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2LP
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MORR 189LP
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Double LP version. Includes printed inners and download code; edition of 500. Music for Shared Rooms is B. Fleischmann's eleventh solo album and his first since 2018. It is also not an album, or at least not in the conventional sense of the word. These 16 instrumental pieces provide a kaleidoscopic glimpse of a forward-thinking musician at home in many different musical worlds, including experimental and abstract music, pop, and more classically-minded compositional forms. These pieces were culled from an archive of roughly 600 compositions for theatre pieces and films written throughout the past twelve years. The Österreichischer Filmpreis-awarded composer, however, aimed for more than simply documenting his extensive work in and with different media. To do so, he edited and re-mixed the individual recordings for this release, taking them out of their contexts and reworking them for an audience who can experience them in a different setting. Music for Shared Rooms makes it possible for its listeners to engage with the sounds and to fill the spaces they open up with their own imagination. Roughly speaking, music for theater or film can serve two functions: it either takes the lead, or underscores what is happening on stage or screen. The marvelous thing about these pieces is that they manage to do both. Fleischmann's work as a prolific producer has always drawn on contrasts, at times combining pop sentiment with rigid experimentation, the seemingly naive with the intricate and complex. This approach also marks the tracks collected here: bringing together acoustic elements and electronic sounds, at times working with conventional structures but always de- and re-contextualizing them, Fleischmann constructs a vivid dramaturgy out of discrete singular compositions, letting them interact across the record. A dramaturgical interconnectedness of varied musical materials is the thread that runs through Music for Shared Rooms. The differences between the pieces may be striking, but the progression from one to the other is subtle. It goes on like this through different moods and tempos. All these pieces create distinct situations through the juxtaposition of diverse musical elements, but are also bound together by a single vision. Writing music for theatre pieces or film requires a composer and his pieces to engage with people and their movements in space, which is exactly what Fleischmann offers on this record.
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CD
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MORR 189CD
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Music for Shared Rooms is B. Fleischmann's eleventh solo album and his first since 2018. It is also not an album, or at least not in the conventional sense of the word. These 16 instrumental pieces provide a kaleidoscopic glimpse of a forward-thinking musician at home in many different musical worlds, including experimental and abstract music, pop, and more classically-minded compositional forms. These pieces were culled from an archive of roughly 600 compositions for theatre pieces and films written throughout the past twelve years. The Österreichischer Filmpreis-awarded composer, however, aimed for more than simply documenting his extensive work in and with different media. To do so, he edited and re-mixed the individual recordings for this release, taking them out of their contexts and reworking them for an audience who can experience them in a different setting. Music for Shared Rooms makes it possible for its listeners to engage with the sounds and to fill the spaces they open up with their own imagination. Roughly speaking, music for theater or film can serve two functions: it either takes the lead, or underscores what is happening on stage or screen. The marvelous thing about these pieces is that they manage to do both. Fleischmann's work as a prolific producer has always drawn on contrasts, at times combining pop sentiment with rigid experimentation, the seemingly naive with the intricate and complex. This approach also marks the tracks collected here: bringing together acoustic elements and electronic sounds, at times working with conventional structures but always de- and re-contextualizing them, Fleischmann constructs a vivid dramaturgy out of discrete singular compositions, letting them interact across the record. A dramaturgical interconnectedness of varied musical materials is the thread that runs through Music for Shared Rooms. The differences between the pieces may be striking, but the progression from one to the other is subtle. It goes on like this through different moods and tempos. All these pieces create distinct situations through the juxtaposition of diverse musical elements, but are also bound together by a single vision. Writing music for theatre pieces or film requires a composer and his pieces to engage with people and their movements in space, which is exactly what Fleischmann offers on this record.
