(Free Improvisation, Electroacoustic, Avant-Garde) [CD] Bernhard Gunter & Heribert Friedl - Trans~ - 2006, FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

The second collaboration between Bernhard Günter and Heribert Friedl looses the spark that ignited Ataraxia, but it remains of interest. It is difficult to explain why the previous album worked at an emotional level and this one does not, but Trans~ stays, through its 45 minutes, a rather cold and uninvolved affair. There are some beautiful moments of shimmering harmonics, but the piece as a whole lacks direction, feeling too much like a sound installation without beginning or end. Günter is heard on electric cellotar (a custom-made instrument with guitar and cello features) and harmonica, while Friedl plays his trusty cymbalon in various prepared ways. Running in the background throughout the piece is a field recording made by Günter of a group of three small power transformers. The delicately changing overtones of the electrical hum allow the two improvisers freedom to work on an intervention-by-intervention basis, instead of having to sustain the cohesion of the piece themselves. Sadly, this approach backfires: Günter and Friedl get trapped in the static drone, limiting their playing to decorative (if abstract) figures that cannot impose a sense of direction or transformation. Trans~ ends exactly where it had begun and the listener is left with the feeling of having stared blankly at the same white dot for 45 minutes. Yes, both artists have chosen a certain form of minimalism as their mean of artistic expression, but even so Ataraxia has already proven that the approach can lead to some powerful, endearing music. - Francois Couture, AMG
"The most striking characteristic of TRANS~ is the use of a field recording of a group of three small power transformers I conceived as a kind of improvised piece, changing microphone positions to cull different sounds and overtone spectra from the transformers' intense hum. The field recording became our basis track for TRANS~, and is exceptionally well and seamlessly embedded in the piece.
Heribert plays his amplified Hackbrett (cymbalon or hammered dulcimer), I play my electric cellotar, a self-made bamboo flute, and three harmonicas (two vintage Hohner BluesHarps bought in the 70's and a Hopf 'Golden Hit'). Unlike on Ataraxia, the flute took the back seat this time because the harmonicas' overtone spectrum blended so well with that of the transformers, and helped creating the harmonic richness of the piece.
When asked to describe the piece, the first expression that came to my mind was 'music like weather' - a series of changes and transformations, a myriad of details that unfold according to their own intrinsic logic, but to no intended purpose, and invite the listener to follow their constant becoming and vanishing."-Bernhard Günter
Heribert Friedl is an Austrian sound/visual/sensory artist based in vienna. He studied sculpture at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. Working with scents and its non visual phenomenons in combination with sounds. He has had exhibitions and projects in cities of hungary, germany, england, italy, the uS, Cuba, and Austria. He has collaborated with Bernhard Günter, Dale Lloyd and John Norman (Radian), and has CD releases on Trente Oiseaux, and/OAR; mp3 releases on Con-V and Earlabs. He also runs the label "nonvisualobjects" in collaboration with Raphael Moser.
"Bernhard Günter, born 1957 in Irlich, Germany, begins his musical life playing the drums at age 12, then changes to electric guitar at 17. He moves to Paris in 1980, where he takes up auto-didactic studies of contemporary composition techniques in the libraries of IRCAM and the Centre Pompidou, and attends Pierre Boulez's lectures at IRCAM and Collège de France.
Returning to Germany in 1986, he starts working on computer-based music in 1987; after four years of preparation and one year of work he releases his influential first CD Un Peu de Neige Salie (1993), followed by Détails Agrandis (1994). In 1995, he founds his own label, trente oiseaux. During the following decade, Günter releases numerous CDs and performs his music around the globe. Un Peu de Neige Salie is listed as one of the Top "100 Albums that set the World on Fire" by The Wire, one of his works receives an Honorable Mention at the 1999 PRIX ARS ELECTRONICA.
After a decade of composing electroacoustic music, Günter re-discovers his interest in playing instruments and improvised music in 2004.
In 2005, Günter adds various bamboo flutes, the shakuhachi and the xiao among others, to his sound palette, and begins exploring a middle course between composition and improvisation that uses multi-tracking, editing, and arranging improvised parts that are exchanged between artists through the mail. The first result of this approach (which Günter tentatively calls 'compovisation') is the release of Ataraxia (2005) in collaboration with Heribert Friedl."-Berhard Günter website

Bernhard Günter: electric cellotar, self-made bamboo flute, harmonicas
Heribert Friedl: amplified Hackbrett (cymbalon or hammered dulcimer)