Stephan Mathieu
Stephan Mathieu (born 11.October 1967) is a German musician and sound artist whose work is based on digital and analog processing techniques, mainly as a self taught composer and performer of his own music. Mathieu's music, based on recordings of acoustic, mainly early period instruments, which are transformed by digital and analogue processes, proving that the most functional and impersonal of musical instruments, the laptop, is capable of producing work not only of great beauty, but of mysterious and powerful emotion.
Stephan Mathieu (born 11.October 1967) is a German musician and sound artist whose work is based on digital and analog processing techniques, mainly as a self taught composer and performer of his own music. Mathieu's music, based on recordings of acoustic, mainly early period instruments, which are transformed by digital and analogue processes, proving that the most functional and impersonal of musical instruments, the laptop, is capable of producing work not only of great beauty, but of mysterious and powerful emotion.
Mauve District
After issuing an incredible stream of collections featuring archival and recent material in the last years, electroacoustic journeyman, Stephan Mathieu, returns with “Mauve District”, his first physical solo stand-alone release of new material since 2017’s “Radiance”. Created as the soundtrack for an exhibition of the American painter, Helen Frankenthaler, at the Museum Folkwang in Essen, Germany, earlier this year, it encounters Mathieu weaving a truly mesmerizing minimalist work for piano and …
Wandermüde
Grönland is proud to announce the reissue of Wandermüde on CD and, for the first time, vinyl. Both versions include one previously unreleased bonus track. The 2LP is pressed on crystal clear vinyl. This 2023 edition was mastered by Stephan Mathieu from the original recordings.
FrequencyLib / Sad Mac Studies
Stephan Mathieu's FrequencyLib was originally released in 2001 on Mille Plateaux's Ritornell sublabel. A quintessential document of the late 1990s/early 2000s Pismo PowerBook era of digitally manipulated audio, FrequencyLib is an adept meditation on the entropic possibilities inherent in popular music. Included with this reissue is the complementary Sad Mac Studies EP - first issued in a run of 100 on Robert Meijer's boutique En/Of label. Exploring similar themes/processes as FrequencyLib, Sad M…
Wurmloch Variationen
* Edition of 300 * For the past 20 years, German composer Stephan Mathieu has been steadfast in pushing his electro-acoustic alchemy to unique and personal places. His debut LP release on Ritornell in 2000, Wurmloch Variationen, would come to define the sound of ambient music for the two decades that followed.
This October, on the 20th anniversary of its release, Wurmloch Variationen will be issued for the first time on vinyl by Dublin-based label Weeding. The album has been astutely remastered …
Heroin
**LP + 12". Incl. printed inner sleeves, edition of 500 copies** Between Christmas 2000 and New Year 2001 producers Ekkehard Ehlers and Stephan Mathieu recorded an album of warm, soft, delicately crackling electronic music in the space of that week. It was christened with the ambivalent title "Heroin" and was released on CD via the label Brombron in 2001 and later in 2003 re-issued on Kit Clayton's Orthlorng Musork on double-LP with remixes the pair had commissioned as expansions.
17 years l…
A Static Place / Remain
**200 copies** Schwebung presents a 2CD edition of Stephan Mathieu's A Static Place and Remain, originally released in 2001 by 12k and Line, respectively. "A Static Place is about the journey of sound. Between 1928 and 1932 the earliest recordings of historically informed performances of music from the late Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque era were etched into 78RPM records. I used some of these records from my collection, playing them back with two mechanical acoustic HMV Model 102 gramophones. …
Radioland
**Deluxe reissue of Stephan Mathieu’s beautiful classic album of realtime processed shortwave radio signal, now reissued with an extra CD of previously unheard material. Double CD, 6-panel 350g cardboard sleeve Pantone Black with spot gloss detail. Available in a super limited edition of 200 copies** Recently, the electroacoustic composer, performer, and installation artist, Stephan Mathieu, has been keeping us mesmerized with a sprawling array of archival material, issued and reissued by his ow…
Folio
A little while back, with the release of German composer and musician Stephan Mathieu’s sprawling 12 CD box set, Radiance, we predictably touched on the overwhelming ambition of such a thing - especially being as good it was. It was hard to imagine we’d be hearing from him again so soon. But here he is before us, issuing another incredible body of work - 8 CDs in total, under the title Folio, on his own Schwebung imprint in an edition of 250. Our minds are bent. His ambitious heights never seem …
Trace. Recordings of Entropic Systems 1998-2018
Another exclusive and elusive release from Stephan Mathieu, a collection of rare and unreleased tracks, Trace is only available as a 2CD - printed in 150 copies only - which includes an instant download of the material. Remastered at Schwebung Mastering in 2018. Design by Caro Mikalef for Cabina. Few copies in stock.