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2LP
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MORR 158LP
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Double LP version. Housed in a gatefold sleeve; Includes download code. B. Fleischmann, the longest-tenured solo artist on Morr Music, returns with indie-spirited, electronica-enhanced moments of bliss on his new album Stop Making Fans. Recorded with a little help from friends including vocalist Gloria Amesbauer, Markus Schneider (guitars), and Valentin Duit (drums), it's a two-part reflection on artistic self-reliance vs. fame-seeking conformism, another deeply personal, utterly idiosyncratic album by the indie-tronic trailblazer. "Stop it and just DO", Sol LeWitt once wrote to sculptor Eva Hesse -- and listening to B. Fleischmann's new album, he indeed does both: He slams on the brakes and stops looking at what anyone else is doing, stops pleasing, stops being restrained, and at the same time he floors the accelerator and delivers the kind of high-paced work that bursts at the seams with polyphonic energy and an urgency unique to his music. Arriving with interlocked bleeps, the hustle and bustle of an invisible grand station's atrium ("Here Comes The A Train"), Fleischmann's trademark vocals serve as a gentle reminder to resist the siren calls, to not trust the latest hype. Energy levels remain high throughout the first part of the album -- whether it's the mumbling, personal stocktaking of what feels like an underwater hymn ("There Is A Head"), the robotic, immodest pop tune "It's Not Enough" (featuring Gloria Amesbauer) or the return to light-speed mode on "Wakey Wakey" -- the first half of this album is indeed all about letting off some steam. After the collected canter of seven-minute instrumental "Hand In", the multi-instrumentalist and his studio mates kick off the slower-paced part two with the title song: it's a sonic tapestry that's impossible to compare or pigeonhole when he changes the rhythm in mid-track and turns yet another corner when you thought there was a fixed pattern. Guest singer Gloria Amesbauer returns for soothing tunes "The Pros Of Your Children" and "Hello Hello". B. Fleischmann guides us to his almost jazz-tinged "Little Toy", and leaves behind an "Endless Stunner" -- another typically dense and shape-shifting stream of harmonies. Stop Making Fans, Fleischmann's his first full-length release in five years, is another totally unique, and thus potentially fan-base enhancing release.
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MORR 158CD
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B. Fleischmann, the longest-tenured solo artist on Morr Music, returns with indie-spirited, electronica-enhanced moments of bliss on his new album Stop Making Fans. Recorded with a little help from friends including vocalist Gloria Amesbauer, Markus Schneider (guitars), and Valentin Duit (drums), it's a two-part reflection on artistic self-reliance vs. fame-seeking conformism, another deeply personal, utterly idiosyncratic album by the indie-tronic trailblazer. "Stop it and just DO", Sol LeWitt once wrote to sculptor Eva Hesse -- and listening to B. Fleischmann's new album, he indeed does both: He slams on the brakes and stops looking at what anyone else is doing, stops pleasing, stops being restrained, and at the same time he floors the accelerator and delivers the kind of high-paced work that bursts at the seams with polyphonic energy and an urgency unique to his music. Arriving with interlocked bleeps, the hustle and bustle of an invisible grand station's atrium ("Here Comes The A Train"), Fleischmann's trademark vocals serve as a gentle reminder to resist the siren calls, to not trust the latest hype. Energy levels remain high throughout the first part of the album -- whether it's the mumbling, personal stocktaking of what feels like an underwater hymn ("There Is A Head"), the robotic, immodest pop tune "It's Not Enough" (featuring Gloria Amesbauer) or the return to light-speed mode on "Wakey Wakey" -- the first half of this album is indeed all about letting off some steam. After the collected canter of seven-minute instrumental "Hand In", the multi-instrumentalist and his studio mates kick off the slower-paced part two with the title song: it's a sonic tapestry that's impossible to compare or pigeonhole when he changes the rhythm in mid-track and turns yet another corner when you thought there was a fixed pattern. Guest singer Gloria Amesbauer returns for soothing tunes "The Pros Of Your Children" and "Hello Hello". B. Fleischmann guides us to his almost jazz-tinged "Little Toy", and leaves behind an "Endless Stunner" -- another typically dense and shape-shifting stream of harmonies. Stop Making Fans, Fleischmann's his first full-length release in five years, is another totally unique, and thus potentially fan-base enhancing release.
