No Fear Of Pop x Torstraßen Festival

First three acts announced.

Stream: new Terror Bird LP

CTM and Diversity: An Unprovoked Rejoinder

03 Apr 2013 — Henning Lahmann

In his account of last month’s CTM festival, published two weeks ago, author Warren O’Neill originally had included the following paragraph:

However, one cannot talk about this year’s CTM without mentioning the distinct lack of female artists. Over the course of the whole week, I saw only three women performing, and though for sure there were female artists I wasn't able to see even including those, I’d be surprised if it reached double figures. Of course some might argue that this is a problem of the experimental music culture at large and that the blame shouldn't be put on organisers (Considering that just about everybody’s label of 2012, Berlin-based PAN, has had only two women on its 40-strong roster, both as a part of a male-female duo, lends some weight to this point of view). But due to the theme of the festival you would think they’d have done a better job. The same can be said of other aspects of diversity; and for a festival aiming to be ‘full of contrasts’, rather disappointingly it was composed mainly of white males in their 20s and 30s coming from Western Europe or North America.

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After some back and forth with both Warren and Jan Rohlf, CTM Festival’s main curator (before someone feels inclined to point out the obvious irony: yes, male white dudes in their 20s and 30s from Western Europe discussing the topic), I eventually decided to remove the paragraph during the editing process. Not because I believe the assertions to be incorrect or not justified. In fact, most readers will be aware that the observations are in themselves not exactly new. Shortly after the end of the festival, Berlin’s BarbNerdy sparked some discussion and indeed some outrage with a post on her blog that initially counted only one performing female artist during CTM, before eventually settling the figure at six. Despite that uncertainty, the DJ/writer’s rage was voiced in unambiguous terms. "We have 2013 and you really make us to bring up the mad discussion about ‘do we need a quota?’ again. I’m against it. (…) But If you do not start digging deeper and check out the fantastic female musicians out there (…) [then] we need a quota just to gain more attention." The intervention was backed up with some bare facts by the website female:pressure, a self-described ‘international database and support network of women in the fields of electronic music and digital arts’. Numerically assessing various global festivals of recent date, female:pressure came up for CTM with a total of 18 female and seven mixed artists/projects. At the same time, 153 male musicians performed at the festival, alongside three of ‘unknown’, or probably rather undetermined, gender. A perplexing figure indeed.

So what about Warren’s assessment then? When confronted with his critique, Jan Rohlf, while admitting that it "surely would have been good to have more female musicians" at the festival, pointed not only to common organisational restraints – such as past bookings, other Berlin bookers’ recent activity, theme, current productions, financial capabilities, availability of artists, conception of individual programme items – and CTM’s more favourable record in this regard, with past editions of the festival itself but also considering the organisation’s numerous other activities over the course of a year. He also compared the Berlin festival’s lineup with that of other thematically similar events, in particular last October’s edition of Krakow’s Unsound Festival, which by his own account did not feature a higher proportion of female artists. This impression is in fact supported by female:pressure’s findings. While CTM ‘at least’ exhibits a ratio of 16.3 percent female musicians, Unsound hits at a mere 12.6. The conceptually akin Mutek Espagne and Mutek Montreal come in at 8.3 and 17.9, respectively.

However, insisting on the latter clarification, what Jan Rohlf stressed first and foremost was the overall situation of society, emphasizing the point already conceded by Warren as well: there simply are fewer female electronic musicians than male, which necessarily leads to a lower presence of women performing at electronic music festivals. And for sure, at first glance it appears difficult to escape the argument’s validity. Asked about her opinion, UK-based journalist Steph Kretowicz, whose own apt take on the festival week can still be found over at Dummy, concurred. "I think the problem of representing women in electronic music is much more complicated than placing an onus on a festival organiser to fill some kind of ‘quota’. The fact is, there are fewer women working within the electronic arts. In the same way that there are fewer women journalists and fewer women construction workers – it’s simply a reflection of the systems of society at large. This is an issue, not only of opportunity but of conditioning. We still exist in an extremely gendered, patriarchal society and those people, defined as women, are not encouraged to excel in traditionally masculine fields. That's not to mention issues of ‘raced’ artforms, which I think is also crucial for analysis. As Holly Herndon said, when asked about being one of few women appearing to take part in artist talks at CTM, ‘it’s not just not women’." And it surely isn’t just festivals: Looking at this very website, I would be surprised if an actual numerical evaluation would not bring to light figures somewhere close to female:pressure’s findings, despite the fact that both our favourite album of 2012 and our favourite track had been produced by female electronic artists. Artists, by the way, who were both present at CTM, a fact that’s somewhat telling I suppose.

