Bernhard Günter
Born 1957, in Neuwied, Germany. Starts playing drums at 12; changes to electric guitar at 17. in 1980 moves to paris; visits readings by pierre boulez at IRCAM and College de France and works in the libraries of IRCAM and Centre Pompidou, to aquire contemporary compositional techniques. he owns Trente Oiseaux label.
Born 1957, in Neuwied, Germany. Starts playing drums at 12; changes to electric guitar at 17. in 1980 moves to paris; visits readings by pierre boulez at IRCAM and College de France and works in the libraries of IRCAM and Centre Pompidou, to aquire contemporary compositional techniques. he owns Trente Oiseaux label.
Un Peu De Neige Salie
Guenter's assiduous compositions favor extremely subtle variances in electro-acoustic crackle, subsonic rumble, and subliminal frequencies exploring the limits of the audible spectrum through invisible digital edits. The title of his landmark debut album, released in 1994 and reissued through Table of the Elements in 1996, translates as "a little dirty snow," an apt description for Guenter's naturally impressionistic minimalism. UN PEU DE NEIGE SALIE opens with "Untitled I/92," a degenerating ma…
Slow Gestures / Cérémonie Désir (For Heike)
“It is very difficult for me to speak of this work, since it is getting very close to my goal of creating a kind of language free space. I thus prefer to let it go without further comment other than that I dedicate it to my companion Heike - each gesture is both speaking of her, and speaking to her, without words.” Bernhard Günter
then, silence
Then, Silence is dedicated to Morton Feldman and Luigi Nono. The experience of listening to their music has changed my understanding, my way of hearing, my thinking about, and my creating music so much that my own work would simply be unthinkable without it. Dedicating Then, Silence to them is my modest Thank You to Morton Feldman and Luigi Nono, expressing not only my admiration, but also the sadness their untimely parting causes me.
Home, unspeakable
Home, Unspeakable is a collaboration between Duncan and Günter based on Samuel Beckett's last work, an opera libretto entitled Neither that he wrote on the back of a card for Morton Feldman. Although Günter and Duncan both claim Feldman as strong influences, this work sounds little like Feldman, but is instead a "series of musical 'places,' which in their entirety form the topography of a 'landscape' we feel might be described by the final words of Beckett's text: unspeakable home" (from the lin…
Japan
Originally projected to be sold exclusively at our concerts during our tour in Japan in November 2001 this split CD of Steve Roden and me will be released on TRENTE OISEAUX, along with Steve's upcoming CD for our label, because we found ourselves to fond of the pieces it contains to limit it to this use. While the three pieces differ very much in style (mine being made of noises exclusively, while the two by Steve are using concrete sounds), they work together very well.
Un océan de certitude
long out of print, one copy only available - Un ocean de certitude' V223 is a triple set: a disk each by Gunter and Wehowsky and one collaboration. Gunter's piece 'Deceptive likeness' is a minimal work, which while at a low volume is not quite subliminal, and close listening (especially on earphones) reveals a delicate soundscape. There are small musical events - what sounds like a cello, rising and falling tones, an almost shaker-percussion, a match being lit, metal clanking, water - which occu…
Trans
The most striking characteristic of TRANS~ is the use of a field recording of a group of three small power transformers I conceived as a kind of improvised piece, changing microphone positions to cull different sounds and overtone spectra from the transformers' intense hum. The field recording became our basis track for TRANS~, and is exceptionally well and seamlessly embedded in the piece. Heribert plays his amplified Hackbrett (cymbalon or hammer…
Univers temporel espoir
For this CD, mister Günter has remixed his 1997 piece “Un lieu pareil à un point effacé, 1ere partie”, which had been released on a CD that accompanied the American HALANA magazine, and reworked “Un lieu pareil à un point effacé, 2eme partie”, never released before. He has also made a new version of his piece “The ant moves - the black and yellow carcass - a little closer”, a piece mainly based on sounds from New York based artist John Hudak, who also wrote the title Haiku. This new version has …
Redshift / Abschied
"I was forming plans for a very different project in my mind when i came across a number of DAT tapes from my first sampling days in 1993, the time of 'Un peu de neige salie' - these tapes contained sounds i had not used in those days, and that i could not at all remember the origins / sources of, but that sounded interesting to my present day ears. I thus started to work with them, without the slightest idea of what might be the result, and the piece kind of made itself - the result was a struc…
Crossing the river (night music)
Crossing the River is calm, peaceful, and beautiful, guaranteed to slow you down after a busy urban day (but unlike chemical products designed to this effect, it leaves your mind clear and aware). The effect it had on me was that i bagged my elaborate liner notes about 'crossing the river' as a Buddhist metaphor for reaching enlightenment, and replaced them by this:
Time, dreaming itself
This work's main aspects are, as its title suggests, Time, and the notion of Slowness. Of complex harmonic design similar to "brown, blue, brown on blue (for Mark Rothko)" the composition uses both instrumental images and elements of a more soundscape type character, plus a non-tempered scale as the basis for the various transpositions of the sounds. Other than that, i think it speaks for itself...
brown, blue, brown on blue (for Mark Rothko)
“I finished "brown, blue, brown on blue (for Mark Rothko)" in mid-july 1999, and it picks up where "Slow Gestures / Cérémonie Désir (for Heike)" left off (actually, the two pieces can be listened to as one large work in two parts...). It is dedicated to my favorite painter, Mark Rothko, and the title is taken from one of his paintings that has accompanied me for a long time as print hanging beside my bed. I finally got a chance to see this painting in an exhibition of Rothko's works at the Musée…
Détails Agrandis
This collection of three pieces is dedicated to artists and musicians whom Bernhard Günter admires. The collection's title translates to "Enlarged Details," an apt description of Günter's approach to composition. Musically all of them involve a limited vocabulary of sounds interacting with silence. "Four Grey Paintings" uses low rumbles hovering at the very edge of audibility, interrupted with high-pitched tones and metallic twangs. Dedicated to Jim O'Rourke (an early champion of Günter's music)…
impossible grey
A wildly beautiful. Dangerously low frequencies, that is if you’ve a good system and neighbors. Lovely bright hard sounds, too. You doubtless already like the scratchy sound at the beginnings or endings of LPs
Monochrome Rust / Differential
As with many LINE releases, describing the hyperminimal microsounds of Bernhard Günter’s Monochrome Rust/ Differential is difficult like telling a sketch artist about the features of a ghost’s face seen from a distance – a long time ago – while you were drunk. Extremely vague yet undeniable! Two single-piece CDs are part of Günter’s “triptychon”, with Monochrome Rust (44:30) being the third piece (following Monochrome White and Polychrome w/Neon Nails). A digital degradation of Polychrome, the t…