes only a selection of the possible recordings related to the different artists. In the online project, new contributions are added with some regularity, making a total of 225 recordings and 11.390.625 possible configurations (in February 2019). Despite every single proposal being unique, the result is interesting because it brings us to a common free improvisatory approach. A careful listening approach makes it possible to perceive the connection of different elements and free structures within every specific sound particle, deriving from an inspiration oriented by additional crossings and relations. It's not the first time Achim Zepezauer makes experiments with unconventional formats; for example, in the past he has worked with radio shows using aleatory characteristics and multidisciplinary contents. Thanks also to an artistic study background, this work can be considered versatile, becauseit shows his many-sided talents, his passion for drawing, his free form music work, his teenage compulsion as a sound collector and his stochastic conceptualism. Due to the large amount of contributions, the range of stylistic influences are very broad, from free jazz to ambient, from spacey electonics to krautrock, to mention only the more recurrent and recognizable approaches. When we look up the list of the artists engaged with the project, we find some well known names: Jaap Blonk, with his inimitable voice; then Simon Whetham, a field recordings specialist; Jérôme Noetinger from Metamkine; the radio waves experimenter Marta Zapparoli; and John Chantler, here with his synths and refined contemporary lyricism. The substance is great and the listening combinations are extremely varied. -- Aurelio Cianciotta for neural This is a really fun little thing Gruenrekorder have put out. It's ostensibly a project branching out from a website created by Achim Zepezauer which replicates an old One Arm Bandit slot machine, but instead of displaying fruit it plays an overlaid combination of three 45 second audio fragments from artists ranging from Jaap Blonk to John Chantler and Zepezauer himself. This 10" vinyl release - neatly presented with cute crayon artwork collects 30 of the possible combinations spat out by the slot machine, each with a title constructed in a similarly random way. The opening spin Cowshed Neck Rupture throws out Jerome Noetinger, Simon Whetham and Zepezauer himself, combining with glitchy electronics, field recordings and tape effects. And on the second, Noetinger's classic concrete tape distortions continue alongside Serge Corteyn free improvising on the guitar and Pablo Paredes' piano. And so it goes on, each pull of the machine throwing up unique and often quite natural sounding combinations. Improvisint harpist Rhodri Davies pops up on several tracks including five in succession on side B and another titled Raw Women Emerge which has his freewheeling harp improvisations dueling with Michael Vatcher's drums and the prepared piano of Gaile Griciute. In truth there is virtually nothing here that you would say stands out as obviously put together through random processes, or that sounds out of place. It wouldn't be a surprise to find out the records had been the intentional product of an improvising ensemble - which this group of artists could conceivably be - rather than the combination of numerous disparate fragments. That is undoubtedly due in part to the choice of contributors, all who have history within the improvising and avant-garde scenes. In which case Zepezauer should be congratulated for in effect piecing together (with a little bit help from the lady indeterminacy) a pretty coherent twenty four minute avant-jazz album. Perhaps a minor criticism would be that it's not immediately clear who's contributing to each 45 seconds combination. The credits are listed by artist and you have to go through them to find the relevant track numbers and piece it together that way. But may be having the sources easily accessible ruins the effect of just listening to each combination as it appears. While Jaap Blonk's weird vocalisations might be recognisable to those in the know, many of the other contributions are not so apparent. With the number of possible combinations now at over eleven million the website provides enough original composition material for a lifetime. It can be found at http://slotmachine.kuhzunft.com/ and is well with a spin. - Duncan Simpson for Musique Machine Kuhzunft-Slotmachine is the brainchild of Achim Zepezauer, a musician, composer and organizer of events. It originated as a website project, focused on an image of a child-like slot machine, painted with pastel colours. clicking on the start button elicits combinations of pre-recordings, each one lasting exactly 45 seconds and placed into three distinct slots. Instead of we the usual images of fruits, stars and bells, we have photos of the artists and the titles of tracks. This vinyl document, released by Gruenrekorder, includes only a selection of the possible recordings related to the different artists. In the online project, new contributions are added with some regularity, making a total of 225 recordings and 11.390.625 possible configurations (in February 2019). Despite every single proposal being unique, the result is interesting because it brings us to a common free improvisatory approach. A careful listeing approach makes it possible to perceive the connection of different elements and free structures within every specific sound particle, deriving from an inspiration oriented by additional crossings and relations. It's not the first time Achim Zepezauer makes experiments with unconventional formats; for example, in the past he has worked with radio shows using aleatory characteristics and multidisciplinary contents. Thanks also to an artistic study background, this work can be considered versatile, because it shows his many-sided talents, his passion for drawing, his free form music work, his teenage compulsion as a sound collector and his stochastic conceptualism. Due to the large amount of contributions, the range of stylistic influences are very broad, from free jazz to ambient, from spacey electronics to krautrock, to mention only the more recurrent and recognizable approaches. When we look up the list of the artists engaged with the project, we find some well known names: Jaap Blonk, with his inimitable voice; then Simon Whetham, a field recording specialist; Jérôme Noetinger from Metamkine; the radio waves experimenter Marta Zapparoli; and John Chantler, here with his synths and refind contemporary lyricism. The substance is great and the listening combinations are extremely varied. - Neural Issue 62 |
Photographers Credits: Unless otherwise noted, the artists themselves took the photos or paintings etc.. for their sounds. André Symann: Photos of Achim Zepezauer / Michael Vatcher Sabine Niggemann: Photos of Jérôme Noetinger / Achim Zepezauer Th.C.White / Tobias Daemgen / Daniel Kämper: Photos of Achim Zepezauer Liz Racz: Drawings for Jérôme Noetinger Daaryl Feehely: Photos of Rhodri Davies broken things (Horsehair, metal, gut, nylon) Warren Orchard: Photo of Rhodri Davies Photos of Jaap Blonk: Cheeks: Lisette Stalenhoef / Commercials: unknown (1982) / Frying: Marco Douma / Humhum: Masha Bakker / Lanketrrgll: Jochen Roeder / Oh: Raoul van der Weide / Oneandonly: Irena Jorgensen / Ploff: Martín Gubbins / Ptk: Jaap Blonk / Rages: Paola Scagliotti Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh: Photos of Seán Mac Erlaine Michelle Browne: Photos of Seán Mac Erlaine Myles O’Reilly: Photos of Seán Mac Erlaine Frieda Hartlieb: Drawings for Florian Hartlieb Thank you Roland Etzin & Lasse-Marc Riek from Gruenrekorder Thank you Guida Ribeiro for the help with the website. Thank you Angelika von Ammon. Thank you Maria Trautmann & Sindy Tscherrig & Lisa Balzer. Thank you everybody else for helping and being involved in any way. This project was kindly funded by:    |
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