Felix Kubin

Individually numbered edition of 300 copies, includes an A5 insert. Felix Kubin works with rare and stubborn analog synths for V I S on an abstract, extended portrait of the Hamburg docks riddled with field recordings. RIYL Daphne Oram, Romanian spectralists, Hafler Trio...
Using the Max Brand synthesiser (a rare, modified Moog) on one side, and a Rob Hordijk modular system alongside sounds of the port of Hamburg on the other, the recordings render Kubin at his most explorative and experimental, as opposed to his usually heavily concept-driven output.

‘Max Brand Studie IV’ was composed for 8 loudspeakers, arranged in a circle, and was recorded in the former premises of the Institute for Media Archaeology, Donau, Austria. Working with what he calls “the egocentric and stubborn Max Brand” synth, Kubin rigs the machine in a way that allows it to speak and develop a life of its own, conjuring 19 minutes of ghostly spectral tones and beating pulses that haunt the vaulted recording space with a naturally unpredictable, analogue logic that’s fascinating to follow.

On the flip, ’T O P I A’ was composed for a 3-channel video installation by Josphin Böttger. Recorded at Hamburg’s Hammerbrooklyn Studios, it uses the Rob Hordijk modular system and sounds of the city’s massive port to concretely characterise a sense of space and place that resonates abstract-industrial-realism, following a similar logic of endless cycles of growth and collapse, sustain and decay, with perceptively poetic results.