UPIC Diffusion Session #23 by Haswell & Hecker

 

Russell Haswell and Florian Hecker are sort of interconnected together and also with  Mego/Editions Mego. They have released albums individually since Haswell’s Live Salvage 1997->2000 cd release (MEGO 012) in 2001 and the debut Hecker release IT ISO161975 (MEGO 014) in 1998.

They are coming back together with an album that has  two-channel edit produced initially for their UPIC DIFFUSION SESSION #23, performed as a live diffusion across 8-channels at the X100 Festival, Berlin, 2023, celebrating the 100th anniversary of Xenakis' birth.

Xenakis is the main figure and protagonist of this album - it's an exploration of his UPIC system. It was an utopian way that could help other artists or just anyone to be able to create music output and could be accessible to everyone who doesn't necessarily has a classical or formal training in music. 

H&H duo started experimenting with different images and fed it to the UPIC system - photographs of disasters, atrocities, natural world, microscopic images of molecular structures. The result is definitely some sort of synesthetic overload.  

The whole album feels plunderphonic but it brings the quality of noise mayhem and anything but obvious. Its subtle sways and shifts are powerful enough to distract you to the point when you will simply start to pay attention and immerse yourself in all this.

Two tracks and two sessions of somewhat surreal plunge into an utter sonic chaos.

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