Lazarus by Katja Institute vs. Peter Wullen
the second head
Credits
released December 12, 2021
Vital Weekly 1112 -
Twelve weeks ago, in Vital Weekly 1100, we had ‘Peter Wullen in The Katja Institute’, now its ‘Katja Institute vs Peter Wullen’. Two acts of drone music, from America and Belgium. Information on either the cover or Bandcamp is sparse to extent it doesn’t exist, so it is not easy to tell the difference between these collaborations/remixes or whatever else. I would think that somehow, somewhere they (both are solo ventures, I believe) work on each other’s field recordings and treat them in some way. In the past, especially for Katja Institute this resulted in some very abstract, digitally manipulated recordings and here again this is pretty much the case, but not exclusively. This CDR open with a spoken word intro taking from a scripture reading, which is quite different than from before, and in other instances we hear footsteps and water sounds, almost as clearly as you would expect these things. In the end that makes up a fair portion of the release, but the majority here is the ‘usual’ high-level abstract approach to sound treatments. Both Katja and Wullen give the material a firm makeover so we no longer recognize what it is all about. The other thing that is still present is the utter minimalist approach to their treatments. I listened pretty closely (at least I would think so), but sometimes things don’t change on end. It gets stuck in some treatment and it stays there, but once you skip towards the end of such a lengthy fragment, I was inclined to think that it actually had changed. The how and why as to those changes is very unclear. It happened and goes without much noticing but it surely happened. Strange it surely is. As before the Bandcamp version is divided in smaller parts, on CDR it is one long piece of uninterrupted dark ambient music; music we once would label as isolationist I guess, but these days perhaps would call drone music. This is another excellent release. (FdW)
Vital Weekly 1112 -
Twelve weeks ago, in Vital Weekly 1100, we had ‘Peter Wullen in The Katja Institute’, now its ‘Katja Institute vs Peter Wullen’. Two acts of drone music, from America and Belgium. Information on either the cover or Bandcamp is sparse to extent it doesn’t exist, so it is not easy to tell the difference between these collaborations/remixes or whatever else. I would think that somehow, somewhere they (both are solo ventures, I believe) work on each other’s field recordings and treat them in some way. In the past, especially for Katja Institute this resulted in some very abstract, digitally manipulated recordings and here again this is pretty much the case, but not exclusively. This CDR open with a spoken word intro taking from a scripture reading, which is quite different than from before, and in other instances we hear footsteps and water sounds, almost as clearly as you would expect these things. In the end that makes up a fair portion of the release, but the majority here is the ‘usual’ high-level abstract approach to sound treatments. Both Katja and Wullen give the material a firm makeover so we no longer recognize what it is all about. The other thing that is still present is the utter minimalist approach to their treatments. I listened pretty closely (at least I would think so), but sometimes things don’t change on end. It gets stuck in some treatment and it stays there, but once you skip towards the end of such a lengthy fragment, I was inclined to think that it actually had changed. The how and why as to those changes is very unclear. It happened and goes without much noticing but it surely happened. Strange it surely is. As before the Bandcamp version is divided in smaller parts, on CDR it is one long piece of uninterrupted dark ambient music; music we once would label as isolationist I guess, but these days perhaps would call drone music. This is another excellent release. (FdW)
