Thomas Kessler: Said The Shotgun To The Head & Utopia II

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Release Date: 12th Feb 2016
Catalogue No: NEOS11511
Label: Neos
Length: 58 minutes

Usually despatched in 3 - 4 working days

Kessler, T: , said the shotgun to the head.

Work length26:52

Album only

Saul Williams, Elena Berthold, The-Huy Giang, Stella Lehmann, Oliver Karau, Patrick Elberg, Hennig Gemke, Julia Lang, Talin Maas, Hannah Maria Noack, Sinat Ud-Din, Itamar Marom
WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln
Jonathan Stockhammer

Kessler, T: Utopia II

Work length31:21

Album only

Barbara Ziersch, Axel Lindner, So Jeong Ahn, Johanna Melder, Isis Krüger
WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln
Jonathan Stockhammer

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At an age when one otherwise normally plays with model railways with one’s grandchildren, Thomas Kessler is experiencing his second spring. At the tender age of 66 he refers, in , ‘Said The Shot-Gun To The Head’, to the juvenile culture of Rap, but of course without making use of the customary Gangsta Rapper clichés.

His music follows the word cascades of the Slam-Poet Saul Williams in great detail. It is strengthened by a Rap choir that is to be cast for each individual performance, made up of schoolchildren in Cologne: seven voices sitting in the orchestra and – in the closest contact with the classical musicians – propelling the event.

Kessler goes still further eight years later in Utopia II. His idea of live electronics is central here, reflecting decades of studio experience. Each musician has a microphone, loudspeaker and laptop at his disposal alongside his instrument, and can individually control and alter the sound. The whole, therefore, is not regulated by a “god at the control desk” but by musicians who listen attentively to each other.

The result is a multi-layered, hardly foreseeable orchestral sound containing, alongside instrumental tones, countless sounds, remote voices and noises, as well as fragments of news channels.

Thomas Kessler: Said The Shotgun To The Head & Utopia II

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