Live SHIFT - electronic arts festival, Basel 08:

Wäre ja längst Zeit für eine Nachlese zum SHIFT Festival - wobei nicht nur Nach- sondern auch Mitlesen, -hören und -sehen ja auch schon während der SHIFT-Tage ganz wunderbar über den SHIFT Festival Blog möglich war. Aber das eine oder andere der vielen Highlights muss doch auch dem hauseigenen Zettelkasten einverleibt werden.
Wie zum Beispiel das Kopfhörerkonzert mit b°tong - organisiert von (wen wundert's): unserem Basler Lieblings-Netzlabel Interdisco.
Wer sich an diesem Abend, Kopfhörer über den Ohren und eingekuschelt in eine warme rote Flauschdecke, in der Kleinen Halle niedergelassen hatte, blieb. Aber wo eigentlich? Denn der Körper war dann mal weg und auf der Reise in Landschaften, die fern und doch präsent und plastisch wuchsen, sich unaufhörlich verwandelten. Kino für die Imagination. Ganz Geräusch, das nicht nur Klang, sondern mehr war - Struktur, Körper, Raum, Architektur.
Nun sind wir ja sowieso erklärtermassen verliebt in noisige Experimente mit Gerätschaften und Field Recordings. Aber selbst Menschen, die ihre Neigungen sonst nicht in diesem Feld verorten würden, sollten sich doch gelegentlich mal die eine oder andere der Produktionen von b°tong zu Gemüte führen.
Futter für Neugierige (und zukünftige Fans) gibt es obendrein nicht nur auf Tonträgern, sondern beispielsweise auch bei archive.org, wo etwa die im Mai diesen Jahres publizierte EP-S Ausgabe von Microsleep wartet. Oder bei NOECHO Records, wo man nach wie vor sein Album "Structures" bekommt.
Beides natürlich kein Ersatz für Live-Experimente wie eingangs besungene Reise ins Innere der Gehörgänge. Aber lecker in jedem Fall...
Miss Gunst, Home Made Labor 08

Eine besondere Spezialität am Shift sind noch die Kopfhörerkonzerte. Zum ersten mal in die kleine Halle kommend ist man ein wenig irritiert, denn es ist totenstill im Raum. Überall sitzen Menschen auf gepolsterten Sitzflächen, zum Teil in Decken gewickelt und lauschen entspannt den Klängen der (auch Kopfhörer tragenden) Musiker. Sobald man sich auch ein Plätzchen gefunden hat und sich den schnurlosen Kopfhörer aufgesetzt hat, kann man den Grund für die Entspanntheit verstehen: Die Musiker von b°tong produzieren eine Art Ambient-Sound, jedoch nicht Strand- und Wohlfühlambient, sondern eher kratzige und teilweise rohrere Klänge, Teppiche aus langsam fliessendem, brummendem, düsteren Material. Und trotz Kopfhörer ist es mehr ein Konzert als einfach nur Musikhören, denn man weiss, dass alle anderen im Raum, obwohl es still ist, das selbe im Ohr haben. Sehr beeindruckend.
out-of-space.ch 2008

Live Mala Scena, Cakovec 2008:

U najmanju ruku eksperimentalno bi mogli nazvati koncert ova dva glazbenika u prekrasnom prostoru cakoveckog CZK.
Naime, B°Tong i Tamagawa su u biti 2
"One-Man-Banda" koji uz hrpu efekata, pomagala (cesto i kuhinjskih) pa i instrumenata stvaraju zanimljivu glazbu koja bi mogla dobro posluziti za neke mracne scifi filmove.
Dok se Tamagawa iz Francuske krece krautrock putevima koje su utabali NEU posebice na svom drugom albumu, koristeci Moogove analogne sintice, loopove i hipnotisne gitarske dionice, B°Tong je tu mnogo kompleksniji. covjek na pozornici stvarno izgleda kao Jamie Oliver i stalno nesto vrti, okrece, premjesta i namjesta, pali i gasi i stvara kolaz zvukova koji bi se mogao usporediti s radovima LaMonte Younga i Johna Cagea.
Svjesni prijemcivosti svoje glazbe, dvojac je "odsvirao" svaki po pola sata da bi na kraju jos i udruzili snage u desetominutnom "jam-sessionu".
Na kraju je 50-tak posjetitelja ovog dvostrukog performansa moglo zakljuciti da su se zapravo ugodno zabavili na ovom nesvakidasnjem koncertu dvaju neobicnih glazbenika koji su se u cakovcu nasli skoro pa slucajno na proputovanju iz Budimpeste za Svicarsku.
Emil, Le Figuar De Kranque 08