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CD
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MORR 119CD
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Bernhard Fleischmann, or rather B.Fleischmann deals with some difficult topics such as mortality, ticking clocks, the elusiveness of all existence and "extinction" on his new album I'm Not Ready for the Grave Yet. This time, the Austrian multi-instrumentalist focuses more on the vocals, and for the first time he does all the singing himself. He sings about the transient nature of existence on the forward-bouncing "Tomorrow," a track about eternal postponement. This new album is an honest survey by a man who looks into the future, a man who's trying to translate the lemmings' suicidal longing for freedom into rather wild and yet more comprehensible instrumental terms. "Who emptied the river?" he asks between pounding beats and rectangular guitar bits, followed by a line we get to hear more than once on this LP: "Don't follow me." Fleischmann is a musician who's breaking new sonic ground with each track: at one point, he has a call & response conversation with a bunch of vocal samples, discovered on ancient language course LPs, with himself taking on various abstract characters from virtues to mortal sins. Whereas this new album is generally more about beats, rhythms, percussive elements and pushing things onward, resulting in a vibe that feels rather rough around the edges, there are also mellower tracks such as "At Night the Fox Comes," which makes for just the right balance between sonic experiment and proper song structures. Of course, we all know that one day we'll have to make our last exit.
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LP
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MORR 119LP
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LP version. Bernhard Fleischmann, or rather B.Fleischmann deals with some difficult topics such as mortality, ticking clocks, the elusiveness of all existence and "extinction" on his album I'm Not Ready for the Grave Yet. This time, the Austrian multi-instrumentalist focuses more on the vocals, and for the first time he does all the singing himself. He sings about the transient nature of existence on the forward-bouncing "Tomorrow," a track about eternal postponement. This album is an honest survey by a man who looks into the future, a man who's trying to translate the lemmings' suicidal longing for freedom into rather wild and yet more comprehensible instrumental terms. "Who emptied the river?" he asks between pounding beats and rectangular guitar bits, followed by a line we get to hear more than once on this LP: "Don't follow me." Fleischmann is a musician who's breaking new sonic ground with each track: at one point, he has a call & response conversation with a bunch of vocal samples, discovered on ancient language course LPs, with himself taking on various abstract characters from virtues to mortal sins. Whereas this new album is generally more about beats, rhythms, percussive elements and pushing things onward, resulting in a vibe that feels rather rough around the edges, there are also mellower tracks such as "At Night the Fox Comes," which makes for just the right balance between sonic experiment and proper song structures. Of course, we all know that one day we'll have to make our last exit.
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2CD
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SHAKE 012CD
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These two concerts B. Fleischmann recorded complement each other and interlock quite smoothly and organically, lifting you up when the other is pulling you down and vice versa. The first track "For M - A Tribute To Mark Linkous" was recorded in May 2010 at Klangboden Mödling: Austrian angst might still be no option for a Weltanschauung, but there is a certain unease at work in the beginning, pushing down the strings and the cautious guitar loops. The entire piece is a musical obituary for the man who started Sparklehorse and shot himself only a few weeks prior to this very concert. While Fleischmann takes care of electronics, guitar and omnichord, as he usually does, he was joined on stage by Matthias Frey (violin, snare), Martin Siewert (guitar, lap-steel, bass, electronics), and Alexandr Vatagin (bass, electronics, cello). The resulting 45+ minutes of commemoration, initiated by B. for the late M., so to speak, is a dark yet glistening pile of leaves, in which the musicians repeatedly return to the bass line, the key note, the pulse, the "why," to all those existential questions about the end we all have to face one day. Question marks in the shape of a soaring lap-steel guitar appear on top of beats that turn and squeak, softly, like an extended lament, a form of rebellion, a consultation of yet more instruments, wondering and meandering in unison, until it all gives way to a swooshing noise, a threat to crush the listener from the inside, gnawing, biting, then resolve at last: harmony, harmonies, a shadow of zest, faith. Although he has contributed vocals now and then in the past, our man from Vienna remains silent for the second track as well, focusing on ambience alone: "Mikro_Kosmos," a solo piece, was recorded in June 2010 at "Festival Irritationen II." Like scoundrels in striped rags, a bunch of sounds appear on the quiet, two of them and a third hidden in the underbrush keeping watch, yet the electronic fetters soon get a hold of them, and a pool is filled with swirling, creaking textures, sliding downwards under a long note, long and wide like a horizon of dark clouds. "Mikro_Kosmos" is a spectacle of nature, a self-renewing environment populated by wraithlike creatures. In the middle part, Fleischmann's guitar takes the lead, runs wild, things are head over heels all of a sudden, there's beating and elopement, until we hear new paws on the ground, and the playing field is ready to be cluttered up once again: grow, thrive, wither, fade away, be eaten, until the next breakup sets this little world on fire.
