True traum muzick - concret sounds embedded in drones and tones point to the real world, but it's too clear - that is a dream.
The lady saw the rabbit planting melons on the fence.
sold out
You can download the bonustrack „The Sacred And Her Journey Home“ for free in standard mp3 quality (128kbps stereo) and you can stream the whole album, too.
If you purchase the CD you will get access to the bonustrack as high quality encoded mp3 file or if you prefer, as the wonderful free and lossless audio compression format, flac.
Esto es mi viaje nocturno en alta mar; he perdido mi pequena libreta roja. This is my journey on the night’s ocean. I lost my little red notebook. The cracks in the planks have eyes and the ears thereunder a fortiori. It has fallen through the coppice somehow. I’m missing my little red notebook. These logbooks of souls. Medical guidebooks. And peregrine recipes. Maybe listed in my little red notebook. Somewhere in the salt of the waves I also lost my little wooden desk and salt. And my map’s nothing more than white paper again. The dreams percolate through the coppice of the mind but: look at my wonderful shoes. Yo traigo la arena y tu traes el mar. Little white rabbit sitting on the fence and waiting for big black hats to hide in.
Spilling milk over sour sentences is all I can manage these days.
FADE OUT...
Fished on Monday, 30th April 2007 with five sounds for every finger.
Outside temperature: 24°C
Wind direction: east-northeast
Clothing: nothing
Beverage: green tea with honey
Special thanks to Marcus for talks, songs and releasing.
Dedicated to Daly.
and not the ambulance of history
Cricket in the field of drones - born: June 1981 in Aachen - wearing a straw hat with a head on fire. Mirko Uhlig first appeared 2004 with his surreal collage project Aalfang Mit Pferdekopf which slowly moved towards the humming of the moon. In 2006 Uhlig decided to release this now much lower and serene music under a less distracting and delusive name.At the moment Mirko’s music is a maybe-equivalent to a calm dusk in midsummer or the smell of burning wood in a clear and cold December.
Beside Aalfang Mit Pferdekopf, his two labels and the breeding of little organic’n’magical artefacts in the form of starfishes Mirko runs the electretrokrautberlinschooltribute project Suneaters together with Tobias Fischer; in general Uhlig is always involved in something...or someone.
das logbuch des hasen spricht:
von gesträubtem fell und blicklosen augen;
von getarnt unter büschen und offen im sand;
von einsamkeit im selbst beim spielen im gras;
von stehender luft und bleiernem himmel;
von latentem frieden und wachsender bedrohung;
von unverständlichem und selbstverständlichem, gespiegelt im selbst;
von zäsuren als rhythmus einer endlosen ruhe;
von nahendem gewitter und sonne über dem feld;
von zeiten der entspannung bei rastlosem geist;
vom anreiz der stimmung nach zeiten der gewöhnung;
von einer welt der rätsel gleich neben der bekannten;
von einer fremdheit im erkennen in einer phase der neugier;
vom unverständnis des hasen gegenüber dem wechsel in den dingen.
dieses album ist nicht die erwartete fortsetzung der “VIVMMI” bzw. “storm: outside calm tamed”, sondern ein eigenes kleinod auf 3”-cd mit einem hasen auf dem cover, der wie ein esel aussieht. für mich auf einer ebene mit einem so herausragenden release wie der (neuen) stars of the lid “and their refinement of the decline”, nur halt leider nicht so lang. unbedingt empfehlenswert und nicht zu verpassen.
schöne grüße
n
Pure Träumerei!
Ein ständiger und gern gesehner Gast mit seinen Veröffentlichungen ist mein “Lieblingsmusikverrückter” Mirko Uhlig (Aalfang mit Pferdekopf). Die neue Arbeit “The rabbit’s logbook” von seinem selbstbetitelten Zweitprojekt eröffnet der geneigten Konsumentin bzw. dem geneigten Konsumenten ganz neue Einblicke in das Leben eines Hasen.
Kein anderer Künstler geht so abstruse Wege wie Mirko Uhlig, um seine Kundschaft zu faszinieren bzw. in Ekstase zu versetzen. Wie irre muss ein Mensch sein, um diese vorhin angeschnittene Thematik zu vertonen? Die Beschreibung “auf dem schmalen Grad zwischen Genie und Wahnsinn” trifft definitiv auf Mirko Uhlig zu, ohne Persönlichkeiten wie ihn, wäre die Musik schon lange in einer Sackgasse gelandet. Unkreative massentaugliche Plagiate säumen die Wege der Musikindustrie und bekommen das Geld in den “Allerwertesten” gesteckt, aber echte kreative Denker und Lenker müssen zu sehen, wie sie es privat finanziert bekommen (Entschuldigen Sie diese klaren Worte!).