Live AZ Conni, Dresden 08:

Sofort nach betreten des Konzertsaales war klar, dass dies ein interessanter Abend werden würde. Die Musiker hatten ihr Equipment bereits aufgebaut und das bestand zum großen teil aus Klangerzeugern der Verschiedensten art.
Im laufe des Abends zeigte, dass sich der Schweizer Chris Sigdell oder b°tong vor allem an allerhand Küchengerät abarbeitete, dem der mittels Kontaktmikrophonen klänge entlockte, die Feinen Trinkers aka Jürgen Eberhard benutzte watschelnde Weihnachtsmänner auf einem Metallteller, eine Schraubzwinge, abgeklebte Schallplatten und so weiter und so fort. Beide Projekte schufen aus diesen Quellen und einigen vorgefertigten Sounds eine sich stetig verändernde Ambient-Noise-Muzak, die sich nur schwer in Worte fassen lässt. Insgesamt wirkten die Feine Trinkers... dabei etwas in sich geschlossener, die Klanglandschaft weniger abgehackt. Sehr experimentell und kurzweilig, insbesondere da man als Zuschauer dem Schaffensprozess beiwohnen durfte.
Club-Debil 08

Live Keller 242, Freiburg i. Br. 07:

Sprach ich gerade von elektronischen Spielereien die mir gefallen haben? OK, große Tische sind nur für Weicheier, die ihre Elektronik nicht ordnen können. Ich glaube, ich hab noch nie einen so vollgestellten Bistrotisch gesehen wie bei b°tong. Da drängten sich neben einem kleinen Mischpult ein paar Tretminen, und Klangerzeuger/-konserven (ein Mobiltelefon als Samplequelle habe ich auch noch nie gesehen, konnte man hier aber bestaunen - ein Anruf wäre bestimmt auch lustig gewesen), und über alle dem thronte ein alter Grillrost, der auch als Klangerzeuger herhalten musste. Auch hier haben mir die selbstgebastelten Sounds sehr gut gefallen, die alle wohlüberlegt zusammengesetzt wurden.
German internet forum 07

Structures:

Music by B°Tong has been reviewed before, but when? The search engine has some difficulty, but as far as I can remember they were all on CDR. This might very well be his first real CD. B°Tong is originally from Sweden, but now lives in Basel and was once part of the duo NID. 'Structures' is inspired by a trip to Jukkaskarvi's ice palace in Sweden, although I don't believe this release deals with field recordings. Both music and inspiration recalls very much the work of the earliest works of Thomas Koner: icy fields of music, stale cold wind on your body, the mood is dark. Humming slowly, played on, perhaps, a bunch of analogue synthesizers and lots of sound effects. Perfect Isolationist drone music. There is never anything new under the ambient sun, it seems, but what B°Tong does here, can easily match his previous work - no, let me correct that: this is his best work to date. For all fans of Brian Eno, Thomas Koner, Biosphere and Troum: this is the new name to watch out for.
Franz de Waard, Vital Weekly 08

Microsleep:

Wirklich ein seltsam-düsteres, interessantes Album, das Chris Sigdell mit Microsleep vorlegt. Schnell sein, denn die CD-R ist nur auf 60 stück limitiert. Alle Sounds der CD wurden mit einem Laptop und verschiedenen Samples aus natürlicher Umgebung wie auch aus Filmen, Radio etc. kreiert. Dabei ist ein wirklich sehr spezielles Gruselkabinett an Klängen und Ambiancen entstanden, wie sie dunkler und bedrückender kaum sein können. Man stelle sich vor, man steht im Dunklen vor einem tiefen Schachteingang und hört weit unten unter sich Geräusche, Stimmen, ein Knacken und Krachen. Microsleep wurde von einem Trip nach Australien inspiriert, wo am Wegrand immer wieder die Schilder stehen, die vor Microsleep, also Sekundenschlaf warnen und drauf hinweisen, Ruhepausen einzulegen. Thematisch dreht sich alles um Übermüdung, Einsamkeit, Träume und Albträume auf einer Strasse ins Nichts.
Creative Eclipse 07

Chris Sigdell, one half of the now split duo Nid (see also Vital Weekly 585), has already released a couple of releases as b°tong, in which he showed an interest in playing the atmospheric card in music and continues where we left him off with 'Polar:is' (see Vital Weekly 522). Metallic percussive sounds, drenched in a lot reverb, spiced with some extra delay, and some rumbling of analogue synthesizers as we go on this journey. A less subtle version of the early Thomas Köner (when he played the gong, anyone remember that), but certainly a release in which b°tong shows a development from his previous. Things sound more worked out, there is more variation among the separate pieces, and while it doesn't sound too new or strange, this is actually quite a nice release in the field or ambient, drone and isolationist music.

