schimpfluch-gruppe - paris aktionen

LP, 2009, Bennifer Editions/Tochnit Aleph, Toronto/Berlin.   Available

Sh g paris


REVIEWS

New LP documenting a set of actions that Schimpfluch staged in Paris in 1996 and 97, including the infamous ‘spaghetti action’. The Schimpfluch Gruppe – the ‘abuse’ group – is cover for a series of affiliated artists who work in the liminal space between contemporary performance art, confrontational punk, avant garde composition and transgressive personal theatre. Founded by Rudolf Eb.Er and including at points Raionbashi, Dave Phillips and Joke Lanz (aka Sudden Infant), these recordings feature Eb.Er with Helena Greter, Dave Phillips and Doris Tomasoni. Minus the visuals it’s almost impossible to work out exactly what’s going on but as a stand-alone audio document it works well. One set seems to be based around violent hyperventilating chokes and groans building into overwhelming cathartic vocal violence. The second set is more extended and makes more use of dynamic tension, with long periods of silence populated by nothing but a ticking metronome before the introduction of tortured vocals and split-seconds of warped electronics gives way to an electro-acoustic pile-up with all of the avalanching power of the The New Blockaders. This is a whole other approach to ritual sound, with the primitive vocal poetics of Dylan Nyoukis/Blood Stereo and the body-focused investigations of the original actionists combined with a theatrical approach to avant garde performance and an energy and visceral power that comes straight out of punk rock.

(David Keenan, Volcanic Tongue)