John Eckhardt – Taffel, Tramp Orgel, Mbira, Alto Recorder, Harpeleik
PALAEODUBFOLK presents a continuation of John Eckhardt's ecological narrative that began with 2008’s „Xylobiont“, and which was further developed as Forresta and Fatwires. At the same time, necessarily, the perspective expands in certain directions: who is it, actually, this curiosity that never leaves? Are there other potentials for development beyond "never-seen-before“ or "higher-further-sicker“? How can we get in touch with our environment (here: musical instruments) on eye height, rather than from a position of strength and control? Can the exploration of a very distant, thus partly imaginary past become a key to the future, as it sharpens our consciousness for our evolutional entanglement with the more-than-human world? And what about the flesh-and-blood-musician, who plays with her hands simplest instruments as so many others before her - in a techno-algorithmical world that in many regards seems to have arrived at what was the point of departure for our long civilizing journey (shortages, extreme weather, villains and poisonous animals)?
The corresponding photographical project, contained in a selection of 14 postcards, again resides in the mid-Swedish landscape of John Eckhardt's ancestors, where the audio-recordings were also made. However, the images gravitate more towards the transitional zone and the traces of interactions between humans and their environment, which here has been characterized by large natural deposits of iron. It was only thanks to these interactions that humans were able to settle here, have a life and also produce the musical instruments that happened to appear around John Eckhardt over time: the long-defunct, 19th century square piano of his grandmother, the detuned Norwegian folk music zither, bought for as a gift at a local loppis (Swedish yard sale), or a harmonium found in a deserted congregational house in the forest - as well as the gift of a Zimbabwean Mbira, and the alto recorder from John Eckhardt's late mother’s legacy.
Next to symbiotical relations to landscape, an inevitable entanglement with the Anthropocene appears: forest transformed into coal in order to process iron ore, used to produce and sell ever new tools, including weapons, until the technology is left behind as outdated; or the peripherally emerging agriculture that also subjects the forest itself to its variety-reducing efficiency and logics of profit.
This play of forces is embodied in the bright blue (or sometimes greenish) slag stone contained in each linen box, which was hand-crafted individually by a Hamburg-based bookbinder using finest materials. These „rocks“, dug up one by one by John Eckhardt as in his childhood days, can still be found in nearby locations of iron smelting, a process here dating back to at least the 14th century, but actually as far as to the Iron Age. Slag occurs at temperatures above 1000 degrees Celsius as a by-product of the extremely energy-consuming process of dividing the iron from ore.
FROM THE INCLUDED NOTES:
The material, the musical instrument in front of me, represents all that is not me. It is my environment, and together we form a living organism. We rely on each other, and live and die together. Our behavior and responses to each other are existential and express a balance of power between us.
I wish to restore some of this mutuality with a collection of instruments that literally came to me over the years. I am looking for these instruments to play me as much as I play them. I would like them to explore me, tell me something about who and where I am in the moment of action. I invite them to have the same physical, cultural and magical powers over me as I have over them.
Their varying, unchanged degrees of decay tell about their previous lives, and their cultures and applications ring through their material, build and sonic characteristics. The musical substance emerges from the elementary gestures countless others have performed before me - touch a key or string, breathe through a flute, make air flow from a bellows with my feet.
I work in three time zones simultaneously. Part real, part imaginary, they constantly overlap each other, and make up a fragile landscape that I explore. To be granted access to this wondrous landscape, I commit to being mortal, naked and ultimately edible as everything else in the world around me - a world that becomes invisible when I reach a certain degree of familiarisation and control that overwrite more archaic states of discovery.
The first of these time spans lies before agriculture, urban life and writing. Viewed from today, it represents a primal mindset that relies on sensory awareness, intuition and practical experience. Material, reasoning and actions seem simple, but are enmeshed in complex relations to the environment and to small, nomadically living groups.
The second lies in the near future. We have all the tools and knowledge we have ever dreamed of, but our quest for individual and economical progress has led us full circle back into our caves. The overpowering natural forces outside seem very similar to those we have tried so hard to overcome during the last 10.000 years. Labour and innovation are taken over by machines we created, while we are forced to accept our evolutional heritage, potential, limits and obligations. We are challenged to restore degenerated hunter-gatherer sensibilities: to understand and connect with whatever it is that we find before us or in our environment - people, animals, spirits, things such as musical instruments - and the fateful nature of our connections to them.
The third point in time lies anywhere within the 40 milliseconds between a sensual perception and the onset of its intellectual processing. Hearing serves as one of the most direct gateways into this zone in which instinct precedes rationality. It is full of evolutionary dispositions shared over millions of years, and particularly vital whenever we encounter the unknown. Mostly subconscious circuits, such as curiosity, desire or fear, are both universal and individual, as their distribution characterizes personality and also culture.
Rather than improvisations or compositions, my musical activities are audio-manual strategies that allow or even require me to inhabit these zones. I am looking for specific feedback loops between what I hear and what my next move is. Ideally, the succession and interweaving of listening and action are so dense that they turn into a constant stream that starts to form a larger organism, leading a life of its own.
The findings I bring from the zone are fed into the echo chamber - a mixing desk of culture, memory and imagination. Through repeated deep listening and experimentation with overdubs, structures and stories are allowed to emerge and coagulate around each instrument. In the end, I feel more like a witness to how works come into existence from ephemeral, unexpected synergies.