Strikingly, in his response Jan Rohlf pointed to an essay by pansexual/transgender artist Terre Thaemlitz aka DJ Sprinkles entitled "Statement of Purpose. Identifying Social Content in Japanese Electronic Music", included in the anthology Gendertronics. Der Körper in der elektronischen Musik [The Body in Electronic Music, ed.], edited by club transmediale and published by Suhrkamp in 2004. Thaemlitz basically arrives at the same conclusion, while furthermore asserting that "[o]ne of the keys to developing and spreading practices on a wide-scale basis is wide-scale necessity. But frankly speaking, the fundamental assumption that there is a necessity for more (white?) women producers of electronic music (not to mention transgendered producers) imbues electronic music with a degree of cultural importance that (…) I ultimately find lacking". Eventually, she even "dare[s] to suggest there are some cultural spheres in which ‘equal representation’ will never exist on a material level".

So is that it? No doubt – I do agree that curators of contemporary music festivals are not the first ones to blame when it comes to the blatant lack of woman artists present at those occasions, which is why both Warren’s initial review and BarbNerdy’s piece might come across as slightly unfair to those directly involved in the organisation of a festival as complex and challenging as CTM. And I also don’t really believe in any sort of actual conspiracy to preserve male dominance at the event, as suggested by BarbNerdy. If anything, what the festival revealed last month was the need for a discussion that’s still to be started. Still, I also wonder if it is that simple the other way round, too.

However, I’m not so sure if I can agree that we should accept that ‘culture’ might simply not ‘need’ more non-male electronic musicians, as Thaemlitz bluntly asserts. That would essentially entail asking already active woman producers to basically accept the fact that they probably will continue to not be booked in the future. Quite the contrary, I wonder why we don’t assume the possibility that festival booking could actually make a crucial difference insofar as an increase of female artists at such much-noticed public events may set an example that could in itself encourage more women to get into electronic music, or to put their stuff out there, or getting more labels to sign them. Why not, instead of relying on a bottom up conjecture and just continue with the assumption that once there are ‘enough’ women in electronic music, booking will follow suit automatically, why not just as well suggest that what we should establish in fact is the exact opposite. After all, it is not really ‘the women’ – or, rather, the whole non-western white male part of the population – who somehow need to step up and ‘emancipate’. If the ideas of enlightenment ever meant anything, it surely is that society at large that is in urgent need of progression. And when it comes to avant-garde pop culture, I wonder if music festivals couldn’t play a much more significant role in attempting to achieve that than they seem ready to admit.

For now, I’m unsure if the talk about quotas will lead anywhere ultimately; so I’m not willing to advocate them here and now. But if the real issue is a question of conditioning, as Steph suggests, why not start conditioning society by means of progressive booking and journalistic coverage? In other words, where should that necessary and anticipated change come from if not through those who write about electronic music or organise music festivals? If perceived correctly, forward-thinking curatorship in whatever field shouldn’t be the conclusion of socio-cultural shift, but stand firmly at its outset. It’s not called avant-garde for nothing. So for what it’s worth, maybe we should just all try a little harder next time – because it seems to me that The Golden Age is still a long way off.

Zoe Polanski: Thoughts from Tel Aviv

26 Nov 2012 — Henning Lahmann

Last week, once again it turned out that the people on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea simply don’t focus on falafel enough, instead leaving the field to the IDF and the Al-Qassam Brigades in order to do the job that simply won’t be done this way. For now, further escalation has been stopped, with another ceasefire in place that might or might not serve as the foundation for something more sustaibable. So far however, there surely is no reason whatsoever to become overly optimistic in this regard. I will abstain from doing you the favour to put this whole mess into context or even suggest a causal nexus, as all too many people have done so already; that’s business as usual. Looking at the public opinion in Europe in particular, what has always been most striking in view of Israel and Palestine is the odd correlation between ignorance and assertiveness: The less you actually know about the conflict, it appears, the stronger your opinion will be, and the louder you’ll be heard. Sadly, thanks to ineradicable resentment and preoccupation, ignorance is by and large prevalent, which in a better world should lead to the opposite conclusion: if we don’t know, who the fuck are we to judge?

