Mi, 18.9.2013, 20.30 Uhr im MUG / EINSTEIN Gewölbe 4

▶ S O N T A G  S H O G U N

NYC’s piano+electronics+tapeloops trio ON TOUR IN EUROPE with DEAD RAT ORCHESTRA

Spätsommerklänge im SIGNALRAUM
Ambient Sounds und exzentrische Videocollagen. Gestaltwandlerisch  melodiös, irritierend und  unvorhersehbar. Musik zum hin- oder wegträumen. S O N T A G  S H O G U N arbeitet mit  Künstlerpersönlichkeiten wie Matana Roberts, Tom Carter, Aki Onda oder einem Kollektiv japanischer Videokünstler zusammen.

funny-bone effects trill like cicadas or fireworks or distant slide whistles; sonatas and pitch-shifted drones suck face. Unlikely antecedents turn up in this mournful and meditative melee - Ray Cummings, Village Voice

Mit:
Ian Temple – piano
Member of Trio, [the] slowest runner [in all the world]
Jeremy Young – reel-to-reel tapes, oscillators, piezo’d objects
Aka szil‡rd, member of Foxout! and [the] slowest runner [in all the world]
Jesse Perlstein – laptop, voice, field recordings

Aka Absent Warrior, member of Marble Fawn and [the] slowest runner [in all the world]

There's a tangible loneliness to Sontag Shogun's music, but there's a wistful loveliness present, too. The Brooklyn trio assumes a sort of songwriting assembly line, with Ian Temple's emotive, tremulous piano figures falling prey to Jesse Perlstein's legion of atmospheric, laptop-catalogue samples and the oscillator/tapes/electronic militia at Jeremy Young's command. Borne thereof are instrumentals that hover somewhere between quiet-storm raucous and New Age quiescent: giggly ivory-tickles brush elbows with industrial found sounds; funny-bone effects trill like cicadas or fireworks or distant slide whistles; sonatas and pitch-shifted drones suck face. Unlikely antecedents turn up in

this mournful and meditative melee; (The band counts composers like Arvo Part, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Philip Glass, and Max Richter among their influences.) Perhaps it's just that

they seem to, for succumbing to a Sontag Shogun song is like wandering into a mist or thinny in a mystery novel: the first few seconds are universally objective, but beyond that, the experience is colored by what the listener brings to the table. ”

-Ray Cummings, Village Voice

Mit:

Ian Temple – piano

Member of Trio, [the] slowest runner [in all the world]

Jeremy Young – reel-to-reel tapes, oscillators, piezo’d objects

Aka szil‡rd, member of Foxout! and [the] slowest runner [in all the world]

Jesse Perlstein – laptop, voice, field recordings

Aka Absent Warrior, member of Marble Fawn and [the] slowest runner [in all the world]

weitere Stimmen:

“Sontag Shogun is a very corporeal project in which very pretty keyboard melodies are

caressed and oppressed by organic and electronic sounds, resulting in a very different

jazz and a very unusual ambient.”

–Avant Music News

“Absent Warrior, Abandoned Battlefield, in other words, effectively demonstrates that

prettiness and experimentalism needn't be thought of as mutually exclusive properties.”

-Textura

“Absent Warrior, Abandoned Battlefield is deeply evocative, even nostalgic, aiming for

maximum emotional impact with nary a lyric to be found anywhere. Go ahead, lend this

NYC trio 26 minutes; they will wander away with a heart you didn’t even know you had

and dash it into a million glittering shards.”

–Village Voice

“It's one of those rare collections of music that really strikes you with both its intimacy and

daring, like the end result of a precocious but wonderfully talented young musical

prodigy bringing a bored extra-terrestrial home from the woods to wreak potential havoc

in the practice room but instead discovering a strange fluency and deep bonding...one

of the most intriguing progressive classical works I've heard this year.”

“The warmth of piano set against the colder climate of electronics and a bit of field

recordings here and there, the rumble of contact microphones and such like make up

five great pieces of music that flow right into each other. Too loud to be microsound, but

also too soft to be noise - the thought of that!”

-Vital Weekly

“On the surface, the music of New York trio Sontag Shogun gives the impression of neoclassicism

that recalls the piano-led inclinations of Sigur Ros and Dustin O'Halloran. The

truth, however, is much more obscured as their recent EP, "Absent Warrior, Abandoned

Battlefield," is just as likely to display a raw, unbridled sense of exploration as it is a serious

sense of piano-based fragility.”

-Experimedia

signalraum - gefördert vom Kulturreferat der Landeshauptstadt München. Impressum.