Reinhold Friedl — Xenakis (A)live

As the title suggest this is a tribute to Modern Greek classical &  electro-acoustic pioneer Iannis Xenakis, with berlin based  composer and pianist Reinhold Friedl joined by the avant/noise chamber orchestra zeitkratzer.

Thorough you can clearly hear Xenakis violent, macabre and otherworldly fingerprints with-in the sound, they manage to breath their own  touches and edges  into the nearly hour compositions. I guess it’s best describing this as classical noise, with some electronic and sampled elements deep with-in. The ten piece collective build up a mean and often creepy wall of dense sawing of strings, bellowing and yawning horns,  layers of  percussive beaten matter & eerier contrabass bellows.

It has a very dense subterrain and often fiery feel, giving the impression of walking the boiling corridors of hell, passing by different rooms filled with each persons individual hell, having quite a haunted alien/violent and sawing and seething beauty about it all. Towards the middle of the track it starts to go more towards drony and sinister, at times in the albums latter periods bringing to mind the atmospheric and strange dark expanses of some of Starving Weirdoes  damp and eerier work, but with a high modern classical edge & embossed with the odd darkly curdled  cinematic touches here and there.

As well as the audio disc, you also get a second DVD disk with visuals to accompany the whole piece by Lillevan from Rechenzentrum. It mostly brought to mind the DVD visuals for Coil’s Ans set, but not really been inspired or varied enough to make it partially watchable over the full hours playing time. I feel the piece is more effective with out visuals, which lets you conjure up your own imagery  and concentrate on the many unfold levels of sound better. A dark room and headphones are perfect way to experience this.

A violent, eerier and dense listening experience that has to have concentrated playing at loud volumes to really appreciate its power and complexities.