Above all, having an opinion is certainly easier when you don't live in the war zone, or close enough to be an actual target during fighting. Last week, the people of Tel Aviv, one of the most vibrant and culturally rich cities on this planet, received a few reminders that they do, after the first successful bomb attack in years and after Hamas had proven that the city now lies well within the reach of their rockets. In view of that and the media cacophony that we all have been and continue to be confronted with, it's a relief to have someone offering words that are distinctly different from the clichéd opinions that we've read over and over again. Tel Aviv-based artist Zoe Polanski, who has been part of the city's underground music scene for years and who nowadays performs under her solo moniker Bela Tar, has agreed to share some personal impressions on the situation at home during these last days, and what it feels like to be an Israeli artist. Read her thoughts below.

(Photo of Zoe Polanski by Jennifer Abessira)

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I live in a suburb north east of Tel Aviv. My house is located on a hill across from the Samaria mountain ridge. Some days I can see the mountains crisp and clear from my driveway, other days they are wrapped with heavy fog. They always intrigue me and as time goes by I feel a growing curiosity and attachment to them. Needless to say that I can never actually go there because it is considered to be unsafe. I am sure that the counter position, that of people who reside in Arab towns and villages on the mountains, is very much like my own. We all see a great wide open and yet we are constrained and restricted within it.

I believe that the community of artists and musicians in Tel Aviv may be experiencing an effect that resembles this illusion of space. To us, it usually feels like we are a part of a global happening in terms of culture because Tel Aviv is extremely cosmopolitan in nature, and it is packed with young, up to date individuals who constantly open communication channels with the world. But Tel Aviv is just one small city inside a Middle Eastern country and we are so adjusted to living inside this box that really seems to give us all we need, intellectually speaking, that we often forget --and choose to forget-- where we are. The missiles are just a reminder. But regarding art, I personally don't feel it changes anything. We mastered escapism before and we still do. Pain influences us all the time, because this place is constantly tough, but the enemy is a bogus one. It changes form all the time, usually thanks to a manipulative media force which is flooded with commercial content. I think that struggles to survive are always being made, not only by two different sides but by countless different sides. The politicians with their supposedly aerial perspective are trying to bring order into chaos with different master plans, that aim to change micro through macro. My personal way to deal with the chaos is to focus on the micro and let little things naturally grow and spread. The way I write is the same, no master plans.

Regarding the Palestinians, I guess that I always thought that in order to come together and mix with other people, different from ourselves, we need to form together some product of love such as art, music or well... babies. So giving up a separatist approach is probably a good idea. I love venues and artist communities in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem (Uganda, The Zimmer) that are completely liberal and really open themselves to a variety of performers and audiences.

In short, we may feel solidarity but our life is not changed. Me and everyone I know, we just keep doing what we do under the familiar limitations and misconceptions, and we feel elevated.

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After spending her early years in Haifa, Zoe Polanski moved to Tel Aviv where she started playing in numerous bands and projects before starting her solo venture Bela Tar, making guitar-centered dream pop heavily influenced by classic, late-80s shoegaze. Her debut recording Pulsar was released in 2010 via Uganda and is still available via bandcamp. Below, you may listen to Zoe's latest single "Black Mark", which was released about a month ago, and watch the accompanying video, directed by Valentina Dell'Aquila.

 

No Fear Of Pop: Notes on the Future of Music

29 Oct 2012 — Henning Lahmann

’Popular music’ can either mean ‘music that is widely appreciated’ or else music for ‘the people’ or by ‘the people’, regardless of how many people actually appreciate it. I’m referring to the third category, but either way the term is generally a catch-all category for music that isn’t thought to be Western classical music. Since the Second World War this ‘popular music’ has been increasing exponentially in diversity and complexity, incorporating new, technological structures and forms and becoming a powerful new site for musical modernism. It hopefully goes without saying, then, that modernist music isn’t limited to one particular musical style or genre, but can and will manifest through hundreds and thousands of different styles. In any case, the main thrust of musical modernism has largely fallen out of the hands of Western classical music over the last fifty years.

Adam Harper, Infinite Music

 

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In line with above introductory statement in Adam Harper's wonderfully inspiring Infinite Music and contrary to what Adorno would have us believe for decades, we are convinced that pop music indeed is capable of introducing something "fundamentally new" into the larger picture of contemporary culture. We believe, in essence, that what's currently happening in Montréal or Bristol, in Brooklyn or L.A., or what might happen during a night at Berghain or the Golden Pudel Club, can be a manifestation of true modernism. However, it would also be too short-sighted to only look for the avant-garde in Burial's or Julia Holter's latest work, or in a Laurel Halo remix of a Kuedo track (though we're sure it's there) - boundaries are also being pushed in Oklahoma, or in Georgia, or indeed in Scandinavia's latest dance anthem; it is in this sense that we have no fear of pop.