Radiance
**few copies back in stock, very last around** It hardly needs to be said that the context of experimental music is defined by incredibly ambitious efforts. But there’s ambitious, and then there’s ambitious. The German composer and musician, Stephan Mathieu, might have taken the cake. Back in 2016, he began issuing his sprawling Radiance project, the culmination of a decade of work, in the end amounting to twelve thematically linked album length pieces, built around the concepts of stasis, unfol…
Zauberberg
**restocked** "A few years ago, an idea germinated while readingThe Magic Mountain (Der Zauberberg) by Thomas Mann. An idea not driven by the narrativity of the book, but by the traces and the aura invoked in it. That was it: an audible aural journey through the memories of a place lost in the heights of the Swiss mountains. A century after the events depicted in the book, we went to where the story took place, trying to capture the remaining sounds that could have been heard at the time, and th…
The Falling Rocket
This is true cosmic music!!! Stephan Mathieu is at the top of his game with The Falling Rocket, this is some seriously pensive & brooding minimalism that runs the gamut of the emotion rainbow without tossing you around rollercoaster style, with mostly just a Farfisa organ, Hohner Electronium, and radio at his disposal, Mathieu concentrates on a dense & lightweight essence, the sound of civilized silence carved out in the blankness of your mind, surrounded by inaudible hiss & hum, a delicate stat…
Un Coeur Simple
Stephan Mathieu's latest work transforms music made for Gustav Flaubert's titular play. First published as part of the book Trois Contes (Three Tales) in 1877 and translating to 'A Simple Heart', the text, a modern rereading of an old tale, makes for a neat analog to Mathieu's sonic practice - augmenting recordings of obsolete formats - wax cylinders, 78s - and early instruments by computer processes. Using pieces written by early renaissance composer Guillaume Dufay (1400-1474) and performed in…
Coda (For WK)
The new CD-EP (clocking in at 20 minutes exactly) from Stephan Mathieu is a coda to A Static Place (2011, 12k), created with his highly focused setup of two mechanical-acoustic gramophones and computer. Coda (For WK) is dedicated to the legendary “quiet” pianist Wilhelm Kempff, whose 1927 recordings of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 26 Les Adieux from a double 12” 78RPM set on Brunswick were used as input for an autogenerative process. Mathieu’s process emphasizes the archaic beauty and texture of…
Palimpsest
It’s no secret how much we’ve loved Stephan Mathieu’s sublime drones and Sylvain Chauveau’s delicate compositions in the past, so to see these two pillars of experimental music collaborating has got us hot under the collar. But that’s not the half of it – not only did the two decide to work together, they had a very specific concept - ‘Palimpsest’ finds the duo reframing the timeless songs of Bill Callahan (aka Smog). Those familiar with Callahan’s writing might struggle to work out just how two…
Strings
“Strings” documents the long awaited first encounter of David Maranha and Stephan Mathieu, taking place in the Tennis Court of the Parque de Serralves, in Porto, on a sun-drenched yet gusty late-afternoon in July 2011. Having discussed in advance which instruments, tuning and notes to use, the piece was accomplished as an improvisation on the violin, shruti-box and virginals, reflecting both players love for classic minimalism, but also their ability to transform this language and make it their …
A static place
Deluxe edition on double LP, an edition of 155 copies, individually inscribed and numbered, cear vinyl, 140g audiophile quality "Sourced from a mic’d gramophone playing 78rpm records from 1928 to 1932 with a cactus needle for a stylus, A Static Place has the more urgent, dynamic feeling to it. There is heavy use of hissing and layers of analog static to be heard on "Schwarzschild Radius", but it is used sparingly, burying processed choral arrangements and organ passages in its fuzzy warmth. Viny…
To describe George Washington Bridge
To Describe George Washington Bridge is Stephan Mathieu’s 2nd Dekorder release in the 10inch format (reflecting his interest in old 78rpm records) after 2009’s sold out The Key to the Kingdom, and, we’re happy to say, again it features two of the composer’s most outstanding short pieces. Both are recorded utilizing similar methods as used on his most recent album “A Static Place” on 12k yet they are presented in an even more condensed and melodic way. As source material he used transcript…
Remain
Another beautiful sweeping dense work by German artist Stephan Mathieu. Remain, a new 60 minute composition utilizes original material from Janek Schaefer’s Extended Play, reprocessed by Stephan Mathieu between September 2008 and October 2010 using an entropic setup, spectral analysis and convolution processes. A companion piece to A Static Place on 12k. (label info)
The Key To The Kingdom
"The Key to the Kingdom" is Stephan Mathieu's tribute to the great gospel preacher Washington Phillips and the world of raw, early gospel on 78rpm platters. The 2-part suite, presented in the classic 10" vinyl format that comes in a authentic, individually stamped and numbered 78rpm archive sleeve, has been performed on a historic Phonoharp No.2 zither from the 1890s utilizing five E-Bows and entropic and convolution processes. "The Key to the Kingdom" is a spin-off of Mathieu's "Virginals" pro…