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12" + CD
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PROFAN 037EP
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In the beginning God created the bass drum. He had it beat for 8,601 days. Then he dropped it. The greatest work of art is death, said the almighty God. And that one is expensive. Finite. Infinite. That's politics and sciences and arts. The art of omission. The art of refusal. Death is total. Do you want the total bass-drum?
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12"
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PROFAN 036EP
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Originally the B-side to Rückverzauberung 2, "Du Musst Nichts Sagen" marched towards a dark fortress, following a point-blank trail and inspired by the mute grit of the many. The remixes present three distinct alternatives, starting with the "Fanfaren Mix" that cranks up the amount of fanfare, the "Informel Mix," created as the soundtrack for an experimental video (http://youtu.be/49_-S5nWdMI) and the "Doppelvoigt Mix" which takes an interview given by Wolfgang Voigt and translates it into some sort of document of techno both abstract and humoristic.
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CD
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PROFAN 010CD
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For Wolfgang Voigt, techno is a means of constantly reinventing himself. After the publication of the highly idiosyncratic Freiland Klaviermusik (PROFAN 009CD), the two Sog records Abweichung and Fremde Hände, and Du Musst Nichts Sagen, on Profan, his new album Kafkatrax is dedicated to the human voice. As in previous projects, Voigt is solely interested in the sound and the structure of the original material -- in this case, recited text. Using various cutting and covering techniques, he disassembles the text into a disturbing, abstract "literature rap" that at best creates an illusion of comprehending fragments of the shredded words and sentences left over. In combination with Voigt's typical Umta techno beat, the outcome is a kind of vocal polka consisting of voices and their side acoustics that sound like psychedelic without guitars or acid without 303. The fact that Voigt used a Kafka audio book CD, reminiscent of his literary preferences as a teenager, is entirely meaningless to the final musical product -- Voigt is only interested in the sound of recited vocal text. He could have equally used Thomas Mann or the Grimm Brothers. What is interesting, however, is that by covering and layering the voices across up to 5 octaves, a claustrophobic, nightmarish atmosphere is created that can definitely be described as Kafkaesque.
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12"
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PROFAN 035EP
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Following the legendary first two, stoically super-minimal records, Profan presents Fremde Hände. The A-side contains a tonally noncommittal sequence ambling across the keyboard in quantized form, reminiscent of the arpeggiator (accompaniment function) function of early '70s and '80s synthesizers. On the B-side, daring and thoroughly unquantized quaver rhythms rock around a bass drum that, as the only straight element, tries to keep the whole thing together. The result sounds a little like a delirious Can live.
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12"
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PROFAN 034EP
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Another eagerly-anticipated 12" from Wolfgang Voigt's newly-revived Profan label. Including part two of an exclusive track released on the Pop Ambient 2011 compilation (KOMP 087CD/KOM 223LP) that sonically describes the Profan concept. Gas-eous harmony that glows and leaves you wanting more.
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12"
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PROFAN 033EP
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Profan presents the original version of Wolfgang Voigt's hypnotic minimal track "Verwandlung" as well as "Geduld" from the album Freiland Klaviermusik (PROFAN 009CD). DJ Koze has created an incomparable remix that has the potential to make this track a massive floor-filler, and in doing so, he has effectively integrated all of the relevant and original piano parts of the track.
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CD
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PROFAN 009CD
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If experimental minimalistic dance music as we know it today had existed during the lifetime of Arnold Schönberg and Paul Hindemith, it might have sounded much like this present album. Something fascinating and possibly well known, is that Kompakt label founder Wolfgang Voigt has a fondness for historical music like this. Freiland-Klaviermusik stays true to this idea, maintaining its focus on music composed for the piano, but composed with a very different approach. It's once again Voigt's effort to find a musical structure that eliminates the boundary between freely-improvised "virtuosic" music and fine-incremental sequencing of a computer matrix. In Voigt's Freiland project there is one underlying theme; one single sound varied in many different ways surrounding the main idea of minimal-techno music: the four-to-the floor bass drum. In this case, it's a synthetic piano, which moves between rhythmic and abstract, between deliberateness and coincidence, within a somewhat predefined structure. Sometimes the clock of the bass drum does not accompany its presence at all. The present aesthetics of atonal, sometimes Kafka-esque and early 20th century classical music are rather a "pleasant by-product" than an authentic classical-music statement. Blasting borders and breaking rules to create apparently new revelations has always been Voigt's drive. Apart from his timeless preference to adopt different musical styles such as classical-music, jazz, schlager or brass music into his own music, in this case, Voigt's encounter with the music of composer Conlon Nancarrow (1912-1997) was an important influence. In Nancarrow's work, Voigt found strong parallels to his own; the search for unpredictability and spontaneity, often affecting his way of working, to find a symbiosis between man and machine. This approach has also influenced Voigt's work as a visual artist. The front cover of the record presents an excerpt from one of Voigt's Tetrapak-paintings, in which he covers, combines, and confronts a predetermined mechanical structure (pattern, wallpaper ≙ loop, pattern) with more or less a free, progressive, and rhythmic painting technique. The current releases on Voigt's re-launched '90s label Profan together with the reunion of his music with his lesser-known work as a performing artist represent that in 2010, Voigt sees minimal music through as it relates to minimal art rather than minimal techno. It could also be that Voigt believes that art can express complication and pain in ways that the minimal techno of today cannot.
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12"
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PROFAN 032EP
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Profan (...remember Wolfgang Voigt's abstract techno label from the 1990s) is back from the future. Like his earlier projects, the brand new SOG release combines seemingly familiar and extremely unfamiliar signs, and in the most unusual way bends them around the utterly familiar bass drum. The result is a conspiracy of four sound frescos of peculiar beauty which deserve the title "Abweichung" (trans. "deviance") -- named after Voigt's painting featured on the cover. This is minimal art-techno that raises questions.
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LP
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PROFAN 029LP
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12"
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PROFAN 028
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Repressed! Classic Wolfgang Voigt tracks from 2000, with remixes by Michael Mayer and Tobias Thomas. "Coming from the heart is the solid-rocking version by Frankfurts DJ-high priest Sven Vath. In collaboration with the supersmart producer-duo Roman Flugel/Jorn E. Wuttke (Alter Ego, Eight Miles High) he handed in a fat modern DJ-tool. As heartily is the mix of the Cologne DJ-heroes Michael Mayer and Tobias Thomas. Sweated out Studio 672-like, spaced out and tranced into form. And finally once more by the original Wassermann."
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