Note: Also available in 3D/immersive audio formats at at
archive.org/download/lodsb-konservenorchester-katzundspatz
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I wrote K&S along with six other pieces during a rather manic phase in summer and fall in 2008. For me these have been part of a breakthrough in discovering a new voice that was
on one hand a continuation of the melodic focus of the album lazer.eyes.love and on the other, a beacon at the brink of uncharted territory - practically and philosophically.
I remember the excitement I had during day at uni or work to finally go back home,
pull an all-nighter to write a couple of bars until it wore me out. And the more I lasted in this unhealthy but “youthful” half-state, the more obsessed I became writing those pieces.
After that summer, every year or two I'd come back for a month and get rid of the cruft, slightly alter the composition while retaining all that symbolized the initial spark in these pieces, even if it meant giving in to my younger self. But in all honesty I was always terrified to finish them - I had to grow to distance myself from them and wait until I had the necessary means to complete the production.
Katz & Spatz is the longest and hopefully not the last one of that cycle.
Philosophical Background:
To come back to these practical and philosophical viewpoints. Practically this was a change for me, because it is almost a reversal of musical processes when you started with making electronic music. The process is more abstract but the result feels more musically concrete. It is less work with the material itself (recording, sound design, …) but rather focused on a pen&paper-like process of creating music from basic ingredients (notes, voice-leading, divisi, …) and however it was recorded there has been several interpretative layers in order to have the notation “sound”.
In that period I was committed to the belief that music should reflect and comment the time it was created in, and that meant for me to mimic excess
(economic growth based on externalizing costs, lifestyle, ...), the conflict in
asymmetry of accelerating information overload and being a responsible citizen/person,
and the naiveté of the narrative that current developments naturally result in positive progress as a tech-utopia (networks, VR, AI, meaning of work, …).
The album Aero was vocalizing this viewpoint in a SFX-laden, textural onslaught ad nauseam - occupying every free space and cramming as much material as possible into its linear narrative while also taking the boorish stance that "if it is too much, pause or rewind it".
The reason the albums following Aero were so bereft of tonality were those seven pieces I wrote that summer - K&S included -, they are somewhat the antithesis of what followed but within the same mental framing.
They preceded/followed that “need” for compressing musical content but from an absurd notational viewpoint. And thus they occupy a strange space between meandering, almost cheesy lullabies and pompous, convoluted cacophonia - avoiding texture and trying to point inwards.
But moreover, and different to the other albums, as a result of these philosophical musings, they almost demand a play with the Uncanny Valley (of what is real). Classical orchestral music has such a long tradition in Western Cultures that from a phenomenological viewpoint, just the sound of traditional instruments already evokes a sense of musicality regardless of the musical context. It is as if the instrumentation already legitimizes something as music(al).
Back in 2008 this was the motivator to keep on working on these orchestral scores - I could “hijack” that culturally innate response to propel that absurd music and use technology to “elevate” the music to the point that listeners may ask themselves whether they are listening to the honest result of complex and culturally valuable human/social interaction or just the imitating computation of robots sweetalking and fooling the them.
Technical Background:
For K&S and the other pieces, there are instances, however, where the machine reveals itself: sometimes the expressions are sloppy, the instrument ranges are unnatural, for a whole orchestra certain parts are really hard to play and the audio-scene of the recording is physically impossible. There was quite a lot of research and experimentation, some programming but mostly manual work involved in creating K&S after the compositional process was finished. And for some things I just had to wait until the technology was there.
Aesthetically, It was necessary to avoid that lush, larger-than-life Hollywood/symphonic sound to provoke some sense of intimacy and instead opt for a hyper-detailed chamber-orchestral setting. Which also meant that the pure production work had to be more detailed.
