grykë pyje

grykë pyje ~ collision and coalescence (mappa, 2019)

The missed seed of cryptobotany music. Jani Hirvonen (Uton) and Johannes Schebler (Baldruin) reconstruct the mesmerizing world of the Grykë Pyje swamp tribe. Vinyl in your hands is a ceremonial sonification of the sacred herbarium, painted myths of the animal kingdom and voices behind the thicket. mappa

As it usually goes without saying with these two wild magicians from the woods, right from the starts we are here to experience maximum weirdness, off-charts musicality, undercover psychonautics and extraterrestrial invocations. All those voices and bloops and blips and warped geometries of cryptobotany music are definitely meant not for everyone, at least if you approach music from the consumer's perspective. For relaxing, background chill, for sleeping, or just for fun ~ it always says something about what we are expecting from music but not about what we can give to it ourselves. Of course, there's an established ritual of exchanging impressions received from sound to a certain amount of paper with certain pictures and symbols on it given to the persons who made those sounds. Which is even weirder, if you look at this ritual from the perspective of some alien visitor, knowing not much about our planet. It's logical, yes ~ but the fact that those weird and often not really beautiful pictures will later be exchanged again, and again, and again, our visiting Jacques-Ive of interplanetary travels will probably lose the track of it ~ right the way I just did while pursuing the analogy to the point of tripping out of it because of some sudden change in music. So nevermind, let's just say everything is weird if you're an outsider to the process, and everything makes perfect sense if you're an attentive insider. Same as Voynich Manuscript, this music leads you to some guesses and hints are everywhere but without a master key to unlock the meaning of it all.

Let's just decide if we are outsiders or insiders here because there's a choir calling to a mystic inside myself while some gnome voice persuades that I should rather have some ale and give my body a rest in this glorious moss bed... Of course, I'd love to do both but that analogy thing from the first part keeps flying around like a truly annoying bee. So yes, let's say that despite any weirdness, what really matters to alien observation is the fact of interaction itself and whether he's a botanist of mathematician or astrophysicist, he'll see that the process of interaction creates all those symbols, images, sounds. And that weirdness, which surrounds them is only a fog of an unknown semantics. Every symbol exists to meaning, while mosses and ferns are simply are. Or pretend to? Okay, here we need some highly experienced insider to infiltrate the fern kingdom and mosses universe to find out. Care to volunteer? 

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baldruin ~ vergessene träume

baldruin ~ vergessene träume (ikuisuus, 2018)

«Johannes is quite a regular guy following a well-arranged, unhurried 24/7 routine. Given this almost boring day in, day out one might wonder how he manages to piece together his colorful, imaginative and meticulously manufactured sonic miniatures? Well, it’s obviously that kind of untroubled artistic existence that leads to a mindset to create a slightly unsettling music quite far from the artist’s own experience. It’s not real, it’s phantasy. It’s art, it’s entertainment – and it’s meant to be fun...» ~ ikuisuus

It's not that easy to make creepy things fun, you know. Of course, there are thousands of horror movies which are somehow both, yet they may be boring as well, especially if you have seen a lot. Previous Johannes' work was everything but fun, it was creepy and catastrophic in a full measure. (Okay it was fun, but only if you are experienced noise & forest-folk user). Here, on the once again amazingly designed vinyl record, that story seems to continue but with a tone of irony. Small village zombie-apocalypse has happened (classical scene from low-budget horror arises) but it wasn't that bad at all. Now everything is back to the way it was, the daily routine continues – with some weirdness about it though. Some people are still working where they used to work, the others can't because they don't have legs, for instance. All food is rotten in the markets but the chips are still fine. Carousels at the amusement park are running, but with half-dead corpses sitting and staring into nowhere... Holding hands, like they're on a date. Probably they'd be happy to have some ice-cream, it may be refreshing. for their dead minds. But all milk is sour and the ice has melted. Sounds not so funny though, if you really think about it, but you should really be listening to the album by now, and combined with music it may have a completely different effect.