Die Mini CD-R “The rabbit’s logbook” setzt genau dort an, wo das Debütalbum “VIVMMI” aufhörte, meiner persönlichen Ansicht nach, fällt der Tonträger “Storm: Outside Calm Tamed” komplett aus diesem Zusammenhang raus. Liebhaberinnen und Liebhaber der anspruchsvollen Traumwelten müssen die auf “Field Muzick” erscheinende Mini CD-R in ihr Eigentum überführen. Eine sehr verträumte Klangcollage von knapp über 18 Minuten ergießt sich wie ein warmer Tropenregen über die Ohren und erinnert ehr von der Stimmung her, an verfremdete Walgesänge. Das Bonusstück ‘The Sacred And Her Journey Home’ hingegen kann kostenfrei auf der Webseite von “Field Muzick” gezogen werden und bildet einen traummalerischen Appetizer, der eine weitere Sucht nach Träumen auslöst.
Fazit:
Sehr atmosphärisch entführt Mirko Uhlig seine Konsumenten in die Welt der Träume. Wer innovative Inhalte und Musik sucht, kommt an Mirko Uhlig nicht vorbei. Wir die interessierte Hörerschaft dürfen gespannt sein, wohin die nächste Reise uns führt.
Ohne Zweifel es besteht absolute Kaufpflicht für Liebhaberinnen und Liebhaber von Traumwelten!
Raphael Feldmann für Feindesland.de
For me Mirko Uhlig is one of the better and unfortunately lesser known drone masters of Germany. His last excursion was a trip into noise land – it is forgiven, as we haven’t forgotten his ‘VIVMMI’ work (see Vital Weekly 525) or his work with Aalfang Mit Pferdekopf. ‘The Rabbit’s Logbook’ is a very recent work, recorded on April 30th of this year and the cover says ‘with five sounds for every finger’. What these five sounds are, we don’t know. We hear drones, made out of highly processed organ chords as well as of an orchestral nature, with deep atmospheric and dramatic effect. Early in the piece there is also some vague obscure acoustic rumble. I’m not sure if I counted five or more, or less. However it’s a pretty strong, perhaps too short piece of drone music, using just the right amount of sound effects, field recordings and the other usual ingredients of drone music. Uhlig’s work here can easily match with the best in this field, especially Mirror. It’s about time someone made him a real CD and launch his career properly..
FdW
The pure sound aspect is never enough: Fossilised memories of former times.
Information overflow, subliminal messages, the data highway, emails on your mobile: Mirko Uhlig seems to be the only one who does not want to get a message across these days. “The Rabbit’s Logbook”, brought to you on a heart-red 3’’ disc, is the result of a musical and personal friendship with Dronaement’s Marcus Obst (who also runs the Field Muzick label) and another piece in a colourful mosaic of releases which have transcended the collage-like to form a unique handwriting somehwere between an impressionist’s field of flowers painting and a dadaist’s love song.
On the other hand, Uhlig has been compared to Christoph Heemann of Mirror of lately and called “one of the better drone masters of Germany”, both of which I do not agree with. Not quality-wise, I mean, but these parallels simply do not adequately capture his musical personality in full in my opinion. It is true that Uhlig works with drones, just as much as he has a liking for combining them with field recordings and concrete noise samples from old tapes and a huge, evergrowing vault on his harddisc. And yet, his scope is always much wider, his interest much broader and his palette much more varied than those of the typical genre names. Stretching tones to infinite threads and allowing their friction areas to spark little fireworks of harmonics is all fine and well, but to what end? To Uhlig, the pure sound aspect is never enough. Drones make up 90% of the material on “The Rabbit’s logbook”, but they are hardly an end in themselves, either serving as emotive sheets, capturing a mood or even just an impulse in their fluctuating clouds or as derrivatives from former thematic cycles. In their latter appearance, they are the remnants of what western tradition once called melody and harmonic progression. Now merely fossilised memories of former times, their trunkated character allows them to transport nostalgic sentiments as if they were drenched in amber. Nothing lasts forever here, even the most melancholy moment can abruptly fall to pieces and give way to better days. And yet, the constant ebb and flow of old and new scenes, the smeared out sonorities and the precise caligraphic lines as well as the dispersed reoccurence of the imposing, wide-as-the-atlantic-ocean lead theme, lend a consistency and cohesion to these scattered islands of sound. Maybe the mastery in weaving these elements together has slightly increased just a little bit more, but other than that, “The Rabbit’s Logbook” is rather a case of refinement than radical experiments.
