The album Living Theory Without Anecdotes conflates Nicolas Wiese's acousmatic compositions from the years 2009-2011. All four tracks are constructed out of samples from acoustic instrument and object recordings, and are characterized by floating structures allowing slow crescendos and little disruptions.
A significant element in Wiese's soundworks is the spatial layering—there is an architecture of foregrounds, backgrounds and different midgrounds that integrate an analoge room feel, subdivide the dynamics in a manner unusual for a “non-played” music and therefore question the obvious digitality in most of today's electronic productions. The longest piece, filling the entire B side El Jardín Revisitado, is based on a 2 hours long multiscreen video / ensemble piece conceived together with composer Tom Rojo Poller. Sound manipulations from the original instruments have been taken into further processing by Wiese afterwards, serving as a pool for a series of audiovisual solo performances. The album version contains compositional “cells” which vaguely resemble the original ensemble piece, altogether employing them in a very different meta-structure. Der Elefant im Porzellankäfig (the elephant in a cage of porcelain) has been developed as a re-assembly of a few short samples delivered by German sound collagist Thorsten Soltau. Most of Soltau's samples have been played back and re-recorded through tiny speakers, partially covered by plastic and other sounding / sound-blocking matter. The result is a merging of borrowed sounds and their haptic transformation—layered, cut and overlapped into percussive and harmonic properties and relations that have not been there before. Subfertile is an elegy; maybe the most elegic piece Wiese has ever written. It is comprised almost entirely of string samples, plus a few textural percussion layers recycled from Wiese's Breathing Gadgets (2004). The origin of the string instruments is impossible to track back since most sound bits have been drawn from recorded live performances, in which Wiese has used all kinds of string instrument sources. Due To Idle is based on samples taken from the same recording sessions that have been set up for El Jardín. Additionally, Wiese performed some zither scrubbings and cello pluckings himself. The idea of the piece is a concurrence of “hectic” and “calm” elements, resulting in an ambiguous tempo.
Limited edition of 300 copies.
Nicolas Wiese (born 1976 in Itzehoe, Germany, lives and works in Berlin) is an audiovisual artist, designer and composer / performer of electroacoustic music. Wiese studied illustration, communication design and communication theory at the University of Applied Sciences, Hamburg, for which he graduated in 2005. Further studies include sound art at the University of Arts, Berlin, and philosophy & sociology at the University of Hamburg. Wiese creates works in different formats and media, for various contexts—installation and spatial performance, contemporary electronic composition, relational and improvised music, graphic art, drawing, collage, radio and experimental film. As a graphic designer, he primarily works for international clients in the culture and arts sphere.
