| CM von Hausswolff |
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| Reviews |
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| “... a really wonderful, rich, and intriguing project. And Lampo’s such a gem.” (Christoph Cox) |
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| Arthur #24, 10/06 (U.S.) |
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| This book is a collection of red monochrome prints of empty buildings, transformed by their color bath into structures more hypnotic and mysterious than their reality would ever dare hint. Nice. (Byron Coley and Thurston Moore) |
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| Bagatellen, 1/06 (U.S.) |
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| At the request of Lampo, Swedish sound artist von Hausswolff journeyed to Chicago and brought himself to the top of the John Hancock Building where, presumably, he found no crows but recorded every other sound he could, natural and man-made, returning to his studio to construct the present recording. |
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| It’s a 40-minute piece that I find myself mentally slicing into three sections: opening and closing slabs that, in one sense or another strike me as rather prosaic bracketing a rich and fascinating central core. It begins with a pulse of static that at first contains a small, high-pitched whine but soon modulates through some thicker, lower areas and gradually includes counter-rhythmic burbles and splats. Although it’s quite possible von Hausswolff is simply working with the rhythms he happened upon atop the skyscraper and that the rather numbing effect of same is what was intended, this throb grew a bit aggravating over time. It’s not that this sort of Lynchian, industrially dystopic point of view isn’t effectively portrayed; more that one gets the point after a minute or so. It needn’t be insisted upon for another twelve. Interestingly, in the edition of photographs that the good folk at Lampo were kind enough to send along (“Red Empty (Chicago 2003)”), von Hausswolff makes his case more strongly in a series of images of non-descript Chicago buildings red-lit at night. This is worth a look-see. |
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| However, about a third of the way into the recording, the beats subside as a predominant element and a gorgeous wash of ambient sound takes over—the hum of a large space, traffic sounds, children arguing, etc. There’s a wonderful feeling of freedom when the throb fully ceases, replaced by…not sure, maybe altered air and wind sounds, maybe abstracted crowd noise. A much lower pulse makes itself felt, initially in a sporadic manner, then more consistently, but woven in perfectly with the general wash. It’s still ominous enough that when the kids show up you’re torn between appreciating how great it *sounds* and worrying about their safety in such an environment. A fine, expansive segment, this. |
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| I’m guessing von Hausswolff structured the piece in thirds with some precision, as the soundscape changes pretty definitively right around each 13-minute increment. At this last juncture, the atmospherics evaporate leaving only that dark pulse which now includes a bleating cycle every eight beats. The rhythm remains constant while the sounds morph into various guises, none of them especially compelling. The piece fades out almost entirely a couple of times, reappearing as though you’ve driven back into its broadcast range, a nice enough effect but, as with the first section, I didn’t find what I was hearing inherently very interesting, resulting in a mixed opinion of the project as a whole. I can imagine it working better as an installation piece, though, where one might be able to refocus on other aspects of the environment when the soundtrack becomes tiring. (Brian Olewnick) |
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| Cracked, 2/06 (Austria) | Back to Top |
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| In August 2003 CM von Hausswolff climbed up to the 100th floor of the Hancock Building in Chicago and recorded the sounds of the building, the wind, the traffic below, the passers-by underneath, the tourists around. He came there by invitation from Lampo, a non-profit organization supporting artists in the field of electronic conceptual music, sound art and electro-acoustics. Around the same time Hausswolff collected a crew of people into a van, drove through the Chicagoan night to seek out buildings evicted and left for rebuilding. While his crew drenched the buildings in flooding red light, he shot photos of the sites/sights. Later on, back in his hometown of Stockholm, he re-worked the recordings into one massive crunching drone of dense noise that pumps and hovers like the central nervous system of a mechanized organism at full workload. From the photographs he highlighted various details into oversized separations, three to every picture, and worked those into a book. The sound recording has now been released as a CD by Lampo, the pictures worked into a book and released alongside, though also separately from the sounds. |