One could describe Uhlig’s method as “recontextualising lost musical fragments” (it sounds soooo cool for your biennale application), but to him, there is no context. This EP is what it is, nothing more and nothing less. But fear not: As “The Rabbit’s Logbook” proves, you don’t need no complicated philosophies to connect with your audience. Only a nihilist could claim that there is nothing but the void behind a music without message – and Uhlig is none.
Tobias Fischer
“An attractive disc in a neat little jewel case. A single track stretching over 18´24” “fished on Monday, 30th April 2007 with five sounds for every finger.”
Mirko Uhlig is – and I believe many will agree with me – an up-and-coming sound manipulator (and recently co-founder of the extremely interesting Ex Ovo label) who also trades under the name Aalfang Mit Pferdekopf. Anything he releases seems to be worth listening closely to.
Here we are confronted with a soundtrack of the world that exists beneath our shoes and beyond our normal ken, among the high grasses, the gnarled tree roots, the bushes and the undergrowth. The canopy of the night sky stretches above small earthbound incidents, letting in a little light. Some things glisten, others scoot between the dewdrops.
Sudden silences seem to bode no good. Cello swells half way through, a crunchy foundation of static – or is that close-micked rabbit mastication? – lays itself underneath. The cello becomes increasingly brazen and is challenged by incoherent utterings. Again: Another silence and finally, a brief droning coda. All is resolved?
A pretty little masterpiece.“
Stephen Fruitman
Too bad that this work comes on a 3-inch disc and lasts only 18 minutes, because I sincerely feel that it’s one of the best things that Mirko Uhlig has ever released. His music possesses a heart-wrecking sadness, typical of certain adolescent artistic influences (that I discovered to share with him despite our 17-year difference of age but I won’t reveal them anyway, hehe) which predisposes our soul with that sensitive quid that makes us perceive a distant drone or an electronically modified utterance as something that’s just inevitable. And, what’s more, Uhlig is one of the few ones able to cut the oneiric bliss of his creations right in the moment of maximum ecstasy; here it happens at least twice. Checking his bio notes I even discovered that he was born in Aachen, where Christoph Heemann comes from, so I suppose that there must be something in the air over there. Still, do not expect photocopies of “Front Row Centre” or “Aftersolstice” here; better leave those droning birds alone, they’re still flying a little higher. Uhlig has a (quite unpredictable) vision of his own, and this record – which fuses dream, melancholy and absence of nervous peaks in a comprehensive hazy blur – should be developed into something similar, only lasting a couple of hours. Or, at least, as long as we get our well deserved relief from the ugly faces from the outside world.
Massimo Ricci
The label Fieldmuzick releases 3” CD-r’s and they do surprise again, this time with one long track “between reality and dream” by Mirko Uhlig, who is also known as Aalfang mit Pferdekopf. A minimal soundscape with the title ‘The Rabbit’s Logbook’. Might there be a link to the surrealistic environment of Alice in Wonderland’s rabbit?
Instead of the seperate tracks on the other recent release on Fieldmuzick, here you can here that the seperate tracks are well mixed into one larger soundscape with a great tension build-up and a lot of different layers. Sudden surprisingly well fitting breaks in constant sounds, filters on the edge of falling over and symphonic phrases where they are not expected.
This is truly a magnificient piece of music, reminding you of artists like Raison d’Etre (especially ‘Metamorphyses’), some Troum related sounds, maybe even (and this is hard to write but according to my girlfriend) some works by the [law-rah] collective.
The extra track ‘The Sacred And Her Journey Home’ – which is available as free download on the website – follows the created atmosphere perfectly which makes the whole release 22 minutes worth of incredible powerful ambience.
I will leave you with the label’s description to make up your mind: “True traum muzick – concret sounds embedded in drones and tones point to the real world, but it’s too clear – that is a dream”.
Bauke van der Wal
