Within the triangle formed by Düsseldorf, Wuppertal, and Köln (Cologne) lies the town of Leverkusen, which houses the (non-profit) venue KAW. On December 3rd 2021, the KAW hosted an event organized by licht-ung where 5 acts presented some gorgeous drones. Unfortunately, I wasn’t at the event, but this CD contains prerecorded material and recordings from that particular evening. That’s why Modelbau can be found on the CD, even though he sadly missed the performance that December evening.
STRUPPIG DROEHNEN! opens with a couple of short tracks, of which Buck Moon is the first. Buck Moon is a collaboration between Julian Flemming and Julius Ménard, who did record together more often, but I hadn’t heard of them before. ‘Araw’ is a short but powerful guitar drone with a ritual or, better yet, an ethereal approach. A trilogy follows it by Marc Behrens: The spoken-word piece 'ECB', describing a dystopic evening for the European Central Bank, is cut into two parts, and in the middle, a ghostly piece ‘The Unfant Terrible’ is being performed. The origin of ghostliness is mainly (solely?) artificially synthesized vocals as sound sources. Hissing, rumbling, gargling, the artificialness adds to its creepiness …
Modelbau is next with ‘Absentia (Life From Home)’, 16 minutes of a more minimal approach to what a drone can be. The gong awakens my memory and brings me to the minimalism from Coil’s ‘How To Destroy Angels’, but instead of the sword fighting skeletons, we’re given a different soundpalet to enjoy. The result is impressive (the piece really opens a gateway to dreams after 5 or 6 minutes), and one can only think about that December evening IF he would have been there.
‘Semipermeabel’ by Denise Ritter is a piece based on an installation from 2020. Those who think they recognize her name but can’t place it: she is better known under the moniker ’Schachtanlage Gegenort’. Her piece is a wonderful electro-acoustic composition with manipulated sounds of doors, gates, ports etc. recorded in Coesfeld, Germany.
The 20 minute ’Halb, Zwei.Ein Wagen Voller Sterne’ by N (Hellmut Neidhardt) and licht-ung (Johannes Garbe) closes the CD and what a way to end. Guitar drone and violin loops create a massive space reminiscing of Gods of Drone like Troum and Dual. This is one of the tracks recorded live at the event, and it makes you wonder why you weren’t there. The sounds create a dark yet hopeful atmosphere - soon, we will have gatherings like these again in a post-Covid world. This makes missing out on this one a bit less sad because, well, we at least have this document from this one.
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