Schneider TM - Ereignishorizont 2LP/2CD
"The event horizon gives the black hole its size; behind it hides the singularity. And the more extended it is, the more massive the black hole is. But the event horizon is also invisible; if matter or light passes through it, there is no turning back.“ — Prof. Dr. Michael Kramer, Max-Planck-Institut
Ereignishorizont is Schneider TM’s new and with a duration of over 80 minutes truly epic album: experimental guitar, technological innovations and excursions into musical territories beyond the usual. Available as 2LP/2CD/DL.
Schneider TM is a multidimensional music project of Dirk Dresselhaus which oscillates extensively between adventurous electronic pop-music and experimental, sometimes improvised freeform music, while occasionally bringing these and other opposing elements together.
Since the mid-Nineties, he has been exploring unknown musical territory on practically each new release, solo or in diverse short- and long-term collaborations and projects with the likes of ex-Pan sonic member Ilpo Väisänen (as die Angel), Zappi W Diermaier (Faust), Reinhold Friedl (zeitkratzer), Oren Ambarchi, Hildur Guðnadóttir, BJ Nilsen, Lucio Capece, Elena Poulou (ex-The Fall), Damo Suzuki (ex-Can), John Duncan (LAFMS), Einstürzende Neubauten’s Jochen Arbeit & Andrew Unruh, Günter Schickert as well as to numerous works in the field of film music, radio plays, (performance-) theater, contemporary dance and general studio production.
Over the last years, Dirk has been moving Schneider TM in the direction of instantly composed freeform music, employing varying equipment like processed guitar & sound objects as well as field recordings, as documented on albums like Construction Sounds, Guitar Sounds or ‚Con- Struct, a posthumous collaboration with Conrad Schnitzler, all released on Bureau B.
Ereignishorizont, Schneider TM’s new and with a duration of over 80 minutes truly epic album, sounds and feels like a soundtrack for a yet-to-be-made sci-fi movie and exposes the essence of Dresselhaus' artistic approaches, crafted here with a more pared-down set-up, an awareness of advanced musical techniques, the physicality of sound, and an improvisational spirit that is based on the experience that things are strongest when they happen first.
Performed on (partly self-developed) electroacoustic guitars + effects through a stereo set of tube amps with sensibilities for the world of modular synthesis and a range of seemingly contrarian musical directions, the 8 tracks present transcendental micro- and macrotonal soundscapes and polyrhythms, a musical cosmology that appears to be located in a sort of idiosyncratic alternate or parallel universe where parameters are slightly shifted, which doesn't necessarily mean something like ‘otherworldliness’ but certainly offer a view onto ‘reality‘ from a bunch of different angles.
The main tools on Ereignishorizont are two customized electroacoustic guitars:
# The "FireSchneiderTM“ has sound chambers featuring removable bakelite lids and piezo mics, that can be used as percussion tools, vocal mics, or filled with interesting sounding materials like screws, etc.
# The next step in the long-term collaboration between Schneider TM and Deimel Guitarworks is the "SPARK“:
In addition to conventional magnetic and piezo pickups the guitar also has playable reverb springs, one of which is attached to the tremolo construction and can be tensioned. The different sound sources can be combined via a global selector switch and sent to an integrated electronic LesLee, which oscillates back and forth between the signals and is connected to CV In & Out sockets for integrating e.g. modular synthesizers via control voltage. The "SPARK" can not only be played acoustically, electrically and electronically, but as an electro-acoustic sound object it also offers possibilities for playing techniques that are not typical for guitars.
The sci-fi feel of Ereignishorizont is complemented by the artwork by Sebastian Mayer who, just a few weeks before Dresselhaus contacted him, got the opportunity to work as a beta-tester with some of the first available AI based image generators (for which Mayer himself prefers the name „neural network image generator“ because there’s no „intelligence“ - yet - in these networks).
Dirk sent Sebastian some tracks of the new album with the note that he was thinking about this particular image when recording them. Mayer listened to his recordings and understood what inspired Schneider TM about these more-or-less artificial artworks: “there’s a crude weirdness to the image, it’s funny but at the same time a bit frightening, by topic and by style. It’s like an omen of what’s ahead of us in regards to AI – and not only about image generation but in a wider sense. AI will impact our society in ways we can not yet comprehend, and this image is a coarse yet deceptive harbinger for things that are yet to come - for better or worse.”
