The Hafler Trio

condition (discs/cover): NM / NM

Oversize fold-out sleeve with inserts.

The reunion record. Andrew M. McKenzie's Hafler Trio had not released material on Soleilmoon since the 1996 clear-vinyl LP An Utterance Of The Supreme Ventriloquist, hand-wrapped in Japanese paper in an edition of 451 copies. Normally, released in 2003 in an edition of 500, re-opened the partnership across a double CD wrapped in a 5 x 8 inch cardboard fold-over sleeve with two inserts.

The project belongs to what the Hafler Trio later called the Voice Series. Disc one is built entirely from the voice of Blixa Bargeld of Einstürzende Neubauten, who spoke a single particular phrase three times, in what the liner identifies as his three trademark vocal modes: whispering, hysterical, and ordinary. The album's title refers to the part of the phrase Blixa did not say, and to the way the German adverb normal(erweise) is used in everyday speech. The disc is organised around what the package calls Sphotavado, the Vedic concept of sound as the foundation of every material phenomenon: everything, including thought, is understood as a result of vibration, and vibration as a product of sound.

McKenzie designed the sleeve and internal graphics himself. Liner text insists the music must be played through speakers, not headphones, and that MP3 conversion strips out the essential information. Standard Hafler Trio instructions for an album that sits at the beginning of McKenzie's most focused sequence of voice-based work, continuing with collaborations with David Tibet, Jónsi Birgisson, and eventually spreading into his long Icelandic late period.