“I love plainness in colour, monotony, snow is rather a monotonous tune. Why should colour not give an impression of singing? White is like a murmur, a whisper, a prayer." (Robert Walser). The first Schnee record appeared in 2000. 20 years later their fourth album, the first coming on vinyl (!), on Mikroton. In between these years, the laptop player, saxophonist and singer Christof Kurzmann and guitarist Burkhard Stangl went different ways, but met again and again in projects such as Schnee, together with the American spoken word recording artist Ursula Rucker or in the context of Bernhard Fleischmann's “The Year Of”. Guitarist Burkhard Stangl was a member of the electroacoustic supergroups Polwechsel and efzeg and collaborated among others with Christian Fennesz as well as with Taku Unami, Taku Sugimoto, Angélica Castelló or Mario de Vega. Besides his fantastic reinterpretations of several Robert Wyatt numbers, Christof Kurzmann is known as the founder of the Orchestra 33 1/3 and the legendary label charhizma and — together with Fennesz — the forefather of electroacoustic improvisation music in Austria. Among many others he currently works regularly with John Butcher, Mats Gustafsson or Ken Vandermark. Schnee is concerned with the actual sensory non-cerebral experience: the relationship between colour, image and sound. Schnee sets music to imaginary films or makes music that relates to films that have not yet been shot. The invisible film as a drama of a possibly liberated life, embedded in the soft, cold dress of sound creative avantgarde or experimental electroacoustic improv. Furthermore, songs are also repeatedly implemented in the instrumental electroacoustic dispositive of Schnee, which reveals references to literature, pop culture, politics and writing conceived as speaking about the unspeakable. “If there was ever a battle, it must have been the one between the guitar and the computer”. Schnee has long fought the battle and maybe even won it. Why? Because poetry and resistance revolve in the record groove.
Tracks A1, A3 and B recorded by Kurt Liedwart
at soundcheck and during the concert on September 25, 2018
in Kaliningrad at Mikroton Mikroten
Track A2 recorded by Maxim Khaikin during the concert
on September 28, 2018 in Dom at Mikroton Mikroten
Mastered by Mikhail Myasoedov
Lacquer cut at Dubplates & Mastering
Graphic design: SETKA design
Artwork: Julia Voronina
Thanks to: Danil Akimov, Alec Bathgate, Björn Dirlack,
Langston Hughes, Maria Konshina, Chris Knox, Serge Kolosov,
Vlad Kudryavtsev, Simon Mraz, Phil Ochs, Lou Reed,
Julia Voronina, Petr Vrba
MIKROTON recordings was releasing experimental music [2005-2021] and now it exists in archival mode with no future
activities planned. Founded in 2005 and curated by Kurt Liedwart, Sergey Kolosov and Christian Müller.
Wonderful album. An immature, pensive, passive aggressive speaker sparsely lets slip his flaws to the listener in a way one can only find both humorous and frighteningly real. stink freak