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| As a conceptual work this trinity of live action, recorded sound and printed pictures is highly densified and complex and full of interesting connotations. Recording a building and putting its own sound in the middle of the recording, eviscerating its inner turmoils and workings is a direct way of hinting at the way rooms and buildings influence our own sense of listening, from the highly designed for acoustics concert hall to the recording studio with the absolutely special sound to our regular whereabouts at home and at work. Also, within the same room our attention might change from one acoustic detail to another, influencing our hearing experience, by ourselves changing focus from one part of the room to the next. For instance, during the day the hiss of a heating pipe might go completely unnoticed by us, while as soon as night falls and we try to sleep, this little sound might be the one to break our ability to sleep completely. In contrast to the mentioned hiss, the noise drone on “there are no crows …” is quite the opposite. |
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| A book consisting of red and black (with a little spots left without either colours acting as white) pictures might not sound much, to look at it, will soon tell you different. First, pictures all include so called “haunted” houses, i.e. evicted buildings or buildings left to fall down into themselves with time or to be replaced by something else. Americans also call buildings like that “doomed”—a connotation favourably enhanced by the flooding red light shone on them. The details extracted from the pictures include abstracts washed of red and black impossible to be found within the pictures themselves, as well as easily discernible letters or words. The nightly work had to go fast, or the crew would have been caught red-handed. Seriously now, the colour red carries a lot of strong connotations, from the blood and love to rage and anger and down to prostitution and the dawning of the apocalypse. The figures of speech including the colour red are almost impossible to count. The effect is intriguing and mesmerizing, while at the same time the music on the CD will put you into a perspective mood. |
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| von Hausswolff’s work includes art in physical objects and purely virtual ideas (probably best known is the Kingdom of Elgaland-Vargaland, which he rules as a co-monarch together with colleague Leif Elggren), with music on CD always being a thing stuck in the middle between physical immanence of art and its fluctuating existence in the stream of time. Like Hannah Hartmann, Jon Mueller or Justin Benett, noise music in the broadest sense of the term with so much theoretical background has a hard time getting off the ground and exciting the listener, because at times it is so much worn down by its own academic virtue (that is bound to come as soon as it has started—a vicious circle of some kind). “There Are No Crows …” would work on a purely physical level as well, which in this regard is usually a good thing to keep the work from being too cubist and insurmountable, but instead digestible and enjoyable by everyone with open ears. |
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| Dusted, 2/06 (U.S.) | Back to Top |
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| The John Hancock Center may now be dwarfed by Chicago’s Sears Tower, but, upon its completion in 1969, it was the tallest building in the city, and it was revered as an architectural milestone. The tower remains the fourth highest in the country, with an outdoor observation deck on the 94th floor, offering patrons the chance to venture outside and into the city’s storied winds at an elevation of 1,000 feet. When invited by Lampo to create a work within the confines of the Second City, it was the Hancock’s observation deck that Hausswolff chose as his destination, a high-rise recording studio that found Hausswolff surrounded by the wind, the sounds of his fellow sightseers, and those of the city (and building) below. |
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| Hausswolff’s final product, “There Are No Crows Flying around the Hancock Building,” is not simply a field recording; upon his return to Sweden, Hausswolff crafted an accompaniment to the recording, a feedback loop inspired, so it seems, by an imagined murder of crows circling the building’s upper reaches. This oscillating tone, a monstrosity of low-end grit, slowly deteriorates, with peals of feedback seeping through the cracks in its grim exterior and a dissolution of the prominent bass crunch into an even more ragged revolution. It’s ten minutes before Hausswolff’s field recordings find their way into the mix, by which point the crows are a muffled and slowly fade into the background. But, after only a few minutes of the unadorned sounds of the city, Hausswolff’s dark-winged denizens make their return, slowly swallowing the sound until only a dark pulse remains. The album closes with further variations on the cyclical feedback, from a clean tone to one so encumbered with static it seems almost immovable. |
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| This last segment of the disc is a departure from the thematic backbone of the album; no longer is it so easy to envision Hausswolff’s crows in the music, but if “There Are No Crows Flying around the Hancock Building” relied completely on this visual for its impact, it would be a far less compelling listen. As it is, Hausswolff’s forty minutes of speaker torture is, at proper volume, capable of great impact. It’s a disc that forces itself upon the listener, as it has its way with the unlucky stereo equipment upon which it’s played. There’s an almost meticulous sense of order to the recording as well, and Hausswolff proves that he needs not rely only on harshness and sheer force. One wishes he had used the field recording more often, since it seems that the actual Hancock recordings take a back seat on much of the album to the unholy rumble of Hausswolff’s crows. But were the disc to dispense completely with the organic source material and the atmosphere it inspired, “There Are No Crows Flying around the Hancock Building” would nonetheless be a forceful and unnerving listening experience. (Adam Strohm) |
