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••total _39':21''

The Physiognomy of Depth

Since the 1980's Werner Dafeldecker and Theo Nabicht have repeatedly collaborated in diverse musical and artistic contexts on projects between composition and improvisation. However, it was not until Spring of 2010 that they began to record as a duo. Using doublebass and contrabass clarinet they staged not only a programmatic exploration of the possibilities of the lower frequency register, but also an unmediated encounter of their respective artistic positions.
Dafeldecker’s work has been associated since the time of so-called 'reductionism’ with the notion of an aesthetic of presence that experimentally mines the inherent aesthetic possibilities of elemental sound at a microscopic level. In contrast, for Nabicht as a composer and performer, the expressive and narrative aspects of music always had priority over an experimental performance practice. Vessel’s music furnishes proof of the fact that these different artistic postures need not be irreconcilable; instead, their music intentionally oscillates between sensualism and sense, between the presence of sound and musical representation. Imaginative moving images and articulations of a virtual corporeality spring from this liminal zone between materiality and message, between experimental sound research and elaborate musical vocabulary – physiognomies, gestures, and shapes overlap in this zone to create expressive scenarios and sonic close-ups revealing the multivalent anatomy and symbiosis of sounds and noises.
The structures in Vessel’s pieces, which were worked out in rehearsals, show a high degree of compositional coherence. They take shape from the sometimes delicate, sometimes violent physicality of the instruments at work. They find their almost thematic concentration in the characteristic kinetics of the clearly defined musical material, thus challenging the relationship between the forms of the sensible and the conventions of the assignment of meaning.

Matthias Haenisch (translated by Amy Pradell)

Werner Dafeldecker - Double bass
Theo Nabicht - Contrabass clarinet

Werner Dafeldecker _doublebass
Theo Nabicht_contrabassclarinet
Recorded during August 2010 by Theo Nabicht - Berlin.
Mixed by Werner Dafeldecker and Theo Nabicht.
ltd. & numbered edition
hand printed screen print gouache on cardboard
Cover_50x18cm (20x7in) foldetd to 7in

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The Physiognomy of Depth

Since the 1980's Werner Dafeldecker and Theo Nabicht have repeatedly collaborated in diverse musical and artistic contexts on projects between composition and improvisation. However, it was not until Spring of 2010 that they began to record as a duo. Using doublebass and contrabass clarinet they staged not only a programmatic exploration of the possibilities of the lower frequency register, but also an unmediated encounter of their respective artistic positions.
Dafeldecker’s work has been associated since the time of so-called 'reductionism’ with the notion of an aesthetic of presence that experimentally mines the inherent aesthetic possibilities of elemental sound at a microscopic level. In contrast, for Nabicht as a composer and performer, the expressive and narrative aspects of music always had priority over an experimental performance practice. Vessel’s music furnishes proof of the fact that these different artistic postures need not be irreconcilable; instead, their music intentionally oscillates between sensualism and sense, between the presence of sound and musical representation. Imaginative moving images and articulations of a virtual corporeality spring from this liminal zone between materiality and message, between experimental sound research and elaborate musical vocabulary – physiognomies, gestures, and shapes overlap in this zone to create expressive scenarios and sonic close-ups revealing the multivalent anatomy and symbiosis of sounds and noises.
The structures in Vessel’s pieces, which were worked out in rehearsals, show a high degree of compositional coherence. They take shape from the sometimes delicate, sometimes violent physicality of the instruments at work. They find their almost thematic concentration in the characteristic kinetics of the clearly defined musical material, thus challenging the relationship between the forms of the sensible and the conventions of the assignment of meaning.
Matthias Haenisch