On the occasion of the first exhibition of Vir Heroicus Sublimis, Barnett Newman had attached a note that read, "There is a tendency to look at large pictures from a distance. The large pictures in this exhibition are intended to be seen from a short distance." As a blog, which this site has been so far and will remain to be at its core, we follow Newman's instruction. Standing right in front of the painting, we gaze at the details that are the tracks that we post and write about, a tiny selection of the thousands of musical works that appear each single day. Only in retrospect, from a distance, those details may or may not turn out to be of significance for the bigger picture that we like to call the culture of contemporary, forward-thinking pop. This self-perception surely does not mean that we don't have our own thoughts about the evolution of music, and one reason for relaunching the site was to allow the presence of longer and more reflective pieces in the future. However, for the time being we happily and emphatically direct you towards the people whose job it is (or should be) to stand in the safe distance and shed light upon the big picture, publications that we trust in such as The Wire, The Quietus, Ad Hoc, FACT, Dummy, Tiny Mix Tapes, or Electronic Beats.

What you see here should nonetheless be more than another random assortment of the arbitrarily hyped or soon-to-be-hyped or would-be-hyped. Apart from pure pop-cultural relevance, our primary aim is to provide at least some meaning in and of itself. As Pitchfork's Mark Richardson put it so beautifully the other day, "I am absolutely saturated with new music every day, and finding new things I like is not just easy, it's inevitable. So when I ask someone, 'What have you been listening to?' I'm trying to learn something about them. (...) The fact that someone would find music interesting purely by virtue of the fact that I am listening to it is foreign to me. What I listen to does not seem notable; why I listen to it might be. I need context." That's exactly what we shall be trying to achieve; not so much simply acting as curators of the dernier cri but as an honest guide into the ever-growing obscurities of today's pop music. So when we're good, you will like the stuff we post, or ideally even find it intriguing, engaging, and challenging. But when we truly succeed, you will also know why we posted it.

To celebrate No Fear Of Pop's second metamorphosis, we've asked our esteemed friend Michael McGregor (Meadowlands/The Report) to share his vision of the future of music with this exclusive mix that you may listen to below.

"The idea was certainly in keeping with, and from the point of, exploring the 'future of music', however, most of the tracks are pretty old, or at least not contemporary. Either way, these songs, together, feel symbolic of where things may go as the archive of music opens and expands for all to hear and enjoy."

Tracklist:

(1) Bearns & Dexter - Golden Voyage
(2) Jean Bouchety - Lifebound (Submix)
(3) Teebs - King Bathtub (minus 10)
(4) Kevin Ayers - Pisser Dans Un Violon
(5) Nini Raviolette - Suis Je Normale
(6) Actress - Ascending (bckwrds)
(7) Dick Sutphen - Trance Sex
(8) DJ Sprinkles - Brenda's $20 Dilemma
(9) Elaine Radigue - Adnos 3
(10) Gramm - Legends / Nugroove™
(11) Prince Jammy - Wafer Scale Integration
(12) Inoyama Land - Apple Star
(13) Roland Douttate 7 Orchestre - Gymnopedie no. 3 (Erik Satie)
(14) F. McDonald/ C. Rae - Memory Bank
(15) Bullwackies All Stars - Black Heart Dub
(16) David Caspar - Dawn Poems part 1: Early Moments
(17) Reichmann - Weltweit

Brannten Schnüre and German Hauntology.

