Titel: SUPERANDOME – SUPER RANDOM ME
Format: single & download code,
Material: recycled paper & Lino print
Limited Edition: 210 (160 pieces extra or as a part of the BOX (50 pieces))
Cover Artwork: Maja Osojnik
Graphics & Linocut: Maja Osojnik
Recorded & Mixed by Rdeča Raketa
Mastered by Martin Siewert
A-Side: SUPERANDOME (4:08)
text: Natascha Gangl, music: Rdeča Raketa (Maja Osojnik & Matija Schellander)
Superar means: to overcome, overtax and go beyond. Superandome means: to grow beyond oneself and thereby transcend that known self. How does that sound? And how does it sound as a Mexican experience? The electronics gurgle and spark, the world they create musically rattles. The language goes forward and backward at the same time and thereby rids itself of rational statements. A new feeling is created and makes room for Mexico as an assembly of curanderas and brujos, of old and new gods and goddesses, of overlapping history and stories. The sound presses and swells, a sound-thundercloud becomes an invocation, an ultimate “llamada” where even the machines begin to breathe.
B-Side: SUPER RANDOM ME (4:28)
text: Natascha Gangl, music: Rdeča Raketa (Maja Osojnik & Matija Schellander)
A miniature film that asks: What do you want to see? What do you want to see when your acoustic experience takes you on a journey into the surreal? When the music invites you into the rainy season, for a walk through the mud and suddenly in this world of sound the door opens and you are standing in a crowded subway. You start to find your way around, you start to explore and bam! You are standing in the rain again, in the mud; it glimmers, it shimmers and wham! A door opens and you are playing in the casino with the original Mexican question, “Where is the gold?” The composers combine their inspirations from acoustics and musique concrète to create a dream in four minutes and twenty-eight seconds in which natural and artificial spaces merge into one another. What is the reference? What will you stick to?
2020, MAMKA RECORDS
All rights reserved by Natascha Gangl & Rdeča Raketa
Supported by SKE-Fonds & Kunstradio – Radiokunst (Ö1)
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REVIEWS:
Christopher Nosnibor in Auralaggravation, UK, 03.12.2020
Just when things threaten to be getting a bit safe and predictable, with many musical artists having found ways of working around Covid restrictions to record remotely, release digitally and promote by means of performing on line or otherwise streaming shows, the ever-restless Maja Osojnik manages to do something truly different and innovative.
The third release on her recently-established Mamka Records is far, far more than just another digital single, and it’s not just about the music, either: it’s about both art and artefact, and forms the very fabric – literally – of an exhibition as well.
With Matija Schellander, Osojnik is Rdeča Raketa, and for this project, they’ve teamed up with author Natascha Gangl and evolved a genre unto themselves, in the form of the ‘sound comic’ (or beautifully evocative ‘Klangcomic’ in German). The concept – whereby, as with comics, ‘where words and images merge into one another, here it is the spoken word and sound which blend together.’ As such, this is a graphic novel in audio form, a juxtaposition of word and sound that conjures an alternative space in between, a cut-up collage of sorts.
But first, the artefact: as the liner notes explain, ‘Each individual record is its own uniquely woven and hand-printed specimen. Woven from the randomly selected strips of paper, cutting remnants from the other works’. Consciously or otherwise, this links the project into the lineage of cut-up forms that feeds through from Tristan Tzara to Kenji Siratori, although perhaps most obviously via William Burroughs. The assimilation and recycling of pre-exiting material taps into the subconscious on a level that’s difficult to explain, conjuring a strange sense of deja-vu, whereby the ghosts of those remnants and scraps of other works forge a subliminal nexus of intertextual references, reminding us of the things we know, but don’t know that we know (to paraphrase Burroughs).
‘Superandome’ very much exists within this territory of the simultaneously familiar and unfamiliar, a murky electronic collage – not really a tune or a song but a shifting soundscape – but an immersive experience. Woozy, tremorous synthy wibbles oscillate and ripple and churn, while a mutter of voices gradually rises in volume and pitch until it reaches a helium-filled cacophony or babble. As with any collage, interpretation is as much about rezeptionsästhetik – essentially what the individual brings to the work as its specific meaning as bestowed upon a work by its creator. And as such, I find myself increasingly on edge, the swelling conglomeration of chatter evoking the anxiety of overcrowding and agoraphobia.
‘Super Random Me’- which is exactly the same 4:28 duration as ‘Superandome’ – is a yet more extreme collage as fragments of voices are overlaid and cut in / out over ominous rumbles, eerie drones, and random tweets. Again, it’s disorientating, bewildering – and yet equally, an encapsulation of the experience of life as lives, a clamour of voices and random sounds all at once.
