Sudden Infant
Sudden Infant is the project of the Swiss artist Joke Lanz, born in Basel and based in Berlin. Lanz started it in 1989 as a solo noise and action project in the industrial and experimental underground, and ran it alone for 25 years. In 2014 it became a trio with bassist Christian Weber and drummer Alexandre Babel, playing a rough mix of noise, punk and Dada-minded rock. Lanz is also a turntablist and has worked with Shelley Hirsch, Peter Kowald, Christian Marclay, Z'EV, Ken Vandermark, Lasse Marhaug and The New Blockaders, among others.
Aliases: Joke Lanz
My Life's A Gunshot -(2LP)
2010 retrospective 2LP set on Hrönir with material spanning from 1989 to 2009 by aktionist Schimpfluch group's main band using unconventional sound sources, lo-fi electronics and turntables.
Berlin Paris Taipei (DVD)
DVD documenting three live Aktions from 1996 to 2007 by aktionist Schimpfluch group's main band using unconventional sound sources, lo-fi electronics and turntables, released by Tochnit Aleph in 2010.
Zungsang
Zungsang by Joke Lanz takes listeners on a disorienting and surreal sonic journey marked by sharp observations and idiosyncratic soundscapes. Anchored in the spaces between performance art, improvisation, and experimental noise, the album weaves together unsettling textures and fleeting melodic fragments, revealing a world that is at once darkly humorous and intellectually provocative.
Sudden Infant / Bill Kouligas
2007 release ** Cardboard sleeve. Probably one of the frenziest & craziest Sudden Infant' recordings. Recorded live at the Gluerooms, London, on may the 20th, 2004, stands for me as one of joke lanz most intense and unique sudden infant recordings I came across to this day besides his already classic ones! sharing this disc w-his recent "partner in crime' Bill Kouligas (those who caught up w-the recent dec 06, uk tour know what am talking about), also member of the bizarre greek duo of family ba…
Alarm
2018 release ** "Pauline Oliveros was only partly serious when she coined the term "deep listening" 30 years ago. The American composer, accordionist and electronic music pioneer first offered the phrase after recording an album 14 feet underground. Regardless, it has grown to become a meaningful term in avant-garde music circles, promoting the idea that artists can (and perhaps should) listen and react to their environment when performing. This new effort from Xenofox - electric guitarist Olaf …
Ella
With solid training as a classical musician, Sophie Agnel took a close interest in modern jazz before committing in the early Nineties to the shifting, deliciously uncertain ground of free improvisation, thanks to her fascination for the powers of expression displayed by a few great keyboard-heretics such as Keith Tippett, Fred Van Hove or Christine Wodrascka. She began reworking the prepared piano techniques imagined by John Cage and transformed her instrument into a sort of extended piano. Com…
Ella
With solid training as a classical musician, Sophie Agnel took a close interest in modern jazz before committing in the early Nineties to the shifting, deliciously uncertain ground of free improvisation, thanks to her fascination for the powers of expression displayed by a few great keyboard-heretics such as Keith Tippett, Fred Van Hove or Christine Wodrascka. She began reworking the prepared piano techniques imagined by John Cage and transformed her instrument into a sort of extended piano. Com…
Ear Wash
2003 release ** "Crazy free noise, controlled chaos & vocals in usual Sudden Infant's Childish-Industrial style."
Mutants In Siberia
Petr Vrba and Joke Lanz met each other many years ago while standing in the cue for the Hermitage museum in Saint Petersburg Russia. They never made it into the museum, instead they went to eat Solyanka soup and drunk red wine from Georgia. That’s when they decided to join forces and create a power duo w/ electrified trumpet, turntables, electronics and voice. They have toured Czech Republic twice and performed several times in Vienna and Berlin. Mutants In Siberia is their debut album recorded …
Berlin + Brooklyn
Schizo-improvisations by Swiss artist Joke Lanz (turntables and electronics) and American vocalist and composer Shelley Hirsch (vocals). Recorded 1 July 2011 in Berlin / 25 September 2011 NY
Tonal - Nagual
Joke Lanz and Christian Wolfarth are two of the most interesting and extreme Swiss improvisers. They combine ritual reductionism with anarchistic playfulness, atmospheric soundscapes with cut-up noise and physicalness with unpredictability. Physical and electro-acoustic experiments are the flesh and bone of Tell. They break the boundaries between Improv, Experimental and Noise.
