Fever – Five Songs from a Percussionist
Each composition of this CD is dedicated to a person, or to the work
of a person: Malcolm Goldstein, Amadeu Antonio Kiowa, Ingeborg Bachmann,
Elvis Presley and Yoko Tawada.
Each CD-bag (handmade) is unique, because it is a part of a huge painting, which has been cut into thousand pieces. Above, you see a reduced size reproduction of that painting. Of course, this is a limited edition.
With the handwritten number and letter, which you can find somewhere on your CD-bag, you can work out, which part of the painting you are holding in your hands.
FIVE SONGS FROM A PERCUSSIONIST
1. Listen, this is for You
2. Amadeu Antonio Kiowa
3. Bachmann
4. Fever
5. Listen,this for You (II)
PERCUSSIVE NOTES DECEMBER 2003
Fever-. Five Songs from a Percussionist
Matthias Kaul $18.00 nurnichtnur
This CD gratifies three of the five senses. lt appeals to touch by virtue of its use of a textured, canvas CD bag; it is satisfying to the eye with its use of a Wolfgang Kahle painting (Silence, 02. 2002), cut into a thousand pieces, one of which is used as the cover of the CD bag of this limited edition; and finally, it presents an aural smorgasbord, provided by the five compositions written and performed by Matthias Kaul: 'Listen, this is for You,' 'Amadeu Antonio Kiowa,' 'Bachmann,"Fever," and 'Listen, this is for You II. The pieces are dedicated to Malcolm Goldstein, Amadeu Antonio Kiowa, Ingeborg Bachmann, Elvis Presley and Yoko Tawada, respectively. Throughout these five sound portraits, Kaul displays a fertile imagination and a penchant für exotic instrumentation, which includes a hurdy-gurdy, Korean gongs Japanese and Tibetan temple bells, kalimba, Tanzanian lute, bowed gopichand from India, glass harp, kanjira, tabla and frame drum. He utilizes Western percussion instruments as well, setting an ominous tone in “Amadeu Antonio Kiowa” (an immigrant murdered in 1990 by Nazi skinheads) with a snare drum delivering 98 very loud, hard beats. A castanet is used to imitate Presleys finger snapping in 'Fever.' Instruments are also utilized in non-idiomatic fashion, with microphones rubbed on drum skins, and triangles hung from long wires running through Styrofoam half spheres. Kaul's sound portraits are a repository of creative ideas for composers of contemporary percussion music and those who perform it. -John R. Raush