the avian kin - alien kin
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he Alien Kin is an itinerant research and sound project playing with biomimicry and collective music making. Starting in 2022 with a sojourn in the Black Forest, the ensemble started to explore the sonic worlds of meadows, monoculture forests, train tunnels, bogs and imaginary places.
A long walk with Klaus-Peter, a hunter who cares for an area of forest near Triberg, raises questions like – what does it mean to interfere in the forest, for instance by hunting down roe deer when they no longer have predators? What does it mean to live in a world which is, as he says, a completely cultural or cultured landscape (reine Kulturlandschaft)?
All materials on the A side were recorded outdoors. Field recordings are haunted by a nearby highway; the spruce trees planted rectilinearly provide only limited shelter for birds, insects and mammals in the area. Their crowns tower 20 or 30 meters tall, and the grounds are systematically cleared of any bushes, scrubs, and dead wood. Stumbling in the tracks of giant pruning machines, two players follow a whimsical tawny owl and try to learn her tunes. Later, with Joan Jordi Oliver on Saxophone and instrument builder Joe Summers playing a duophonic flute, the group of three venture into a... more
credits
released November 17, 2023
Compositions by Diane Barbé. All the pieces on side A were recorded outdoors in the Black Forest (Schwarzwald), Germany, April 2022, during a residency at Global Forest e.V. with special support from Irene Pérez Hernández and Olsen Wolf.
All the pieces on side B were recorded by Rabih Beaini at Morphine Raum, Berlin, Germany, October 2022, with support from Musikfonds e.V.
Special instruments were built by Joe summers and Diane barbé.
Mixed by Diane Barbé. Mastered by Joe Summers.
Tree trunk painting by Lou Croff.