Tomas Korber/Bernd Schurer - 250904

Balloon & Needle
bnn16

I’m not sure there’s so much to be said about this release. Bernd Schurer (computer) was performing at a squat in Zurich, decided he didn’t want to play solo and asked Tomas Korber (electronics) to sit in and the two created 18 minutes of music. The result, even if(as was the case with myself) you weren’t familiar with Schurer’s prior work, is probably along the lines of what you might expect: generally low-level abstract electronics (with notably loud exceptions right near the beginning and end) packed with scratchy, troubled detail. It’s fine but nothing I’d call exceptional.

But.

There’s something really appealing about it, something very un-performance like, as though you stumbled across these 18 minutes on the way to somewhere else. It’s very open and airy in that sense, without any of the hermeticism that can often attach to similar performances. Sure, there are the subsonic pulses paired with the hypersonic mosquito whines, the scrabbling around erose surfaces, the harsh, subtle drones. But it moves with a confidence that implies absolute openness to any direction they happen to turn. Hard to say why I get this feeling from this particular recording and not so many others, but it’s (subjectively) there. Maybe it had to do with the ad hoc nature of the performance, the lack of very much psychological prep time. Whatever the case, it’s a very enjoyable little package. Oh and the material packaging itself is way cool as well.

balloon & needle