Melancholic notes and sudden bursts of string psychedelia, cold synths and unvarnished rhythms of childish percussion – Baldruin's music functions like self-driving mechanism, perfectly working despite obvious faults, seemingly unnecessary parts and weird engineering solutions made by its creator. Yet, it's alive! And it's purpose is unknown. It may sweeten your evening like a purring cat or can be as dangerous as the window left opened during the Samhain. When you sleep and one of your hands is on the floor. And this thing is under your bed... Or maybe it's already in the kitchen, talking to the brownie? It's hard to know their intentions, but the intention of Baldruins body of work seems to be a constant disillusioning the fact that our world is simple and devoid of magic. When there's nothing weird around you, why not to create it? Maybe all the magic needs are someone to channel it to our world. Only if that's a pure intention and self-made domestic rituals. And it doesn't matter if anyone sees what you channeled. Just be calm and careful, don't tell anyone about gnomes in your cellar. Let them eat all pickles. You won't need them in a dreamland...  

It's actually the same with music reviewing – you hear and see something in the sounds, you tell about it, and people start wondering if that's true. But the magic here is the fact that nothing is carved in the stone. Or even if it is, the stone itself is fluid, ephemeral, it radiates drones and affects the surroundings by the clatter of unknown origin. Don't you realize? We are in a dream. Try to read what is written there again. Where? On the stone. Which stone, what are you talking about? About wild goose wearing green gloves. Ah, I see... Oh, she's sooo beautiful, I'm gonna faint! Please, faint – I made a fresh bed for you out of these gentle bells and drones. Have a good sleep, we are going to the amusement park tomorrow! 

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baldruin ~ biotische verwitterung

baldruin ~ biotische verwitterung (aetheric records / cloister recordings / black horizons, 2017)

«A disquieting record to accompany the nightmare of now. Baldruin documents this darkness, finding some hope in the helplessness. Buried within these grooves, lies a dizzying array of crepuscular sonics. Barely alive, it drips with dread. Rachitic loops return to us, like traumas. A sticky submission. My goodness, these earworms are infectious.» aetheric-records 

If this world is going to an end – let's dance! Why not? Oh, there is so much fear and dread, and awe, and horror, and hope, and loneliness, and death-death-death is everywhere! But why not to dance? It all begins in light they said. Send your prayers they said. But what's in the end? Baldruin says 'Vom Ende' and then nightmare just begins, spinning its way back to your memory, turning everything upside down, changing the faces and places in the same canvas like in the most disturbing David Lynch movie. Yet, we can dance a bit. Because why not? Okay, despite being groovy and glitchy and gloomily enjoyable this record is not about decadence. It's definitely Baldruin's most creepy work to date, sometimes so disturbing that it gets physical. Something in the stomach. So you better move your body, because these aural rats are everywhere, their skins are soft and warm but they are red inside and they want you be same way... It feels like everything collapsing, yet there is something hidden in the sound which gives you strength to look, to face this storm. Apocalyptic, yes – this records definitely has its own transcendental virtue usually avoided by many. If it's usually calming escapism or filth and decadence in case of 'apocalyptic music', Baldruin paves his own way far away from both. I'd call it necessary vision. To look at thing as they are. As you just came out of wilderness and faced human world for the very first time. Not knowing what's good and what's bad. Not knowing where to go, because your wilderness is gone. And everything else is going to end as well... And it isn't dark at all. It's just how it is right here, right now, when you go by the streets – just one step away from the usual safe road. It may be literal, but can be in your mind. Just one, just little tiny step. And new wilderness unfolds, The Real of the Now. It barks, it bites, it pleases, it laughs, it fists your guts. But after all we know that we created it. So why not to dance with it? 

