Bleep

Felix Kubin wears his abstract synth music hat for Hamburg’s V I S in two starkly pieces written on rare, bespoke and stubborn analog machines. Using the Max Brand synthesiser (a rare, modified Moog) on one side, and a Rob Hordijk modular system and sounds of the port of Hamburg on the other, the recordings render Kubin at his loosest, explorative and experimental, as opposed to his usually heavily concept-driven output. Following two Max Brand studies released on the ‘MDM A’ tape in 2015, Kubin’s ‘Max Brand Studie IV’ was composed for 8 loudspeakers, arranged in a circle, and was recorded in the former premises of the Institute for Media Archaeology, Donau, Austria. Working with what he calls “the egocentric and stubborn Max Brand”, Kubin rigs the machine in a way that allows it to speak and develop a life of its own, conjuring 19 minutes of ghostly spectral tones and beating pulses that haunt the vaulted recording space with a naturally unpredictable, analogue logic that’s fascinating to follow. Kubin’s B-side ’T O P I A’ was composed for a 3-channel video installation by Josphin Böttger. Recorded at Hamburg’s Hammerbrooklyn Studios, it uses the Rob Hordijk modular system and sounds of the city’s massive port to concretely characterise a sense of space and place that resonates with the abstract-industrial-realism of his ‘Max Brand Studie’, following a similar logic of endless cycles of growth and collapse, sustain and decay, with perceptively poetic results.