{"id":1886,"date":"2023-09-05T09:45:19","date_gmt":"2023-09-05T07:45:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xeroxex.de\/?p=1886"},"modified":"2023-09-05T09:45:19","modified_gmt":"2023-09-05T07:45:19","slug":"xerox-exotique-083-akchamel-wirecutter-11-11-23","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xeroxex.de\/?p=1886","title":{"rendered":"Xerox Exotique #083: Ak\u2019chamel &#8211; Wirecutter &#8211; 11.11.23"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>\u201c<strong>Ak\u2019chamel<\/strong> are a mysterious duo from Texas who call out some seriously weird ritualistic cult jams by way of midnight smoke chants, speaking in tongues while plinking away on a broken spike fiddle, pounding a ratty drum, and droning on whatever noisemaker they can find.\u201d -Anti Gravity Bunny<br \/>\u2026over the past decade they have produced over a dozen cassettes, VHS films and vinyl LP\u2019s (such as the critically acclaimed \u201cThe Totemist\u201d). They perform in full homemade costumes with an array of half-broken indigenous or self-built instruments. <br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/akchamel.bandcamp.com\">akchamel.bandcamp.com<\/a><br \/><a href=\"http:\/\/instagram.com\/akchamel_\">www.instagram.com\/akchamel_<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Wirecutter<\/strong> &#8211; \u201eLittle Faith\u201c<br \/>The intimate relationship between walls and music is as old as music-making itself. Music, as the<br \/>Bible tells us, can make walls collapse; but as bands like Sonic Youth, Melvins, Sunn o))), or Zu<br \/>demonstrate, it can also build them up. \u201cLittle Faith,\u201d the debut album from the Berlin-based duo<br \/>Wirecutter, belongs to the latter camp: Michael Hoppe and Sidney Werner\u2019s walls of sound stand so<br \/>tall and strong that they themselves can\u2019t even surmount them.<br \/>As Werner describes the music: \u201dExtremely slow, extremely loud, extremely ornate, and extremely<br \/>minimalist!\u201d Practically everything else is self-explanatory. &#8220;Extremely massive\u201d might come to<br \/>mind as well, when, during the first track \u201cBuilt to Break,\u201d the the bass, drums and synthesizers<br \/>hurtle relentlessly forward\u2014and right when you\u2019ve started to keep pace with the sound, Werner and<br \/>Hoppe turn it up a notch.<br \/>Improvisation was key to recording &#8220;Little Faith.\u201d Guided by nerve and intuition, both musicians<br \/>left behind their primary instruments for less-familiar ones: Hoppe, trained as a pianist, played<br \/>drums, while Werner, a bassist, opted for a home-made instrument he calls the Diddley Bow. They<br \/>recorded during Lockdown, when a huge amount of pent-up energy\u2014emotional, social, and<br \/>musical\u2014had to be released. &#8220;It felt very freeing to just play music without any underlying idea,\u201d<br \/>says Werner. &#8220;That way, everything developed very organically. Nothing had to be discussed or<br \/>planned ahead, because we not only have similar values in terms of the music we like, but also why<br \/>we like it.&#8221;<br \/>A person can either lose or find herself in open improvisation. In \u201cLittle Faith,\u201d Werner and Hoppe<br \/>embark on a deliberate search for something. The tracks are indeed opulent, but never aimless.<br \/>Sifting through the material after recording, the two cut it apart, pasted it back together, and<br \/>recorded brutal synths over the patchwork until certain sounds and structures began to naturally<br \/>emerge.<br \/>A wall is always a wall. But let your eyes rest on it a while, and you will start to notice the cracks<br \/>and seams, the texture, the sediment. The same is true of \u201cLittle Faith\u201d: at first, the album seems<br \/>like a coarse block of blacks and grays. But listen further, and new colors will emerge. Time and<br \/>again throughout the project, the duo acquired new perspectives and priorities. As Hoppe stresses:<br \/>&#8220;The music is not just confrontational. It shouldn&#8217;t be understood as an attack on the ear. But the<br \/>underlying aggression can be seen as a statement on political, social and musical conditions.<br \/>Through repetition of certain themes or motifs, the music develops a narrative quality.&#8221;<br \/>Above all, Wirecutter makes music devoid of fear. They do not believe in a certain way of doing<br \/>things; they aspire to exclude nothing, to allow anything, to ask for a high degree of openness from<br \/>the listener, and to reach, dispassionately, across time\u2014an aesthetic Hoppe aptly describes as<br \/>Retrofuturism. &#8220;This album is looking backwards in a futuristic sense, leading us to the non-existent<br \/>source of the music we listen to today. Through it, we enter a parallel reality where we can reinvent<br \/>ourselves. As Bj\u00f6rk said: We have to invent our own roots.&#8221; (Wolf Kampmann)<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/boomslangrecords.bandcamp.com\/album\/little-faith\">boomslangrecords.bandcamp.com\/album\/little-faith<\/a><br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/_wirecutter_\/\">www.instagram.com\/_wirecutter_<\/a><\/p>\n<p>11.11.2023, Einlass ab 20:00, beginnt ca. 20:30<br \/>Eintritt 8 Euro<br \/>INM \u2013 Institut f\u00fcr Neue Medien, Schmickstra\u00dfe 18, 60314 Frankfurt am Main<br \/>Der Eingang ist auf der rechten Seite des Geb\u00e4udes, dann die Treppen bis zum obersten Stock laufen.<br \/><a href=\"http:\/\/inm.de\/\">www.inm.de<\/a><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-1865\" src=\"https:\/\/xeroxex.de\/wp-content\/uploads\/XE083.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"900\" height=\"400\" srcset=\"https:\/\/xeroxex.de\/wp-content\/uploads\/XE083.png 900w, https:\/\/xeroxex.de\/wp-content\/uploads\/XE083-300x133.png 300w, https:\/\/xeroxex.de\/wp-content\/uploads\/XE083-768x341.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cAk\u2019chamel are a mysterious duo from Texas who call out some seriously weird ritualistic cult jams by way of midnight smoke chants, speaking in tongues while plinking away on a broken spike fiddle, pounding a ratty drum, and droning on whatever noisemaker they can find.\u201d -Anti Gravity Bunny\u2026over the past &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-allgemein"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xeroxex.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xeroxex.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xeroxex.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xeroxex.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xeroxex.de\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1886"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/xeroxex.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1886\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1888,"href":"https:\/\/xeroxex.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1886\/revisions\/1888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xeroxex.de\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xeroxex.de\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xeroxex.de\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}