Both tracks are reworked and edited from a previous work, and so such, are recycled cut-ups that in turn form a self-referential intertext which also challenge the concept of a work of art ever being ‘finished’ or a fixed definite article.
As for the art, in lieu of a conventional single launch, the record was set to be presented as a picture (built out of 110 of the 160 singles) and a video on 17th of December as an Exhibition in the Gallery Kluckyland in Vienna, and the exhibition is scheduled to run until the 3rd of January 2021 – and while at present it can only be viewed from outside, ‘Superandome / Super Random Me’ stands as a remarkable accomplishment that shows once again that it’s the artists of the avant-garde who innovate the hardest. In the year of the lockdown, we need art even more than ever.
Rigobert Dittman for Bad Alchemy, Germany, dec 2020
Mamka Records (Wien)
Das namensgebende Großmütterchen von Maja Osojniks Mamka-Label geht am Stock wie Meister Yoda. An ihrem Rockzipfel hängen drei Urenkelchen: “Chicken” (MAM01), “Mi Corazón” (MAM02) und “Superandome – Super Random Me” (MAM03, golden vinyl). Keines größer als 7″, aber toll aufgemacht mit handgemachtem Artwork, das eine durch Toño Camuñas, das andere von Maja Osojnik & NATASCHA GANGL und das dritte als jeweils handgeflochtenes und handbedrucktes Unikat, von Osojnik geflochten aus nach Zufallsprinzip ausgewählten Papierstreifen. Das Triptychon tonträgt scheibchenweise Exzerpte auch dem Klangcomic “WENDY PFERD TOD MEXIKO” mit Text von Gangl (den sie mit mädchenhafter Stimme spricht). RDEČA RAKETA (= Osojnik & Matija Schellander) haben das zusammen mit ihr als ein Hörspiel aufbereitet und vielfach auch schon konzertant performt – ich erinnere mich dunkel an die Version beim Moers Festival 2018. Schauplatz ist Mexiko, aber in einer magisch-realistischen Version. Erstes Bild: Das ängstliche Herz (There is a chicken in my heart and it bleeds…) fürchtet, von Pegasus abgeworfen, den Sonnenstich und hört nur noch Schlangen, die Unheil verkünden: Doom – Doom – Dooom. Dagegen stimmt Osojnik eine Reihe von Flüchen an, gegen die verfaulten Zungen der Toten, den Staub der Ahnen, die toten Flüsse. Deren Wasser ist verschwunden wie die Frauen von Ciudad Juárez, die Wüsten breiten sich aus, Wellen (wie man gleich noch erfährt) spiegeln sich nur noch in den Wellen im Kopf. In kollektiver Nekrose wurde aus dem magischen Realismus Frida Kahlos ein Nekrorealismus wie in Roberto Bolaños “2666”. Seht euch in die kurz lebenden Augen und haltet dem Blick stand. Das sagt sich so. Elektrobeats und Noisekicks unterstreichen das taffe Postulat. Zweites Bild: Mi corazón, mein Herz ist heute schwarz wie die Nacht. Es tanzt in schwarzem Kleid, mit nichts drunter. Als Köder für den Herrn der Fliegen, als Herzstück eines Giallo-Notturnos, das Osojnik in zartbitterer Melancholie zu Spieluhrklingklang anstimmt. Gefolgt von einem Wiegenlied für ein Neugeborenes, mit dem sich die Mutter selber eingelullt durch das Märchen, dass, wie die Ratten, auch die Fliegen Nachts schlafen und weder an den Toten noch an den Schlafenden saugen. Die Musik klappert dazu wie ein Mühlrad (?), ein Webstuhl (?), der Rest verhallt als Streicheradagio. Steckt in ‘Superandome’ der Appell an den ‘Letzten Menschen’, sich zu überwinden (superar), hin zum ‘Übermenschen’, zur Wonder Woman? Oder zum endgültigen Zombie? Elektrobeats pochen und kaskadieren, der Text ist babylonisiert, zerloopt, verzerrt, von Noise zerschlurcht. Auch das Was willst du sehen? von ‘Super Random Me’ wird zerfleddert und vom Regen weggespült. Atemzüge locken doch die Fliegen an. Die Spieluhr, ein Surren, anschwellendes Tamtam und weiteres Brummen führen hin zu stampfendem, von Alarm rhythmisiertem Groove. Aufgepasst, euer Land bringt euch an seine Grenzen. Etwas besseres als den Tod findet man überall, aber erstmal jenseits der Mauern, Zäune, Tunnel im Reich des Yankeedollars. Bei Kerouac hat der Kompass noch andersrum gezeigt, und on the road nach Mexiko City lockte ein Fantasia… aus – ach du Sch… – fabelhaften Hurenhäusern.
