 |
1 | 8.5.25 | 25:19 |
Gloriously psychoactive set from Joke Lanz (turntable) and Ute Wassermann (voice + objects), recorded as part of a stellar line-up alongside Charmaine Lee and Jackson Burton at OTO in May 2025.
From the outset, there's a real sense of playfulness here, but the technical skill on display from both artists here is truly jaw dropping. They both wear it lightly though, allowing the listener to sit back and bask in the generosity of a rare gift, freely given.
Ute's voice covers a scarcely believable range, not so much speaking in tongues as channeling an entire other realm. Guttural growls and avian trills mix with half-swallowed breaths and Clangerish whistles; gulps and gasps and overtones spin around each other, all interspersed with a whole array of bird whistles, noisemakers and found objects. Through Ute's vocalisations, Joke weaves snatches and snippets of sound from the turntables, crafting a surreal, absurdist collage of orchestras and oratorios, clattering percussion and stammering preachers, low brass and penny whistles and much, much more.
Both artists move with a remarkable dexterity, and, even more than this, a vitality, a sense of always being fully in the moment, even if that moment is restlessly hurtling ever forward at several hundred miles an hour. There's such an uncanny symbiosis to the duo's interactions - clearly hard-earned - that it's genuinely hard in some places to tell which sound is coming from which performer, or how such a intricate, multilayered sounds could be coming from just two performers at all.
All of this races along at a breakneck pace, barely ever giving the audience time to settle. But why would you want to? The sonic landscape keeps flashing by in an ever-brilliant sugar-rush of kaleidoscopic colour, and it's no hardship at all to just give yourself over to it.
--
Recorded by Rory Salter
Mixed and mastered by Oli Barrett
Joke Lanz (turntable) and Ute Wassermann (voice + objects) have been performing as a duo at international festivals since 2016. Their performance takes the audience on a rollercoaster of vocal, physical and electronic actions. A tour de force of technoid rhythms, cartoonish scraps of speech, twisted melodic fragments, stop-and-go grooves and loops. Their legendary concert at the Konfrontationen festival in Nickelsdorf (2019) was recorded by ORF and released on the Klanggalerie label in 2021. The CD Half Dead Half Alive was longlisted for the 2021 German Record Critics' Award.
Turntablist Joke Lanz is known in particular for his internationally acclaimed project “Sudden Infant” and appreciated for his work in the area between performance/body art and improvisation/noise. He was born in Switzerland and now works from Berlin all over the world. He uses autonomous sound cells to create a personal language that is detached from any function. He combines ritualistic reductionism with anarchistic playfulness, atmospheric landscapes with fragmentary sounds and physicality with unpredictability: scratches, sound walls, grooves, loops, noises and vocal modulations.
Vocal artist Ute Wassermann is one of the outstanding contemporary vocal artists. She has been touring the world as an improviser and performer of contemporary music for many years. In the last ten years she has increasingly realized audiovisual performances/installations and compositions for soloists and ensembles. She combines composition, improvisation and performance art to create her own form of Gesamtkunst, in which environment-related issues play a role. Her multidimensional sound oscillates between electronic, an/organic, animal and human qualities. She masks her voice with bird whistles, a DIY drum and objects, transforming her human form with a seemingly impossible vocal technique.