Frans de Waard, Vital Weekly 07

Polar:is:

B°tong is Swiss composer Chris Sigdell who has been active since the mid nineties in various guises. His music is a deep and dark somnambulant stream punctuated with occasional flurries and eddies of sound and texture that serve to both enhance and agitate the flow. Much of Sigdell's sounds display a love for the harsher ends of the sound spectrum but they are assembled with such a sympathetic ear that they achieve a naturalistic quality that is the flip side of what early expectations lead one to expect. 'Polar:is' is forceful and vigorous excursion into the outer edges of ambient music. It's considerably more interesting than most music being produced in this style at the moment and if, to use a crass term, dark ambient is your particular bag then you'd be hard pressed to find anything better.
Wonderful Wooden Reasons 08

Many of the 1000+1 TiLt recording releases deal with people from Greece, but b°tong is from Switzerland, being Chris Sigdell of Nid. His first release was on Verato Project (see Vital Weekly 486). 'Polar:is' is a release that is just one step further from a sound installation b°tong did, together with Camilla Schuler and Brigitte Gierlich. It consisted of 'a white room with three looped record-players in rotating psychedelic light, plus a separate underwater installation where two live-performance in icy atmosphere where held'. In what way the release is related I don't know, but it mentions natural sound and samples. Maybe because this release lasts a bit longer, we get a more coherent picture of the music of b°tong. Moving away from the microsound laptop doodling, he enters the spheres of isolationist drone music. Deep dark rumbling bass sounds, with gentle, glacier-like moving textures on top. It reminded me of what was called isolationist ten or so years ago, but more in particular Thomas Köner's earliest works. A bit dated perhaps, but quite nice for those who love their drones to be darker than dark.
Frans de Waard, Vital Weekly 06

3" CD:

Richly detailed stills sailing through gentle oceans of drony water:
So what is this? Chamber-musical industrial? Musique Concrete in space? An ambient scrap-yard? b°tong are not the first to demonstrate that soundscapes do not need to be a quarter of an hour long to be effective. But they are definitely among the best. Placed neatly in a minidisc-sized box, this pocket-CD-R comes with six intense musical scetches of between two and five minutes duration. Instead of boring you with meandering rivers of distortion and endless build-ups to climaxes that won't come anyway, these richly detailed stills seem to opt out before the goings get tough, but keep on playing in your mind for days. And it is a subtle pleasure on top: Sunrise Over Aris places a heavenly choir underneath the pumping of an artificial respirator and I Never Heard A Silence Louder Than That sails through gentle oceans of drony water. On other tracks, the evil-spirited clouds of unknowing are juxtaposed with high-pitched helium vocals to great effect. Just call it emotional no-nonsense noise.
Tobias Fischer, Mouvement Nouveau 06

Unheimliche, apokalyptische Horror-Reise durch düsterste elektronische Gefilde. b°tong klingt wirklich verstörend und unruhig, wie ein fiebriger Traum in kaltem Schweiss. You picture it. Absolut negative, 50 Grad unter Null Noise-Geräusche. Wohnt hier der Teufel? Und dabei sieht die 3 inch CD so niedlich aus, aber was da einem in einer guten Viertelstunde geboten wird, ist es definitiv nicht. b°tong klingt wie eine kalte Maschine deren einziges Ziel Zerstörung ist. Die Maschine ist schon komplett verrostet, droht auseinanderzufallen. Korrosion überall. Maschinenwelt. Bist du in dieser Matrix gefangen?
Rating: 6/10 Creative Eclipse 07

B°tong is the solo project of Chris Sigdell, who is a member of Nid (see Vital Weekly 460). Between January and April of this year he made this release 'using lap-top, natural sounds and recorded samples'. It's hard to say what kind of natural sounds he has taped, since they are transformed quite beyond the original source. The fact that a laptop is at work here is not hidden, but the collision of sounds and technology works quite nice here, except in 'Waves To The Shore (Riptide)', which is a very freaky piece of rhythm and noise, which doesn't work very well. But the other tracks are, in all their more upfront micro sound, quite nice.
Frans de Waard, Vital Weekly 05