Joke Lanz - turntables, electronics // Christian Wolfarth - percussion
Animals
"Radical playing techniques, curiosity and the exploration of sound possibilities create constant tension. Their first trio release Animals brings together 13 tracks full of twists and turns, creative lightness and complex virtuosity."
Lunatic Asylum
Joke Lanz and Sudden Infant once again return in their razor-sharp trio setting whereby the absurdist nature that Joke’s work is already cut with is reconfigured in a gnarled and beefy punk-fucked contorted rock setting. Short bursts of angular flex are heavily propelled by depth-charge rhythms, wry lyrical musings on modern living, and sensibilities hatched from years of experience in the worlds of sound art, abstract music, industrialised junk-noise and related areas have manifested in the per…
Abstract Musette
"This seemingly improbable duo finds both artists defending a common cause, with Lanz as stunning turntablist to serve as a perfect companion to Kocher's iconoclastic approach to his instrument. Detailed moves, fast gestures and throbbing pulses are recurrently cut by silences and sustained tones. Short rhythmic patterns and precise syllables emerge only to give way to more intimate sequences where players drift into some neutral space before re-colliding again into actualizations of micro-event…
Musical Education
Joke Lanz was born in Basel, Switzerland and is a well-know noise musician, performance artist and turntablist. He is also founding member and singer in the art rock group Sudden Infant, a meber of the legendary Schimpfluch group (alongside Rudolf Eb.er, Dave Phillips, Marc Zeier and Daniel Löwenbrück) and performs in many duos and and other forms in the improvisation scene. He also writes music for theatre and film, radio, installations and objects. Dieter Kovačič aka Dieb13 is an Austrian impr…
Half Dead Half Alive - Live In Nickelsdorf
Joke Lanz was born in Basel, Switzerland and is a well-know noise musician, performance artist and turntablist. He is also founding member and singer in the art rock group Sudden Infant, a meber of the legendary Schimpfluch group (alongside Rudolf Eb.er, Dave Phillips, Marc Zeier and Daniel Löwenbrück) and performs in many duos and and other forms in the improvisation scene. He also writes music for theatre and film, radio, installations and objects. Ute Wassermann is a German vocalist, composer…
Kangaroo Kitchen
n 2018 Mikroton Mikroten Festival offered a special occasion to record five important musicians from the Swiss experimental music scene.
Joke Lanz was born in Basel in 1965 and now lives in Berlin. He is a pioneer of the electronic independent scene and a crossover artist whose work spans improvised and experimental music, noise and turntablism, performance art and musique concrète. In addition to theatre and film music, radio works, installations and objects, there are two constants in his work…
Wölfli's Nightmare
Joke Lanz aka Sudden Infant is Extreme Body culture Performance Art Noise and Blues Industrial at it’s simplest Form. Born 1965 in Basel, Switzerland, currently working out of Berlin Germany and since 1985 involved in many Projects like; Jaywalker, SchimpFluch-Gruppe , Catholic Boys in Heavy Leather, WAL, and many others in the vein of punk/hardcore and noise. He worked as Garbageman, Record Dealer, Chocolate Manufacturer or Bike Messenger and besides composed music for the Vienna Radio Symphon…
Berlin Tapes
Performance of turntablism and double bass from Sudden Infant / Schimpfluch-Gruppe alumni Joke Lanz and Christian Weber. Recorded live November 9th 2012 at Haus am Lützowplatz, Berlin by Rashad Becker. Limited edition clear vinyl LP housed in old-style gate fold jackets.
