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CD
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STAUB 071CD
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This is Polish drummer and electronic musician Paul Wirkus' fourth solo release, and first for Staubgold. When his previous album Inteletto D'Amore came out on the Quecksilber label two years ago, for The Wire magazine it was the most engaging and fully-formed work in the field of glitchology to that date. "What makes Wirkus such a master is his ability to show enough of the source material to allow the listener to follow the narrative journey of its processing, and to fit the digital shards and splinters which result into the music's total perspective," Keith Moliné wrote. "He never once falls into the trap of believing that it's only in this digi-scree that the art happens." All this can also easily be said about the Cologne resident's new work, Déformation Professionnelle, but that's just half the truth. Wirkus has gone a big step further. The glitch still forms the basis, but the result is much more song-structured than before, further emphasizing this sound artist's unique narrative qualities. There's hardly any programming here, with most of the tracks directly recorded live onto DAT without overdubs. Melody has become the main focus. Wirkus' background as an improvising percussionist still informs the pointillistic perfection of his output, developed through a series of serious and studied solo albums and extremely varied collaborations.
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CD
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QUECK 004CD
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"Paul Wirkus is a drummer from Poland who has been playing jazz and improvised music for quite some time. During the '80s he played in the well-known Polish punk band Karcer, by the end of the '90s he participated in a post-rock project by the name of Mapa (you might remember the article about them in the Wire magazine). All this information Paul Wirkus does not judge as important, and indeed, to approach the music on his new solo album, it really isn't. What is important is the fact that this CD -- the music on which could broadly be described as 'minimal electronica' -- is Paul's third release under his own name. This time, he didn't want to be too experimental and just rely on the powers of commination of the work itself. The music on this release was created live with several MiniDisc-players hooked up to effects instead of, as one might think, by editing processes done with computers. Thus the tracks have a warmer, more organic character than most other electro-acoustic music. Accidents, coincidences, minute shifts and 'aural snap shots' characterize this music. In contrast to earlier solo-outings, not only samples of strings and piano and white noise are to be heard, but also generated analogue sounds, fragmentary melodies and even vocals. One of the tracks on which he sings is called 'blask' which roughly translates to 'shimmer', a word that characterizes his music very well. Paul is primarily concerned with the sound of the voice itself, his lyrics are more or less 'open'. Searching and finding. Sometimes, he says, it takes some time to realize that you've already got what you want."
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