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| Foxy Digitalis, 2/06 (U.S.) | Back to Top |
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| When listening to drone albums I sometimes have to think of a Tamagochi. Of course drone music usually sounds anything but cute, but I feel like the relationship between the musician and the drone is like that of the user and a Tamagochi. You can feed it, nourish it until it becomes fat, but you can also keep it on a diet. You can play with it and make it move. Sadly enough, you can also let it die. |
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| Carl Michael von Hausswolff’s 40-minute drone on this album goes through just that process. It’s made up of dark and pulsating feedback with the addition of field recordings taken on the top floor of Chicago’s Hancock Building. In relation to the album title, the drone is meant to picture crows flying around the building. For the first few minutes of the piece, the field recordings are somewhat subdued. You can hear some street noises here and there, but it’s mainly morphing feedback sounds, coming and going. After around ten minutes those dissolves in a steady swoosh. Soon after, there’s a heartbeat and the drone is back. The field recordings get more attention around the 18-minute mark. There are conversations between mothers and their children, some doors and footsteps. They’re interrupted by short crackling static noises. This middle part of the composition sounds a bit like the crows are on hold. It reminded me of somebody pressing the pause button on an older VHS recorder. There’s still a little bit of movement back and forth because the VHS is not able to hold a steady picture. |
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| The field recordings leave around the 27-minute mark and the crows are back. This is where the fun begins because von Hausswolff slowly starts to leave the low frequency ends of his drone and introduces some screeching feedback. That only lasts for a minute or so though. Then it’s time for the outro, which is a bit long maybe. At the 31- and 35-minute marks, one thinks that the drone has breathed its last breath, but each time it makes a return with some of the darkest pulsating of this disc. It sounds like the agony of the Tamagochi not wanting to die. Just when you think it’s fully revived, this album is over. Maybe the batteries just went dead. (Stephan Bauer) |
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| Ikonen, 5/06 (Germany) | Back to Top |
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| Der schwedische Klangkünstler Carl Michael von Hausswolff hat sich, trotz seiner inzwischen mehr als gefestigten Stellung im internationalen Kunstzirkel, eine Subversionskraft in seiner Arbeit erhalten. Hausswolff nutzt seine exponierte Stellung zum Beispiel, um in der Klemme steckenden Künstlern zu helfen (er setzte sich für John Duncan ein, als diesem wegen seiner Arbeit “Blind Date” wichtige Stipendiumsgelder entzogen werden sollten); er geht für seine Ideen wenn es sein muss auch ins Gefängnis (KREV Aktion im Baltischen Meer 2003). Das spannende an seinen multimedialen Arbeiten ist aber, dass sofort deutlich wird, wie hier ein Primärinteresse verfolgt wird, ohne Rücksicht auf Trends oder aktuelle Positionen. Hausswolff präsentiert sich in seiner Kunst als Zweifler im besten Sinne, er schließt dabei Exkurse ins Paranormale oder Mystische nicht aus (die ihm nicht selten als Scharlatanerie ausgelegt werden). Die unabhängig voneinander publizierten Arbeiten “Red Empty” und “There Are No Crows …” haben als gemeinsamen Ausgangspunkt Chicago und den Anstoß durch die Lampo-Organisation. Vor Ort ist Hausswolff auf die Suche nach Nicht-Orten gegangen, nach Plätzen, die durch Vibrationen und Frequenzen in neuem Licht und Ton erstrahlen können. “Red Empty” ist die Fortführung einer Serie, in der Hausswolff aufgegeben Gebäude mittels nächtlicher knallroter Illumination neu inszeniert. “Red Empty (Chicago 2003)” hat allerdings keinen Installationscharakter: die Beleuchtungsaktionen wurden rasch und mit mobilen Einsatzteams durchgeführt, aus ihnen entstand eine Serie von Fotografien, die im Buch stilvoll präsentiert werden. Zu jedem angeleuchteten Gebäudetyp (Lagerhaus, Kirche, Haunted House, Imbiss) gibt es zwei Detailausschnitte und eine Totale, welche die Wirkung der Beleuchtung beeindruckend wiedergibt. In seinen Klangarbeiten ist Hausswolff meist noch radikaler: Er arbeitet mit extrem einfachen Mitteln und fertigt fast schon bruitistisch-rau anmutende Soundmontagen an. “There Are No Crows Flying around the Hancock Building” beruht auf Aufnahmen, die Hausswolff auf der Aussichtsplattform des Hancock Buildings gemacht hat. Er hat seine Mikrophone vor allem den Windverhältnissen ausgesetzt: tiefes Brummen und peitschende Pfeiftöne herrschen vor. Nur vereinzelt sind Stimmen von Touristen tief im Mix zu vernehmen. Diese Feldaufnahmen hat Hausswolff mit knurrenden Oszillatoren und Sinusgeneratoren ins Gespräch gebracht, so dass ein über 40 Minuten dumpf pulsierender Klangteppich entstanden ist. Mit diesem einfachen Handwerksgriff der Montage gelingt Hausswolff eine äußerst wirkungsvolle Soundarbeit. (Till Kniola) |
