JANEK SCHAEFER – CONSCIOUS SEDATION
While struggling with serious health issues, and awaiting an operation, a nurse mentioned that Janek Schaefer was about to have ‘conscious sedation’ surgery. Janek immediately recognized this as the title for his new album.
Empowered by his concept of ‘+ve intent’ (+ve = positive), the album portrays Janek’s ‘cosmic metaphysical experiences having daily ‘photon power showers’ in order to save my life, using the same fundamental electromagnetic waves that bring us our life on planet earth’.
In the context of a serious radiotherapy treatment that may sound somewhat scary and worrying, but the music is quite the opposite of that. The tracks are ‘like a sonic portrait of the energy waves and fluid flow of life dawning’ and sound ‘uplifting, drifting like a comfortable soundtrack to hallucinogenic daydreams‘.
The titles form the sentence The Eternal / Quest for / +ve Intent – all three tracks are repeated three times each in different forms.
Like his previous album, Love Hertz, the physical edition Conscious Sedation is released as a CD plus DVD.
The music on this album is the soundtrack to ‘an abstract portrait of vibrating molecules, from the origin of life within me, nurturing my new baby cells to replace the rogue cells’.
I guess a positive attitude (+ve intent!) as shown in the music must inevitably also have a good impact on Janek’s healing. Get well soon, Janek!
BAŞAK GÜNAK – REWILDING
Başak Günak (born in Istanbul but currently living and working in Berlin) may also be known as AH! KOSMOS. This is the first album that is released under her own name. She also composes for theatre, dance, visual arts, and site-specific performances.
Her extensive experience in creating and performing electronic music is clear from the very first moments of Rewilding.
Günak uses all kinds of materials in her work: whistles, whispers, deconstructed South-Eastern Anatolian folk songs, a range of instruments including a halldorophone (I had never heard of that instrument before), and fragments of her earlier installations. As a result, the intricate and detailed soundscapes ‘take the form of a distant sound of a murmur that tends to disappear and then reaches to the surface again and overflows into audibility’.
Başak Günak plays the halldorophone, organ, Buchla 100, electronics, piano, and does the programming. Vocal parts (on Foraging) are taken from a 2020 sound installation, while the bass clarinet on the title track is played by Isak Hedtjärn.
Together, the music on this 37-minute album often feels more organic than electronic. This perfectly fits the theme of the album: rewilding – letting nature take care of itself, enabling natural processes to shape land and sea.