Charlemagne Palestine & Christoph Heemann - Saiten en Flammen (2009)

This is a very recent release compared to much of the stuff I post here, but its interesting and pretty much unavailable so I thought I'd treat you all to this intense drone work from these two avant-garde hipsters.

Charlemagne Palestine was active in the New York underground scene in the 1960s, a contemporary of characters such as La Monte Young, Terry Riley and Tony Conrad. He composed and performed long and dramatic improvised pieces on pianos, church organs and carillon bells, filling huge rooms (and listeners heads) with a mass of sound.



Christoph Heemann on the other hand is a German sound artist who's been releasing music since the 1980's when he became loosely involved with the surreal English outfit, Nurse with Wound. He's since worked closely with those esoteric pranksters, Current 93, and the likes of Jim O'Rourke, Lee Ranaldo and Andrew Chalk.



Charlemagne Palestine recorded the Bosendorfer piano piece featured on Saiten en Flamen in 2000. The sound was then processed and messed with by Christoph Heemann in 2007. Mr Heemann has softened the percussive qualities of Mr Palestine's playing and brought the tonal qualities to the forefront. The result is something like having a head full of baritone bees.

Tracklist:

01 Saiten en Flammen (Part 1)
02 Saiten en Flammen (Part 2)

Get it HERE.