Nid - Plate Tectonics:

Nid is the German experimental band, existed from 1995 to 2006. Chris Sigdell is known now for his solo project b°tong, Jürgen Eberhard is one half of another eccentric and hermetic project: Feine Trinkers Bei Pinkels Daheim. "Plate Tectonics" was released not so long ago, but this seems to be the only CD - Nid was much more into live performances rather than album recording sessions. The main idea behind Nid was the subsequential changing of the established meaning about electronic music, rooted in the very nature of sound sources. So the music was born in the real time ambience, witnessing the sound space architectural changes, causing constant improvisation. Some of you who have read previous reviews should remember the ongoing creative workshops committed by Günter Schroth and his Six And More ensemble. Nid were very welcome there, as well as in the program of various important festivals like "European Culture Capital". Actually, this particular album is the live recording made during a concert in Arnheim (NL) in the fall of 2002. The common feeling is very close to the post-industrial collages (the New Blockaders and alike) and dark ambient experiments (Lustmord is still living in our hearts!). By the way, the concert was recorded by Mars Wellink, ex-member of the legendary Vance Orchestra. The deep echoing and muffled, slowed down voices are treated with various handmade appliances, the bells and some old mysterious records combined together in the underwater laboratory of secret art-science.
Independent Electronic Music, Russia 08

Irony is an integral part of the music business: after over a decade of touring, performing and playing, Nid finally get to release their first full-length record with one of the bigger labels on the scene and then the band has already disbandened. For twelve years, the project was a constant, its members operating from their home bases of Switzerland and Germany, but reaching out to all of Europe, selling self-burnt CD-R's from the trunk of their car. But even though "Plate Tectonics" has missed out on providing them with their hoped-for breakthrough, it is still a welcome document of a band who could truly "rock" a crowd.
After all, none of the previous publications was able to capture this three-piece with the energy and hypnoticism of their live acts, filled with turntable aesthetics and knob tweaking in sets of many different stages and moods. Till Kniola of the Auf Abwegen label has been one of the project's patrons, inviting them over to his "Geräuschwelten" series over here in Münster, where i could witness them in action and was left wondering about why Nid has never made it to the upper echelons of the experimental family. All the necessary ingredients were there, after all: dense, abstract collages. Mesmerising passages of classical string magic, molten into an industrial amber vision. Rotating beats, noisy ambient and spoken word contributions. This made for a multifaceted listening experience. "Plate Tectonics", too, characterises their style as accessible and catchy, yet profound and stimulating. These three tracks may be stretched-out, but they are never fuzzy or wilfully opaque, never prone to intellectual boredom nor out to cheaply provoke. The band has found the golden cut and merged aforementioned genres into a subliminal, unobtrusive yet engaging and coercive flow. Everything is possible, as the dreamy threads of "Earth's Crust" are softly pierced by a looped radio melody or the closing "35 000 Feet Below The Ocean Surface" changes its timbre and pulse constantly over the course of its almost twenty-two minutes' duration.
As Chris Sigdell has gone on to intensify the effort behind his stoner rock project phased and his solo act b°tong, Jürgen Eberhard and Oswin Czerwinski have once again retreated into the spacey excursions of "Feine Trinkers Bei Pinkels Daheim". They have remained in close contact as well, continuing to perform live together. And yet, there was something special about Nid, which transcended the individual and undeniable talents of its constituent elements. As ironic as its belated arrival may be, "Plate Tectonics" captures this certain kind of magic on record at least once.
Tobias Fischer, Mouvement Nouveau 07