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grykë pyje

grykë pyje ~ fragments of high sensitivity (ikuisuus / hyster tapes, 2016)

After nice tape released at Ginjoha almost four years ago, Jani Hirvonen (well know as Uton) and Johannes Schebler (same, as Baldruin) made a glorious return with exquisitely decorated vinyl, which looks like illustration from famous "Kunstformen der Natur" book. And same can be said about music – huge universe of tiny sounds dancing around the head in constant changing, meticulous mix of bright sparkles and huge atmospheric phenomena. All you now about Baldruin goes here in weird manner of Uton's world and from the very first moments of this album you are somewhere deep in thickets, surrounded by mossy giants. Trail is lost, but that is completely okay... Whole planet's life can be found in the scale of tiny drop water, evolution repeats its pattern at each and every step of magnification. Would it be whole galaxy or just your backyard, something is going on there all the time. This album reflects this ever-unfolding ornament of life with soulful naturalism and not without humour. Some may call it "noise", but it's too subtle. Maybe ambient? Nope, too cacophonous. Folk? Missed again! There are strong feeling of something archaic about it, which makes "Fragments of High Sensitivity" definitely pre-something, proto-music of some kind. Like those radiolaria in the "Kunstformen" – tiny and fragile inhabitants of the oceans for the last 500 million years, creatures of amazing symmetry. What they heard when there were no people on this planet? Symphony of life, unfolding in every direction. It's easy to imagine during this stunningly beautiful cacophony, which reveals new secrets every time you listen to it.

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baldruin

baldruin ~ aufbruch 3" cdr (makrame, 2013)

"you need to have the gold good-luck charm to be able to get into the enchanted forest of sound created by johannes schebler..." makrame

es fácil descubrir los discos donde se reflejan y a mí me parece que Baldruin es puro makrame. el macramé es un arte muy antiguo en el que sólo se utilizan las manos para hacer hermosos nudos, trenzas y cenefas decorativas. y eso es lo que Aritza Land admira por encima de todo, los sonidos improvisados y ancestrales, coger una canción y simplemente tocarla, retorcerla como si fueran nudos. esa fisicidad del free jazz y la música tradicional africana y asiática. claro, cualquier grabación que venga de un sello que nace en el 'vasco país' y que se llama makrame en honor a la abuela de Aritza, tiene a su favor un plus original de cariño y garantía. pero es que este minicedé es tan tan bonito y dorado, literal, que la única palabra que lo define es artesano, como el papel cebolla o el amuleto de la buena suerte que ilustra la portada.

empieza a sonar 'die erweckung des lazarus feat. nebelsonnen', con sus palos de agua y sus notas de piano, y sabes que además estás ante el que será uno de tus discos más queridos del año...lo sé, casi siempre lo digo, pero de verdad que es así. inconfundibles tonadillas de auténtica orfebrería psicodélica en las que sigue habiendo bosques encantados y sigue habiendo duendes y sigue habiendo un clima fantabuloso de cajitas de música con bailarina dentro y microscópicos laberintos de antiguos mecanismos de relojería. un toque artesanal, cálido, rural, tan afín al espíritu de makrame, que dibuja mejor que nunca ~y nunca mejor dicho porque Johannes Schebler además pinta y colorea~ los recovecos de su ambient folk miniaturizado y chispeante. 

