Martin Brandlmayr: Vive Les Fantomes auf CD

Martin Brandlmayr ist ein österreichischer Schlagzeuger, Komponist und elektronischer Künstler und aktives Mitglied der Gruppen Radian, Trapist, Polwechsel und Kapital Band 1.

»Vive Les Fantômes« ist sein erster Schritt in die Radiokunst und wurde ursprünglich im SWR ausgestrahlt. Er erhielt den Karl-Sczuka-Preis für Werke der Radiokunst 2018, die höchste Auszeichnung für Werke der Radiokunst in Deutschland.

Die Arbeit erscheint als Einheit nur auf CD und basiert auf Ausschnitten von Interviews, Proben und Performances von Menschen, deren Arbeit seinen künstlerischen Weg beeinflusst hat: Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Billie Holiday, Jacques Derrida, Chris Marker und viele mehr.

Product Information

Vive Les Fantômes is a radio play created for German station SWR in 2018, by acclaimed percussionist / producer Martin Brandlmayr (Radian). The work is based on snippets of interviews, rehearsals and performances by people whose work had an influence on Brandlmayr's artistic path: Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Billie Holiday, Jacques Derrida, Chris Marker and many more. The process involved searching, discovering and creating connections among the material and resulted in a network of sound-objects that appear repeatedly changing their shape throughout the piece. Communication is constructed across different rooms and times, beyond the borders of language and music. Vive Les Fantômes is not only a piece of music, it's rather acoustic cinema with a non-linear narrative layer organized by scenes.

Samples pulled from live jazz performances played a central role. At various points it’s not clear if the musicians are still checking their instruments, or if it is already considered as part of the coming piece: an enormous feedback, then drums begin to play, and there seems to be a moment of hesitation before the ensemble starts off full on. There are sounds of people in the audience talking in the distance, their applause, and singular clapping. All these represent moments or aspects of what a moment can be: A complex situation of interactions that happened just here in this one particular moment, that will never be repeated. But we can play the recording of it. We can repeat aspects of this moment and play with them, which is what Vive Les Fantômes does.

Vive Les Fantômes is influenced by Jacques Derrida's book Spectres of Marx and countless discussions with Martin's brother Peter Brandlmayr, who was writing a book at this time touching similar themes. A ghost is something unknown, something that we can´t really determine exactly, vague. A ghost can be an idea, a musical piece, a recording, a sentence that was said on tv or radio, that is interacting with us because it is resonating with us. Ghosts do something with us. They influence us. But the reverse is true as well: We do also interact with ghosts. So in the end it is about communication.

Original and found sounds, the core and backbone of the piece, are representatives of their time in general but also of the very moment when they have been created, with all its complexity and richness to be discovered. To Brandlmayr, Vive Les Fantômes is a celebration of the musical moment, pointing to the past and to the future. Repetition is never repetition - it is always creation.