Geisteswissenschaften
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By A_dontigny
Digital album / IMNT 0715
Album on compact disc / IMNT 0715
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1. Koons
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2. Pruitt-Igoe
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3. Tatline
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4. Aufbau
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5. Die fröhliche Wissenschaft
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6. Quelque chose d’informel
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7. Color Field
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8. Gutai
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9. Recollection of Similarity
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10. Begriffsschrift
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11. Crowding Into the Behavioural Sink
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12. Holzwege
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13. Turner
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14. All-Over
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15. Wirkungsgeschichtesbewusstsein
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16. Mathesis
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17. Crowding Into the Behavioural Sink (Jon Vaughn’s Rondo Mix)A_dontigny (Remix: Jon Vaughn)
“Today, when we can eat Tex-Mex with chopsticks while listening to reggae and watching a YouTube rebroadcast of the Berlin Wall’s fall – i.e., when damn near everything presents itself as familiar — it’s not a surprise that some of today’s most ambitious art is going about trying to make the familiar strange. […] Whatever charge of tastelessness or trademark violation may be attached to the artistic appropriation of the media environment in which we swim, the alternative — to flinch, or tiptoe away into some ivory tower of irrelevance — is far worse.” (Foster Wallace, as “plagiarized” by Jonathan Lethem in The Ecstasy of Influence, Harper’s Magazine, February 2007)
This first solo CD by composer A_dontigny (morceaux_de_machines, Napalm Jazz, Ensemble Camp…) has been deliberately conceived to be in the margins of electroacoustic music, electronica and audio art.
Thought up as a series of short sarcastic vignettes, Geisteswissenschaften skilfully manipulates common aesthetic postures in order to create a sound mosaic where one can find hints at modern art history and philosophy. To an arsenal of cut-and-paste and cut-ups, to which we may include encoding glitches and all matter of samples and quotes, A_dontigny adds the sonic interventions of three of his usual collaborators: Paul Dolden (electric cello, guitar and bass), Diane Labrosse (sampler) et Jon Vaughn (remix).
An ode to freedom? A manifest against all dogmas? That’ll depend on the mood of the listener. In the end, Geisteswissenschaften wishes to be a celebration of independance of spirit and human intelligence, one of those rare works that continue to be nourished by great hopes.
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