18 Oct 2011 — Henning Lahmann

Although the tendency to fall for trite, romanticist pastiche is always only a step away in Germany, I've felt that hauntology as an artistic concept has never really gained a foothold in the local experimental underground (as opposed to fine art, a point convincingly made by Adam Harper in reference to Neo Rauch). Considering this, I was both very surprised and quite intrigued to come across the latest offering by Frankfurt-based cassette imprint SicSic Tapes, a C-40 split between Johannes Schebler aka Baldruin and Christian Schoppik, who records under the moniker Brannten Schnüre. In fact it was the latter's side of the tape that really grabbed my attention. Brannten Schnüre's six tracks (that can all be streamed over here) deliver a disturbing if not outright frightening séance made up of looped, slowly meandering instrumental sound collages that feature a good deal of crackling and tape hiss (most likely because the snippets were directly taken from an audio or video cassette). However, what struck me most was Schoppik's choice of source material. As it turns out (according to the description given by the label), he derived a lot of (most?) samples from "obscure Czechoslovakian films", a method that in my view deserves a closer look in regard to the condition of possibility of a "genuine" hauntology in the domestic music scene. Brannten Schnüre - Gole Gandom Let's consider how the use of early electronic music taken from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop etc. by Mordant Music and the Ghost Box label led Mark Fisher and Simon Reynolds to first come up with a description of hauntology as a musical concept (I'll leave it that way, others have described it way better), i.e. music that was mainly used to score 60s to 80s educational programmes and the like. And then let's also look at what induced David Keenan to give birth to hypnagogic pop in 2009, a "genre" that's in many ways related and by some regarded as the American counterpart to hauntology, namely the exploitation of the all-American canon of 80s pop culture, from early MTV videos to all kinds of TV series by h-pop's main proponents such as James Ferraro). Considering this, I find it a very interesting question to ask what would be the appropriate source for a likewise inspired compatriot to come up with a similar piece of art (I admit that I haven't asked myself this question before, which probably says more about my personal relationship to the music of this country that about the music scene itself). Now it seems to me that Schoppik might have found a very compelling, indeed intriguing answer. Trying to remember my earliest childhood, it indeed appears that we've been raised on things like Arabela or Tři oříšky pro Popelku (Three Nuts for Cinderella), or briefly, fairly cheesy fairytale movies and TV series that were produced in Prague's famous Barrandov Studios. More precisely, at least this was the main cultural influence druing our 80s childhoods (apart from Astrid Lindgren adaptations perhaps) that was not derived from or exposed to the prevalent Anglo-American culture (needless to say, this observation is non-judgmental). So I'd argue that if there's anything like the possibility of an original hauntology as a musical concept in Germany or other countries of Central Europe, it would be built on such source material that was used by Schoppik for Brannten Schnüre, or anything similar, and this is what makes his release truly noteworthy. The music's hauntological effect gets further reinforced with the accompanying video for "Gole Gandom", in which the artist uses exactly the esthetic these productions were famous for (unfortunately I couldn't confirm that the footage is actually taken from a Czechoslovak movie, but it definitely fits their general esthetic and it appears to match the timeframe as well). Don't know what this film was about, but at least the editing leaves quite a terrifying impression:The (highly recommended) split tape may be ordered directly via SicSic Tapes. Schoppik takes the concept further with his work "Zaharia Farâmas Protokoll in sechs Teilen" (protocol in six parts), in fact the only other piece of music I've found by him, and of which "Gole Gandom" actually constitutes the last (i.e. sixth) part. Zaharia Farâmas is the protagonist of the 1967 novella Pe strada Mântuleasa (The Old Man and the Bureaucrats) by the (rather controversial, but we need not elaborate this here) Romanian author Mircea Eliade. Farâmas, an elderly school teacher, gets caught by the Securitate (secret police) and subsequently interrogated. The communist officials (thus being representatives of a regime that at least formally pursues the path of Europe's last true utopian philosophical concept) then get mesmerized by the teacher as he starts telling fabulous, labyrinthine stories from the past. Eliade later stated that he (quite obviously) attempted to "engineer a confrontation between two mythologies: the mythology of folklore, of the people, which is still alive, still welling up in the old man, and the mythology of the modern world, of technocracy". This is of course not only postmodern, post-utopian. Moreover, if we accept that hauntology "doesn't merely show or recall an image of the past, [but] shows the present – or more specifically, (...) the past as it exists and is perceived from inside the present", and that "hauntological art is a present-day construction that illustrates the present’s problems as it approaches the future" (again Harper), then what Schoppik does here by using samples from our faintly remembered childhoods and by establishing a connection between the musical result and Eliade's story is a pronouncedly hauntological project, and one that is not a pale imitation of its British or - provided we accept to include hypnagogic pop - American counterparts but that is distinctly, originally Central European (if not exclusively German).Zaharia Farâmas Protokoll in sechs Teilen by branntenschnuere