oke Lanz is a prolific artist working with sound and performance since 1986. His activities in various solo and collective guises (for music groups, radio projects, theater and dance endeavors) have included Sudden Infant,…
Plays Sudden Infant'
Joke Lanz travels down memory lane! Two decks a mixer and a dozen of old Sudden Infant vinyls to spin, scratch, manoeuvre, loop and juggle into a narrative new composition. Recorded and mastered by Rashad Becker in Berlin, this album combines Joke Lanz' unique turntablism and intuition for mutant-body-dramas peppered with a great sense of humour from the rhythms of amplified faders and his own breath to spoken interjections of Bryan Lewis Saunders' dream lyrics. You can dance, you can cry, …
Wellenfeld
The grande finale of 'Extreme Rituals - A Schimpfluch Carnival', performed and recorded live at Arnolfini, Bristol UK on December 2nd 2012. Four leading figures of the international Noise circus team up for a unique performance, solely based on their brainwave activity. Each performer is wearing a wireless electroencephalograph (EEG) headset. The EEG signals sent from the stage are received by soundengineers, transformed from data into sound and processed to emerge through eight speakers …
Noise in My Head: The Actionistic Music and Art of Joke Lanz
Joke Lanz was born in Basel, Switzerland in 1965. In 1989 he created the noise music - performance, art - installation project Sudden Infant in connection with the Schimpfluch-Gruppe art collective. For more than 20 years Lanz has been one of the most prolific and profound artists working in the border zones between performance/body art and improvisation/noise. Noise In My Head documents Lanz's myriad activities and features: photos from installations, performances and actions; visual wor…
Things That Happened
Joke Lanz aka Sudden Infant creates an unique blend of physical sound-poetry and dadaistic vocals, using contact microphones, prerecorded soundloops and noises. The result is abrupt Musique Concrète juxtapositions of spasmodic gibbering and a battery of disorienting electronics. It's a fragmented field of sound that comes to its own autonomy!' Two great live recordings which shows more the competence of Joke Lanz then the most studio recordings ! Termite Club, Leeds, England (Live 2004-08-21). R…
My Life's A Gunshot - Retrospective 1989-2009
20 Year retrospective of Joke Lanz's Sudden Infant project featuring 49 rare and unreleased tracks, as well as some classics. Luxurious set released on 4 LP's housed in 2 seperate fullcolour gatefold-covers, featuring paintings by Joke Lanz. Comes with 12x12 booklet with a 4-page essay about S.I. by G.X. Jupitter-Larsen. Limited Edition of 500 copies. Mastered & cut by Rashad Becker at D+M, designed by Bill Kouligas.' 'Born in Switzerland, now based in Berlin, Joke Lanz (aka Sudden Infant) is on…
Akustische aktion (Essen)
A dinner is a dinner: Joke Lanz (Sudden Infant) & Rudolf Eb.er (Runzelstirn & Gurgelstock) bite, chew, smack, gulp and slurp in order to tickle your ears and your digestive system. Instead of decay and corruption, Lanz and Eb.er deliver a true and undiluted composition of this existential act of annihilation. We believe that, what we are doing, is right, because we are endeavouring to remain true. We want to create no false illusions, no sickly aesthetic or anything beautiful. We want to find th…
Radiorgasm : reissued
Reissue of the extremely limited LP from 1991 transfered from the original master tapes. Classic Sudden Infant -schimpfluch noise dramas featuring Joke Lanz (Schimpfluch-Gruppe), B. Lingg, Inzekt & Dave Phillips (Fear of God). Essential noise listening.
Invocation of the aural slave gods
Exciting new studio album featuring Annie Stubbs (LUSTMORD, SPK) on vocals + percussion and Swiss Aktionist Joke Lanz (SCHIMPFLUCH-GRUPPE) on noise toys, with conversions of Cabaret Voltaire's Nag Nag Nag and Roxy Music's In Every Dream Home A Heartache.
