Articles
2011 Top 10s and 20s
Spotlight 4

Albums
Akhet
Cory Allen
Alva Noto
Aun
Bass Communion
Alexander Berne
Birds Passage / Rosado
The Black Dog
BNJMN
Ursula Bogner
Cokiyu
Steve Coleman
Cubenx
Mats Eilertsen
Elektro Guzzi
eleventhfloorrecords
Ben Fleury-Steiner
Golden Gardens
Goldmund
Thom Gossage
Steve Hauschildt
Helvacioglu & Pancaroglu
Illuha
Larkian & Yellow6
Clem Leek
Mamerico
Milyoo
Hedvig Mollestad Trio
Nao
Yann Novak
Sasajima & Hirao
Scissors And Sellotape
Ryan Scott
Till von Sein
Shaula
The Silent Section
Scott Solter
Spheruleus
Talkingmakesnosense
thisquietarmy
Anna Thorvaldsdottir
tINI
Tycho

Newly Issued
The Beach Boys

Compilations / Mixes
Deetron
Mike Huckaby
Radio Slave
Rebel Rave 2: Droog

EPs
Thavius Beck
Niccolò Bianchi
Falko Brocksieper
Alex Cobb & Aquarelle
Deru
Everything Is
Ed Hamilton
Hammock
Herzog
Oknai
SlowPitch
Tracey Thorn
Damian Valles

Ursula Bogner: Sonne = Black Box
Faitiche

Though Faitiche head Jan Jelinek presents Ursula Bogner's Sonne = Blackbox with a poker face, word has it that the project is, of course, entirely the brainchild of Jelinek himself. It's a clever trick and one that enables the German producer to prevent the album content from being broached in terms of the material he's released under his own name; there's no question the Bogner project is light years removed from Jelinek's Farben and Loop-Finding-Jazz-Records days. To go along with the music, a biographical portrait has been fashioned that presents Bogner (1946-1994) as a German pharmacist, artist, and musician who took courses with Herbert Eimert, founder of Köln's Studio für elektronische Musik, and assembled a private cache of recordings over many years. The release of Sonne = Blackbox came about when Jelinek met Bogner's son by chance, learned of her recordings, and compiled the pieces archived on reel-to-reel tapes and hi-fi cassettes into full-length album form. We're led to believe that she composed the fifteen pieces between 1970 and 1985, and the conceit holds up in the early electronic character of the album's explorative sketches.

Reminiscent of one of Radioactivity's vignettes, the title track (supposedly produced in 1972) plays like some early computer lab experiment in its pairing of modulating electronics, treated vocals, and a naggingly insistent piano part. Elsewhere, the material comes across as early in-studio explorations of the kind performed at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, with Bogner giving birth to warbly sci-fi mini-soundtracks (“Nach Europa”) of whooshes and convulsions and synthesized sing-song chants originating from distant galaxies (“Trabant”). Listening to such material, one naturally thinks of Bogner and her electronic constructions and tape-manipulated pieces as the German counterpart to the UK pioneer Delia Derbyshire. At the same time, Bogner's work can be seen as having laid the groundwork for the paths taken by progeny such as AGF. In fact, vocal fragments intertwine with fluttering tones and theremin-like warble during “Shepard Monde” (1971) in a way that anticipates the lab work done by AGF decades later.

December 2011