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Although the tendency to fall for trite, romanticist pastiche is always only a step away in Germany, I've felt that hauntology as an artistic concept has never really gained a foothold in the local experimental underground (as opposed to fine art, a point convincingly made by Adam Harper in reference to Neo Rauch). Considering this, I was both very surprised and quite intrigued to come across the latest offering by Frankfurt-based cassette imprint SicSic Tapes, a C-40 split between Johannes Schebler aka Baldruin and Christian Schoppik, who records under the moniker Brannten Schnüre. In fact it was the latter's side of the tape that really grabbed my attention. Brannten Schnüre's six tracks (that can all be streamed over here) deliver a disturbing if not outright frightening séance made up of looped, slowly meandering instrumental sound collages that feature a good deal of crackling and tape hiss (most likely because the snippets were directly taken from an audio or video cassette). However, what struck me most was Schoppik's choice of source material. As it turns out (according to the description given by the label), he derived a lot of (most?) samples from "obscure Czechoslovakian films", a method that in my view deserves a closer look in regard to the condition of possibility of a "genuine" hauntology in the domestic music scene. Brannten Schnüre - Gole Gandom Let's consider how the use of early electronic music taken from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop etc. by Mordant Music and the Ghost Box label led Mark Fisher and Simon Reynolds to first come up with a description of hauntology as a musical concept (I'll leave it that way, others have described it way better), i.e. music that was mainly used to score 60s to 80s educational programmes and the like. And then let's also look at what induced David Keenan to give birth to hypnagogic pop in 2009, a "genre" that's in many ways related and by some regarded as the American counterpart to hauntology, namely the exploitation of the all-American canon of 80s pop culture, from early MTV videos to all kinds of TV series by h-pop's main proponents such as James Ferraro). Considering this, I find it a very interesting question to ask what would be the appropriate source for a likewise inspired compatriot to come up with a similar piece of art (I admit that I haven't asked myself this question before, which probably says more about my personal relationship to the music of this country that about the music scene itself). Now it seems to me that Schoppik might have found a very compelling, indeed intriguing answer. Trying to remember my earliest childhood, it indeed appears that we've been raised on things like Arabela or Tři oříšky pro Popelku (Three Nuts for Cinderella), or briefly, fairly cheesy fairytale movies and TV series that were produced in Prague's famous Barrandov Studios. More precisely, at least this was the main cultural influence druing our 80s childhoods (apart from Astrid Lindgren adaptations perhaps) that was not derived from or exposed to the prevalent Anglo-American culture (needless to say, this observation is non-judgmental). So I'd argue that if there's anything like the possibility of an original hauntology as a musical concept in Germany or other countries of Central Europe, it would be built on such source material that was used by Schoppik for Brannten Schnüre, or anything similar, and this is what makes his release truly noteworthy. The music's hauntological effect gets further reinforced with the accompanying video for "Gole Gandom", in which the artist uses exactly the esthetic these productions were famous for (unfortunately I couldn't confirm that the footage is actually taken from a Czechoslovak movie, but it definitely fits their general esthetic and it appears to match the timeframe as well). Don't know what this film was about, but at least the editing leaves quite a terrifying impression:The (highly recommended) split tape may be ordered directly via SicSic Tapes. Schoppik takes the concept further with his work "Zaharia Farâmas Protokoll in sechs Teilen" (protocol in six parts), in fact the only other piece of music I've found by him, and of which "Gole Gandom" actually constitutes the last (i.e. sixth) part. Zaharia Farâmas is the protagonist of the 1967 novella Pe strada Mântuleasa (The Old Man and the Bureaucrats) by the (rather controversial, but we need not elaborate this here) Romanian author Mircea Eliade. Farâmas, an elderly school teacher, gets caught by the Securitate (secret police) and subsequently interrogated. The communist officials (thus being representatives of a regime that at least formally pursues the path of Europe's last true utopian philosophical concept) then get mesmerized by the teacher as he starts telling fabulous, labyrinthine stories from the past. Eliade later stated that he (quite obviously) attempted to "engineer a confrontation between two mythologies: the mythology of folklore, of the people, which is still alive, still welling up in the old man, and the mythology of the modern world, of technocracy". This is of course not only postmodern, post-utopian. Moreover, if we accept that hauntology "doesn't merely show or recall an image of the past, [but] shows the present – or more specifically, (...) the past as it exists and is perceived from inside the present", and that "hauntological art is a present-day construction that illustrates the present’s problems as it approaches the future" (again Harper), then what Schoppik does here by using samples from our faintly remembered childhoods and by establishing a connection between the musical result and Eliade's story is a pronouncedly hauntological project, and one that is not a pale imitation of its British or - provided we accept to include hypnagogic pop - American counterparts but that is distinctly, originally Central European (if not exclusively German).Zaharia Farâmas Protokoll in sechs Teilen by branntenschnuere