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John Eckhardt – Taffel, Tramp Orgel, Mbira, Alto Recorder, Harpeleik
PALAEODUBFOLK presents a continuation of John Eckhardt's ecological narrative that began with 2008’s „Xylobiont“, and which was further developed as Forresta and Fatwires. At the same time, necessarily, the perspective expands in certain directions: who is it, actually, this curiosity that never leaves? Are there other potentials for development beyond "never-seen-before“ or "higher-further-sicker“? How can we get in touch with our environment (here: musical instruments) on eye height, rather than from a position of strength and control? Can the exploration of a very distant, thus partly imaginary past become a key to the future, as it sharpens our consciousness for our evolutional entanglement with the more-than-human world? And what about the flesh-and-blood-musician, who plays with her hands simplest instruments as so many others before her - in a techno-algorithmical world that in many regards seems to have arrived at what was the point of departure for our long civilizing journey (shortages, extreme weather, villains and poisonous animals)?
The corresponding photographical project, contained in a selection of 14 postcards, again resides in the mid-Swedish landscape of John Eckhardt's ancestors, where the audio-recordings were also made. However, the images gravitate more towards the transitional zone and the traces of interactions between humans and their environment, which here has been characterized by large natural deposits of iron. It was only thanks to these interactions that humans were able to settle here, have a life and also produce the musical instruments that happened to appear around John Eckhardt over time: the long-defunct, 19th century square piano of his grandmother, the detuned Norwegian folk music zither, bought as a gift at a local loppis (Swedish yard sale), or a harmonium found in a deserted congregational house in the forest - as well as the gift of a Zimbabwean Mbira, and the alto recorder from John Eckhardt's late mother’s legacy.
Next to symbiotical relations to landscape, an inevitable entanglement with the Capitalocene appears: forest transformed into coal in order to process iron ore, used to produce and sell ever new tools, including weapons, until the technology is left behind as outdated and fades back into nature; or the peripherally emerging agriculture that also subjects the forest itself to its variety-reducing efficiency and logics of profit.
This play of forces is embodied in the bright blue (or sometimes greenish) slag stone contained in each linen box, which was hand-crafted individually by a Hamburg-based bookbinder using finest materials. These „rocks“, dug up one by one by John Eckhardt as in his childhood days, can still be found in nearby locations of iron smelting, a process here dating back to at least the 14th century, but actually as far as to the Iron Age. Slag occurs at temperatures above 1000 degrees Celsius as a by-product of the extremely energy-consuming process of dividing the iron from ore.
FROM THE INCLUDED NOTES:
The material, the musical instrument in front of me, represents all that is not me. It is my environment, and together we form a living organism. We rely on each other, and live and die together. Our behavior and responses to each other are existential and express a balance of power between us.
I wish to restore some of this mutuality with a collection of instruments that literally came to me over the years. I am looking for these instruments to play me as much as I play them. I would like them to explore me, tell me something about who and where I am in the moment of action. I invite them to have the same physical, cultural and magical powers over me as I have over them.
Their varying, unchanged degrees of decay tell about their previous lives, and their cultures and applications ring through their material, build and sonic characteristics. The musical substance emerges from the elementary gestures countless others have performed before me - touch a key or string, breathe through a flute, make air flow from a bellows with my feet.
I work in three time zones simultaneously. Part real, part imaginary, they constantly overlap each other, and make up a fragile landscape that I explore. To be granted access to this wondrous landscape, I commit to being mortal, naked and ultimately edible as everything else in the world around me - a world that becomes invisible when I reach a certain degree of familiarisation and control that overwrite more archaic states of discovery.
The first of these time spans lies before agriculture, urban life and writing. Viewed from today, it represents a primal mindset that relies on sensory awareness, intuition and practical experience. Material, reasoning and actions seem simple, but are enmeshed in complex relations to the environment and to small, nomadically living groups.
The second lies in the near future. We have all the tools and knowledge we have ever dreamed of, but our quest for individual and economical progress has led us full circle back into our caves. The overpowering natural forces outside seem very similar to those we have tried so hard to overcome during the last 10.000 years. Labour and innovation are taken over by machines we created, while we are forced to accept our evolutional heritage, potential, limits and obligations. We are challenged to restore degenerated hunter-gatherer sensibilities: to understand and connect with whatever it is that we find before us or in our environment - people, animals, spirits, things such as musical instruments - and the fateful nature of our connections to them.
The third point in time lies anywhere within the 40 milliseconds between a sensual perception and the onset of its intellectual processing. Hearing serves as one of the most direct gateways into this zone in which instinct precedes rationality. It is full of evolutionary dispositions shared over millions of years, and particularly vital whenever we encounter the unknown. Mostly subconscious circuits, such as curiosity, desire or fear, are both universal and individual, as their distribution characterizes personality and also culture.
Rather than improvisations or compositions, my musical activities are audio-manual strategies that allow or even require me to inhabit these zones. I am looking for specific feedback loops between what I hear and what my next move is. Ideally, the succession and interweaving of listening and action are so dense that they turn into a constant stream that starts to form a larger organism, leading a life of its own.
The findings I bring from the zone are fed into the echo chamber - a mixing desk of culture, memory and imagination. Through repeated deep listening and experimentation with overdubs, structures and stories are allowed to emerge and coagulate around each instrument. In the end, I feel more like a witness to how works come into existence from ephemeral, unexpected synergies.
Depth of Field - The music of John EckhardtHamburg, Germany
BASS, SPACE & TIME
“if we don’t start to cherish and practice variety, and see how deeply
everything connects, we’re gonna fry in hell all together soon!”
John Eckhardt is testing the limits of being a bassist on planet earth in the 21st century, working towards a broader vision of what bass always was and can become in the future. A hunter-gatherer navigating a wondrous, branching sonic forest....more
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