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LP
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TONE 068LP
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Strafe Für Rebellion, or Strafe F.R., is a long-term collaboration between the artists Bernd Kastner and Siegfried M. Syniuga, which started in 1979. This release follows 2018's The Bird Was Stolen and sees them reemerge after a long period of hibernation. There are four tracks, four different windows to look out from our studio in Düsseldorf into the street and their different layers of sound. Four horizons, four spy holes in the door, four eyes, four shopping windows. Four landscapes. Witness the electric city and the power house. Strafe F.R. is sitting inside the fuse box. The electric chirp of the night. The socket in which we sleep. The dog comes, in order to devour Strafe F.R. First, he eats the rebellion and next he bites the Strafe. The house and the body, both are earthed and the veins are vibrating. Between the third and the fourth hour of the morning we enter the realm of insomnia. You fly by not using an airplane. An old woman is cleaning the door bells with her own spittle. The old man is distilling schnapps in his back garden. The swimmers are gliding through the day on top of a greasy film. The reception is a flare into seconds until it fades away into noise again. The kettle drum gives the rhythm of breathing, the bass determines the time. You stumble forward, forward into the next day. From our window we see a public building where there exists a toilet, its porcelain shows the most beautiful craquelé fissures. There is an historic poster of Lenin. It is fixed on a garden fence in the landscape and the stinging nettles grow over it softly swinging in the wind. There are shadows but there is also brightness, this means there are complementary colors and contrasts, movements, and reflection until there is stillness. We see the back-breeding of cattle in the Neanderthal age and at the same time we look into the large heating room of an art museum, where we observe tubes and their upstream pressure regulators.
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CD
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TO 110CD
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Based in Düsseldorf, Germany, Strafe Für Rebellion, or Strafe F.R., is a long-term collaboration between the artists Bernd Kastner and Siegfried M. Syniuga, which started in 1979. After a long period of hibernation, The Bird Was Stolen marks their return to Touch following four previous releases in the '80s and early '90s. From their early connection with the local scene, centered around the Ratinger Hof in Düsseldorf, Strafe went on to develop a unique and influential form of sound sculpture that pioneered the use of field recordings alongside home-made instruments and the use of the studio as a performance space. A new track, "Virgin", which appeared on the recent Touch Movements CD/book (FOLIO 002CD, 2017), gave an early indication that they are back at the peak of their powers. The Bird Was Stolen presents 14 new compositions that push the signature sound of Strafe F.R. All songs recorded by Strafe F.R. in 2017 at STRAFE Studio, Düsseldorf, Germany. Features vocals by Caterina De Re and Strafe F.R. Artwork and photography by Jon Wozencroft. Mastered by Denis Blackham.
Strafe F.R. explain the recording:
"1. We have a piano that is somehow completely bare-boned as if a butcher had been at work. The piano is lying on its back -- we can climb into its corpse. The piano strings are easy to access and we prepare them with anything that influences a possible recording. Loudspeakers are installed. Inside the piano we play bass and guitar to use the resonance of the strings of the piano. 'Pianosmoke' was recorded in this way.
2. Sound sources are often 'accidents'. We were recording with our old Uher Portable Tape Recorder -- all of a sudden the machine developed a strange malfunction: the Uher had problems with its engine. Himmelgeist was born. The recorder began to 'scratch' like a vinyl record, but it was the recorder doing everything itself; we could also manipulate the speed with our hands. This was magnificent. Strange rhythms just happened, the tape recorder did it... We are thankful that we managed to record all of this.
3. We often amplify sounds quite loudly, that actually have a very low natural dynamic. This is interesting when recording guitar, piano and the human voice... To reduce the normal recording level by an extreme and amplify the soft, low sounds."
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