las sorpresas de 'aufbruch' son, entonces, pequeños regalos para los que admiramos todo lo que hace Johannes Schebler: apenas el tímido uso de un delay, campanillas, drones que parecen violines, violines que parecen armonios, pianos que parecen mandolinas, vibráfonos que suenan como el hielo en los vasos, flautas que parecen cascabeles, un órgano de iglesia acolchado como el más mullido de los sofás, tal vez un dulcimer, el graznido de un cuervo, voces de niños en 'durch das licht von elysion', preciosa nana cual página arrancada de algún cuento infantil de la famosa noche de Walpurgis. la producción es nítida, vibrante, cristalina, totalmente orgánica, encontrando miles de matices, sonidos indescriptibles y cierto aroma al mágico sonido Canterbury, a la hipnosis folk de nuestra añorada Tara Burke, al mundo flotante de M.M. Peres, a las ondas sónicas de juguete de Jonathan Fitoussi y sobre todo a la dulzura tribal de Sunhillow, con quien el año pasado había compartido un split en SicSic Tapes. no es tanta casualidad que otros de los minicedés publicados en makrame fuese de Uton, el alien duende por excelencia con quien Johannes nos regaló otra cinta inolvidable en Ginjoha Tapes bajo el nombre de Grykë Pyje. de ahí la sensación de que makrame, sin acento porque en euskera nunca hay acentos, conecta en la distancia músicos que, sin saberlo, o tal vez sabiéndolo, ya estaban conectados.

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grykë pyje

gryke pyje ~ callings from nowhere (ginjoha tapes, 2012)

"everybody is looking for Wonderland as Dreams of frenzy. Grykë Pyje is strange duo of Jani Hirvonen (Uton) and Johannes Schebler (Baldruin)" ginjoha tapes

llevo unos minutos sentada delante de la pantalla intentando decir algo sobre 'callings from nowhere' y no hay manera. despertando a los espíritus, visiones de libélulas, sendero fantasma, pareidolia, contactos confusos, bendiciones aurales, epifanía bajo la luna llena. nada más. todo está en los títulos. cada canción es tan bonita que cuesta marcharse de ella hacia la siguiente. ¿cómo transmitir la belleza de una canción de cuento como 'deep soul twinkle'? 'forest breath', la respiración del bosque, resume la esencia de este encuentro de dos personas que sin saberlo ya estaban unidas, se acerca como ninguna a la sensación de adentrarse en un bosque encantado y húmedo de la mano de Charles Burns y Tara Burke, como si fuesen dejando miguitas por el camino para que no les perdamos de vista. intrumentación sencilla y tintineante y ronroneos suaves, Jani y Johannes, que parece tocado por una varita mágica si nos acordamos de su preciosa colaboración con Sunhiilow, dan cuerda a esta cajita musical recostados en sus hamacas, allí es donde componen e improvisan, flotando y balanceándose, lanzando ondas sónicas ululantes para contactar con los espíritus, dejando brotar nueve canciones como nueve soles o como polvo mágico de hadas para impregnarte de felicidad. un disco realmente bonito, de los que florecen cuando deben, en el momento adecuado, para recordarte el valor musical de las fuerzas de la naturaleza, de lo hermoso y lo inabarcable, mezclando la estructura del folk tradicional con las brumas densas siempre con un fondo de surrealismo y el ambient acogedor de todo lo que solemos encontrar en el sello de Buchikamashi. otro disco para poner en bucle y no dejar que se acabe nunca. o para quedarse atrapada en 'waking the spirits'.

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baldruin / sunhiilow

baldruin / sunhiilow ~ split (sicsic tapes, 2012)

"frankly, Valérie Magisson’s music is both: mystifiying and enlightening. her ambient miniatures sound  familiar yet weird and strange. as if ghostlike voices are whispering long forgotten tales into your ears. spellbinding. Baldruin’s slightly nightmarish playground orchestra is the perfect equivalent to Sunhiilow’s music. again there is all the individual notes swirling like glowworms through a late summer night held together by Johannes Schebler’s talent for frail and creepy soundscapes." sicsic