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CD
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MORR 085CD
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Morr Music releases another record by their old Viennese friend B. Fleischmann. Two genuine and touching farewell songs are the beacons of light on this record, and, even more than The Humbucking Coil, Angst Is Not A Weltanschauung! has made its way from sound to songwriting. Still the sounds come tumbling out of the hard disk and one can hear fingers screwing on regulators. And yet these nine tracks are of a distinct corporeity and spatiality; for instance, when Marilies Jagsch or Sweet William Van Ghost lend their voices for two wonderful moments each. The productive feedback between Vienna and Berlin, between Bernhard Fleischmann and Thomas Morr started with Pop Loops For Breakfast nine years ago. With Angst Is Not A Weltanschauung!, Bernhard Fleischmann arrives at a carefully-set wooden table, arranged in a warm and glowing sunset. The aromas are darker and more wholehearted now. The groove box of former times has vanished almost entirely -- only within the congenial embrace of Bernhard Fleischmann's "Phones & Machine" (The Humbucking Coil) and Daniel Johnston's "King Kong" can it still be traced. Regardless of the change in tune, these sounds won't pass you by -- they swing on to the next morning, stroll through the streets with you, drift as an echo from the houses' walls; sometimes as a slow dub, sometimes as an intimate ballad. These are sounds that tumble and dance.
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LP
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MORR 085LP
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LP version. Morr Music releases another record by their old Viennese friend B. Fleischmann. Two genuine and touching farewell songs are the beacons of light on this record, and, even more than The Humbucking Coil, Angst Is Not A Weltanschauung! has made its way from sound to songwriting. Still the sounds come tumbling out of the hard disk and one can hear fingers screwing on regulators. And yet these nine tracks are of a distinct corporeity and spatiality; for instance, when Marilies Jagsch or Sweet William Van Ghost lend their voices for two wonderful moments each. The productive feedback between Vienna and Berlin, between Bernhard Fleischmann and Thomas Morr started with Pop Loops For Breakfast nine years ago. With Angst Is Not A Weltanschauung!, Bernhard Fleischmann arrives at a carefully-set wooden table, arranged in a warm and glowing sunset. The aromas are darker and more wholehearted now. The groove box of former times has vanished almost entirely -- only within the congenial embrace of Bernhard Fleischmann's "Phones & Machine" (The Humbucking Coil) and Daniel Johnston's "King Kong" can it still be traced. Regardless of the change in tune, these sounds won't pass you by -- they swing on to the next morning, stroll through the streets with you, drift as an echo from the houses' walls; sometimes as a slow dub, sometimes as an intimate ballad. These are sounds that tumble and dance.
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2CD
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SHAKE 003CD
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Music from the depths of the room. Music from the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, like Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's
transparent sculpture made of steel, concrete and glass. And in it there are the city lights, reflecting. On the occasion
of the exhibition Melancholie -- Genie und Wahnsinn in der Kunst and a series of concerts that went were curated
by de:bug magazine, the Vienna-based sound-bricoleur Bernhard Fleischmann has not only given a concert in
the Neue Nationalgalerie, he has also composed a song only for that special night: 49 minutes and 15 seconds. Featuring
the most melancholy of all instruments, the bandoneon, a cello and oscillating synthesizers. Melodies materialize softly
and turn into bittersweet opulence, surrounded by short but central lines of loneliness recited from Rainer Maria
Rilke's Herbsttag and Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy. On CD2, there is a picnic in
the country, at the foot of a broadcasting mast outside of Vienna. Then, in summer 2003, it was the Kunstradio, the art
channel of the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation. Fleischmann took piano miniatures of the Austrian composer Franz
Schubert as his source material. Again, the track is about 50 minutes long -- a journey from tumbling piano patterns
to a drifty Vienna Wall of Sound, from Schubert to Fleischmann, if you want to. The tracks were performed live only once.
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