The aulos is an ancient reed instrument, a type of shawm, whose earliest depictions on painted plates date from the 4th century BC. He plays the lead role in the commissioned work “Oto Aulos”, composed by Polish computer scientist and musician Marcin Pietruszewski and Belgian Aulos player Lukas de Clerck for this year’s Berlin Festival for Adventurous Music, CTM.
Pietruszewski wrote a workshop report for the supplement that provides theoretical support for the composition. The aulos, made from reeds, had two cylindrical melody pipes. However, not all of the instrument’s components have been preserved, making exact reconstructions impossible. Consequently, no complete timbres have survived. “Ear Elisions: Subtraction, Slippage, Refraction,” Pietruszewski calls his essay and ponders deliberate omissions, transcription errors and acoustic illusions. “Ear Elisions” sounds similar to “Ear Illusions,” notes the Polish artist.
A nice starting point for reflections on the Aulos sound spectrum, but also a sentence, which characterizes the 27th CTM Festival, which was successful despite all the austerity constraints and the gloomy overall situation. Many events were sold out, all club nights were full, although the opening to various types of metal was particularly attractive and opened up new target groups. Without the discursive level being reduced.
“If the inner ear receives particularly dense timbre combinations, phantom frequencies can arise. The ear then hears something that was not played,” analyzes Marcin Pietruszewski. In “Oto Aulos”, the sound environment of the Aulos is reimagined on the computer and chased through the digital sphere as a loop. This creates material that sounds different than the music being fed into it. An exciting experiment in which history sounds cumbersome.
Negative Anthropology of Sounds
In the DAAD gallery At Oranienplatz, US sound researcher Gascia Ouzounian (Oxford) spoke on the topic “Expanded Frames for Sonic Investigation: Residues, Atmospheres, Inaudibilities”. Ouzounian, who works at the intersection of sound, architecture and urbanism, is often referred to as a “sound historian.” She examines the ways in which physical violence is reflected in sound and thus describes a negative anthropology of noise.
Ouzounian, whose ancestors fled from Armenia to the USA, remained very vivid when she reported on sound spheres of the Turkish genocide against the Armenians (1915-1923). For this purpose, the scientist evaluated 350 “sonic memories” from survivors. For example, the story of a little girl who had to watch as parents, relatives and villagers were herded into a stable, which was then set on fire by soldiers of the Ottoman Empire. The arsonists then sang an Anatolian children’s song and danced to it. The song is forever a sound marker of evil memories, a nightmare triggered by “sonic triumphalism”.
With Peter Sloterdijk, Ouzounian argued about a “dark meteorology” of sound and spoke of “airquakes” in view of the whirring of drones and the detonations after air strikes. She then switched perspectives to talk about “atmospheric occupation” and “vibrational warfare.” For this purpose, Ouzounian used the Middle East conflict as a source of sound and one-sidedly portrayed Israel as an aggressor.
For example, she showed aerial photos of Israeli fighter bomber movements over Gaza. Nobody denies the violence of the Israeli army and the crimes it commits against the Palestinian civilian population, but in this part of the lecture the other side was ignored.
So Ouzounian remained silent about Hamas’ warfare, the violence and threat posed by the Lebanese Hezbollah (and the mullahs’ regime in Iran, which has its proxies fighting in the Middle East). It would be a shame if Ouzounian’s important research was hijacked by ideology.
Earplugs were available
On the night from Thursday to Friday, metalheads mingled with CTM ultras and club kids in the sold-out Berghain. Even screamo face paint was spotted. Letting the dance floor and metal collide is part of the festival’s USP. This year’s motto “dissonate < > resonate” can also be understood in this way. This was achieved extremely well at Berghain thanks to three parties running in parallel.
Downstairs, in the column, the Peruvian duo Dengue Dengue Dengue invited us to a tropical rave with lots of cumbia chu-chucu-chu, while in the Panorama Bar the Australian VV Pete performed her hot girl club rap and in the Berghain in between, Pain Magazine commander Louisahhh roared her heart out to droning, clanging, hammering post-hardcore.
If you had forgotten your hearing protection, you could take earplugs with you at the entrance, as it was particularly loud on the main floor.
Duel with a helicopter
The Brit Finlay Shakespeare mixed a touch of New Wave romanticism into the screaming. At times he sounded as if HP Baxter had gotten into a duel with a helicopter. Then King Yosef fired up the testosterone-charged industrial device as if they had been beamed back to the early noughties. On the grand staircase, a visitor said he had just met his 16-year-old self. Doesn’t necessarily speak for the innovative power of music, but it does awaken feelings.
Filipino Sherwin Calumpang Tuna also feels responsible for them; he calls himself DJ Love. For his set at the column, he performed 90s classics such as Robert Miles’ “Children” and “Better of Alone” by Alice Deejay. Others from his collection played as shrilly as the songs that were once available with the Jamba savings subscription. The dancers liked it.
Tuna was high-fived by Aunty Rayzor. The Nigerian raps in English and Yoruba, firing her razor-sharp lyrics over the beats like a staccato and placing her hooks as energetically as she let the beaded braids fly. With her charisma she got her audience to sing along, something you have to do in Berlin.
A floor higher up, a lot of hair twitched during the performance of the Californian EBM duo Youth Code, only the rhythm was different. Singer Sara Taylor, wearing a Sinead O’Connor commemorative shirt, urged them on with a voice that seemed to come from the depths of the engine room. Has such a mosh pit ever formed on the dance floor at a Berghain club night?
Effects of the Russian war of aggression
No mosh pit on Saturday in the radial system. The sold-out hall listened with emotion, even though the music sounded monstrous. Under the motto „Disturbed Ground“ and the curatorial work of Kyjiwer Clubs K 41 as well as the support of the Goethe-Institut Ukrainian artists came to Berlin. Her commissioned compositions revolved around the effects of the Russian war of aggression on nature. In some cases the composers were not allowed to leave Ukraine, so the stage for Vartan Markarian’s “Horizons of Disappearance” remained empty.
While there was a muted rumble on the soundtrack, what was left of a forest after fighting could be seen on the screen: charred tree stumps, dead plants, a dead landscape. “Heavy Waters” by undo despot, Zeynep Schilling, Alen Hast and Myk Rudik depicted the war on a continuous loop in a frighteningly drastic soundscape. All that could be seen was the outline of an artist dressed in white on a laptop who was performing a detonation score.
The composition, full of dropouts and feedback, remained free of pathos despite the volume. At some point the artist turned off the laptop and went to the edge of the stage, crouched down and played the flute, accompanied by the glow of a flashlight. “The Core” by Khrystyna Kirik and Mark Bain then exorcised the noise of war as a brutal scraping, roaring and humming. The wooden stand wobbled alarmingly, and here too the old maxim “hearing with pain” became reality without any kitsch.
Take the greedy man up into space
Another highlight right at the end, again one with a rather atypical timbre for CTM standards. The last act of the final concert at the Volksbühne on Sunday was the Californian folk singer Emma Ruth Rundle, who drew applause before she had even played a note. She said that she would play songs from her upcoming album.
The opening was about the “greedy man” and also about God, because she would always pray that he would descend to take the greedy man up into space. The packed hall listened almost reverently as Rundle sang, motionless and with a soaring voice.
How she accompanied herself with changing guitars, at times only supported by “John” on the piano. And how she introduced her songs with fine tips; Songs that spoke of power and powerlessness, named after instruments of torture that were created while their home was burning a year ago. Actually, she explains, she wanted to play a set with hits, but then thought it would be smarter to sing these new, as yet unknown songs. They sounded melodic and longing, deeply sad and angry, appropriate to the times.