imagino que no es nada fácil que ante tal avalancha de discos que asoman cada día en el blog, este split consiga captar toda la atención que se merece, pero quiero recomendar de corazón estas dos preciosidades editadas en otro de lo de los sellos que tantas alegrías nos está dando, sicsic tapes. las minúsculas operetas de Valérie Magisson y Johannes Schebler se complementan tan bien y todo es tan bonito que cualquier descripción se queda pequeña y posiblemente no consiga hacerle justicia. la nueva colección de miniaturas de Valérie es la ampliación del universo y la atmósfera de 'from there to here' y como en él, vuelve a dar forma a otro fascinante microcosmos plagado de tonadillas familiares y a la vez desconocidas que en canciones como 'coconut hut' me recuerda una barbaridad a 'sea bed meditation' de Jürgen Müller y en general a los sonidos que últimamente más me han robado el corazón: la librería musical de  finales de los setenta y principios de los ochenta. mi debilidad de este split es Sunhiilow, ella, más luminosa, es quien lleva el vuelo, pinta su música como una cajita musical mostrando un universo propio de collages, de loops, voces y ambientes tocados con la inocencia del surrealismo y la magia de los sueños. una magia que es una experiencia de abandono y felicidad, la electrónica sumergida, la sensación de mirar a través de un caleidoscopio con dibujos de anémonas, peces y corales. después de 'amphibian dance' y 'metamorphosis', que es el sonido de la luz y los grillos y las luciérnagas ululantes en una noche de verano reflejándose a través de un millón de cristales, Valérie se inventa la preciosidad de 'love gravitation', apenas dos minutos y medio de pura ingravidez que despide la colección de miniaturas que más veces escucharé este invierno. una vez hayas subido a su espiral, cierra los ojos y déjate llevar.

luego está el reverso, como la noche sigue al día. las nanas de Baldruin, iguales pero diferentes, se escuchan como un documental sobre leyendas y duendes, como un cuento para niños a caballo entre la vigilia y el sueño. su atmósfera sobrenatural es el otro lado del espejo, alicia en el país de las maravillas a través de los ojos de Tim Burton, o Plexiglas a través del pincel de Jali, un halo fantástico ligeramente más oscuro frente a la mirada contemplativa y cristalina de Sunhiilow. siendo justa y sin dejarme llevar por mi afinidad con Valérie, igual de bonito y fascinante. suena el piano de juguete de 'die physik des animal-magnetismus' y te sientes cautivada y desarmada, suena 'das mirakel' y de verdad pienso que esto no es un vinilo ni una cassette ni un cd, es otra cajita musical con su bailarina convertida en hada que da vueltas e hipnotiza, un carrusel de caballos en mitad del bosque, un 'sueña y graba lo que oyes'. lo mejor de dos mundos comprimido en cuatro minutos y medio. la verdad es que el contenido es tan variado y es tal la acumulación de capas rítmicas, de cascabeles y campanillas, de sirenas abducidas por extraterrestres ('sturz der sirenen' no puede ser más inquietante) retales y organillos, que es imposible definirlo...y me alegro de que así sea. un split del que sólo se puede decir que te deja con ganas de más y que ojalá no pase mucho tiempo para disfrutar de otra colaboración no sólo juntos si no revueltos y que de paso les acompañe Jani Hirvonen de Uton y les salga algo mágico como 'callings from nowhere' de Grykë Pyje, la unión de Jani y Johannes para Ginjoha Tapes, el sello de Buchikamashi. todo está unido*

foto: dear caffeine

sunhiilow ~ baldruin ~ buy the tape

baldruin

baldruin ~ schatten & lichter (cae-sur-a, 2011)

"sleepwalking in lost memories, a hairy goblin processes ambient lo-fi nightmarish takes on keyboard, flute, found objects and percussion. recalling images from childhood days in the bavarian woods, these madeleines taste like cold sweat; dark, romantic and surreal elegies fro a past never experienced, only imagined. some call it “hauntology”, we call it bavarian gothic. 'schatten & lichter' provides ten sonic stillborn changelings at midnight, preserved and presented here on tape." holger adam, phantom limbo

"Baldruin is the solo project of Johannes Schebler from Wiesbaden, Germany. Baldruin is both hanted and haunting, blending ritualistic psychedelic folk jams with vast, shimmering ambient soundscapes to create a deeply cavernous sound." weedtemple

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