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| Loop, 2/06 (Argentina) | Back to Top |
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| First we have to say that Lampo is an organization based in Chicago founded in 1997 and since then it has been dedicated to spread out experimental projects in the electronic, electroacoustic, free improvisation music field and sound art, among other art forms. This organization has been considered as “one of North America’s premier venues for experimental music.” Carl Michael von Hausswolff is a composer, visual artist and curator based in Stockholm that works with a camera, tape recorder, radar and sonar, frequency and investigates electricity, architectonic spaces and paranormal electronic interference. “There Are No Crows…” is a piece of work of 44 minutes commissioned by Lampo to this Swedish artist who worked in the 100 story Chicago building John Hancock. On the top of this building von Hausswolff made field recordings taken from this urban environment that included building vibrations, the breeze of the heights and tourists voices. Back in Stockholm he processed this material incorporating sine waves, drones, and low-fi frequency oscillator. von Hausswolff creates an urban scene that the listener penetrates into those dense noises like car claxons, voices, the breeze of the city that towards the end of the CD submerges and a processed sound on DSP transformed it into an almost inaudible drone. This is the real urban soundscape. (Guillermo Escudero) |
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| MMS, 1/06 (U.S.) | Back to Top |
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| Superlative electronic/concrète composition from Carl Michael von Hausswolff—the “co-monarch” of Elgaland-Vargaland. Starting out with what sounds like a Mokum 12” played at 16 rpm, the piece unfolds as a rhythmic blur of crisp, distorted electricity and heavily resonant filtering... It isn’t until the faint whirr of a police siren and the hissing motor of a passing bus creep out of the mix at the 7-minute mark that the piece shifts to a “presque rien”-ish study of downtown Chicago and its inhabitants. |
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| This does an excellent job of bridging the gap between the pan-fried analogia of latter-day pan(a)sonic and the sort of murked-out mystery layers of pieces such as Xenakis’ “Bohor.” Excellent... one of my favorite listening experiences of 2005 (See! This is why you *always* wait until at least mid-January to publish your year-end lists folks...) (Keith Fullerton Whitman) |
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| Octopus, 4/06 (France) | Back to Top |
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| Prospecteur sonore et visuel des espaces architecturaux et de leurs champs d’interférences électroniques, le musicien et performer suédois Carl Michael von Hausswolff—également connu comme l’un des deux “monarques,” avec Leif Elggren, du très conceptuel micro-état d’Elgaland-Vargaland—a été convié par la structure d’expérimentation électro-acoustique Lampo à venir sévir du côté de leur ville de Chicago. Habitué à toutes les formes de captation (caméra, radar et sonar sont ses instruments de prédilection), CM von Hausswolff a pris comme point d’ancrage le très représentatif John Hancock Building pour saisir depuis le sommet divers enregistrements de vibrations et d’ambiances qu’il a ensuite retravaillés dans son studio, étayés de bruits de rotation suggérant les fameux corbeaux du titre, afin d’aboutir à la longue drone électrique qui tressaute tout au long de ce cd. Forcément conceptuel, le travail de CM von Hausswolff entretient, en confrontant cette linéarité chaotique et permanente entre fréquences grésillantes sur-amplifiées et bruits urbains diffus (circulation, voix), un étrange sentiment mêlé de paranoïa urbaine, comme s’il parvenait à saisir la bande-son d’un univers citadin ignoré, dans lequel nous gravitons quotidiennement sans être capable d’en saisir les sens (sonores en l’occurrence) rééls et profonds. Pour appuyer sa musique, l’artiste scandinave et le label publient en parallèle une série de photographies de bâtiments des environs de Chicago: des lieux de la vie courante comme une église, un entrepôt ou une station-service, baignant dans d’étranges halos de lumière rouge (Red Empty Chicago 2003, aux éditions WhiteWalls/Lampo). (Laurent Catala) |
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| Paris Transatlantic, 2/06 (France) | Back to Top |
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| Swedish sound artist and installation builder CM von Hausswolff recorded the material for this album in 2003, capturing “building vibrations, passing breezes and overheard speeches from tourists” at the top of Chicago’s John Hancock Center, later adding repeated cycles of rotating feedback “to suggest crows encircling the conceptual tower.” The resulting sound resembles the incessant throb of a giant mechanical heart being gradually eaten away by acidic humidity, but its inherent ferocity, masked by the pummeling vibration, never seems to reach real saturation, the sonic elements fusing instead into a single corpulent entity that sounds like a cross between an ocean wash and a distant train. von Hausswolff has collaborated frequently with the likes of Leif Elggren and John Duncan, and this project corresponds well to their aesthetic of working around the thresholds of genres, since the disc comes along with “Red Empty,” a collection of photos by von Hausswolff taken in various abandoned sites (churches, factories, even hot dog restaurants...) specially floodlit by 1000-watt red spotlights. These pictures are the only documentary evidence of a series of events that, to quote Anthony Elms, “search for the monochromatic that banishes purity as a senseless utopian drive.” Gazing at them as the record ends, silence encroaching on the last sputters of feedback, one concludes that managing to lead a normal life is utopian enough itself. (Massimo Ricci) |