While not new, we only just discovered Nid, and our discovery came about in a very random manner, considering various related works were right under our nose. We listed a killer 4 way split 12" a while back called One Man Drone, and our favourite track from the split was a piece by a group called b°tong. We later discovered that the man behind b°tong was previously a member of German experimental sound-collective Nid. (…) So now it's sort of come full circle and we have this, the only proper full-length recording (as far as we know) from the group Nid, aka Feine Trinkers Bei Pinkels Daheim and it's pretty amazing. Pretty bizarre too, but then with a (sometime) name like Feine Trinkers Bei Pinkels Daheim, what else would you expect?
Three looooooooong tracks. Each an epic, incredibly varied sound-world, blending found sounds and field recordings with drones and intense blasts of layered sound. The opener begins with a muted cacophony of birds and crickets, before disappearing into a roiling black cloud of rumbling low end and distant droning guitar buzz. It almost sounds like sticking your head out of a speeding car, the wind whipping by and causing all sorts of distortions, but blurred into an impressively massive wall of sound. Within all this whipping sonic wind and rumbling whirs, are strange bits of percussion, the clang and bang of metal on metal, shakers and simple rhythms, they drift briefly in the eye of the storm, before the drone drops again, even more furious than before, until it fades out amidst the dreamy shimmer of female vocals and haunting minor key melodic buzz. Really intense, and strangely beautiful.
The second track is another deep cavernous roar. A bit smoother than the previous number, but not for long, bit of metallic buzz surface amidst the undulating rumbles, with some serious dynamic spikes, some of which sound like brief bursts of Sunn 0))), and others are even lower and more aggressive bits of low end exploration. There are bits of static and random buzz here and there, but mostly it's black and dark, a massive growling beast, slowly uncoiling into a monster that blocks out the sun. Near the end of the track, the darkness abates and in its place is a strange skipping stuttering snippet of music, wrapped in hazy distortion and looped into a mesmerizing rhythm, repeated over and over and over, gradually crumbling and becoming more and more distorted before erupting into a final burst of chest rattling low end, finally slowing down and sputtering to a halt.
The final track is over twenty minutes and is the most melodic of the bunch. Beginning with a looped cycle of xylophone melody, over a throbbing low-end pulse and streaks of keening distant guitar and bits of operatic female vocals. Very ominous, and mysterious sounding. When suddenly everything stops, and there's a guy with a British accent ranting over someone ransacking a kitchen, breaking glass, clanging cutlery, and suddenly it's gone, and we're back in some new dronescape, a mumbled voice looped into a haunting mantra, beneath distant thunder like rumbles, and little blurs of high end melody, indistinct, but gradually building in intensity. The drones drift away leaving birds and voices, and some strange bits of hiss and skree, before transforming into a plodding doomdrone beast. A simple stretched out rhythm over cavernous thrums and the sound of subway cars, everything pulsing and throbbing, a bizarre bit of dark collage, that manages to be strangely musical and completely hypnotic.
An amazingly weird record, and absolutely essential listening for the drone obsessed, which we would assume should be most of you...
Aquarius Records 07

It may have passed by without notice, at least it did here, but Nid has split up after twelve years of existence. Nid was a German duo of Jürgen Eberhard (who is and was before active as Feine Trinkers Bei Pinkels Daheim) and Chris Sidgell (solo known as b°tong). As Nid they played mostly around Germany and they released a couple of CDR's, of which I only seem to remember 'Solar Flare' (see Vital Weekly 460). 'Plate Tectonics' is said to be the only real CD - although you never know, if they reach the same mythical status as Maeror Tri, that might change. It's not by accident that I mention Maeror Tri, as Nid's music is from the same musical family: dark ambient industrial, built around sampled bird calls, deep synthesizers and utterly slowed down percussive sounds of heartbeat like thunder. Minimal changes in the low frequency range. A choir from the world of short waves, like a transmission from beyond. All of these usual ingredients are there, and it's mostly alright, this music, but it's never a big surprise, nothing out of the ordinary and it never beats say Maeror Tri or Troum. But for lovers of the genre, and they are plenty in the worlds of old Europa Cafe, Cold Spring or Cold Meat Industry, this is absolutely worth checking out, and perhaps launch them into mythical heights. The label Auf Abwegen is also connected to the magazine of the same name (or was that vice versa?).
Franz de Waard, Vital Weekly 07

One Man Drone 12":

Exactly what you might expect from a compilation called One Man Drone: 4 'groups', each made up of one member, each exploring their own idea of the drone. And that's where it stops being exactly what you might expect. As all four of these groups (three French and one Swiss) have dramatically different ideas of what constitutes drone music. And of course all of them are right... (…) The hands down winner though of this 4 way tag team match has to be b°tong who have managed some truly bizarre, gorgeously freaky cinematic dronemusic. Opening with a burst of playful Peter & The Wolf flutes and strings, the track quickly becomes a roiling soundscape of environmental recordings, demonic dark ambience, bits of classical music, and all manner of distorted and processed sounds and samples.
Snippets of playful classical music are swallowed up by thick swirls of grinding sludge, slowed down strings vibrate and pulse, FX swirl and obfuscate everything, mumbled vocals, processed blasts of industrial clatter and streaks of pealing bells, all get tangled up into the dark and heady mix. Almost like a Philip Jeck mix of Goblin and Wolf Eyes!!

Aquarius Records 2006