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| Phosphor #121, 8/06 (The Netherlands) | Back to Top |
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| Stockholm-based artist CM von Hausswolff was invited by the non-profit organization Lampo to do a project specific to the city they are located in, that is Chicago. CM von Hausswolff made recordings on top of the 100-story John Hancock building. Later he added home-made studio recordings. The end-result is a 40-minute long ominous piece. Heading off with distorted rhythmic feedback in the vein of Brighter Death Now (slightly changing regularly), this album continues with a wall of noise, comparable to very thick hiss. Later, this is after about 28 minutes, the sound changes into a sort of sine waves, to return to distorted rhythms again. These low-end drones go together with the recordings made on top of the tower; that is the sirens from a police car, a conversation among tourists and the sound of wind. A very strong release that leaves behind quite an impression (of Chicago). |
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| “Red Empty (Chicago 2003)” is a 128-page book including photographs by Hausswolff. He set 1000-watt red spotlights against the architecture of run-down, abandoned buildings in Chicago. Beautiful estranged black and red photos have been featured in this book, sometimes recognizable as a church, a gas-station or a warehouse and sometimes just abstract, just showing a certain atmosphere. Very impressive, showing the desolate and not so cheerful side of the city. Excellent work! |
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| Vital Weekly #504, 12/05 (The Netherlands) | Back to Top |
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| Through the years Carl Michael von Hausswolff has manifested himself as a visual and sound artist, with a strong interest in architecture, electricity, frequency and paranormal electronic interference. His latest CD “There Are No Crows Flying around the Hancock Building” features a work that he first presented in Chicago in March 2005. All the source material was recorded at the empty [sic] Hancock building in 2003 and treated in the studio, back in Stockholm in 2004. In the studio he added “a series of feedback rotations to suggest crows (guardians or enemies?) encircling the conceptual tower.” If one is familiar with his previous work, one knows what to expect: de-charging electricity sparking over the empty of a large building, with the reverb adding a kind of violent drone to it. In a strict minimal way this music moves slowly forward, with changes whenever necessary. It’s a pretty dense, hermetically closed field of music, and despite the fact that is was recorded at the open-air observation deck, it sounds like claustrophobic music—which is not to say I dislike the music, but due to the rather raw nature, it’s not something to be played for greater pleasure late at night. But playing it while looking at his “Red Empty” book, which is released at the same time (and related to the CD), it gives an idea what this work is about. In the book, you’ll find photographs by Hausswolff of empty buildings set in 1000 watt red spotlights. Water-houses, gas stations and a church for instance, sometimes shown in their entirety or in detail, give a very alienated idea of these empty places. And the CD then acts as a very fine soundtrack to the book. Quite a disturbing affair altogether. (Frans de Waard) |
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| The Wire #264, 2/06 (U.K.) | Back to Top |
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| After making the title’s observation about the lack of bird life at the top of one of Chicago’s grand skyscrapers, Hausswolff populates his processed recordings of the Hancock’s vibrations, electric field disturbances and conversations by tourists with his own murder of crows. The Swedish conceptualist suggests their presence through a relentless aggregate of churning feedback and gnarled distortion, as if his ghost-birds were flapping and squawking at a turgid crawl. On occasion, his electric bird calls give way to the banal chit-chat of tourists; here is where Hausswolff’s allegory takes shape, with these imagine crows enjoying a panoptic perspective, gazing upon the convoluted social structures of humanity with a Hitchcockian sense of terror. (Jim Haynes) |
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There Are No Crows Flying around the Hancock Building Edition limited to 500 CDs Lampo 001 Nov. 2005 $15 
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Red Empty (Chicago 2003) 128 pp, softcover 6-1/2 x 9-1/2 inches 56 color plates 0945323042 Fall 2005 $22
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| Prices are postage paid in the U.S. |
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for overseas shipping rates. |
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