The Milan based imprint, Holidays Records, building on a stellar batch of LPs over the last year or so, returns to their long-standing dedication to the legacy of the late great Danish multi-disciplinary artist and composer, Henning Christiansen, with two incredible drops, a brand new and much needed vinyl reissue of “Schafe Statt Geigen / "Verena" Vogelzymphon”, as well as a never before released work entitled “Mediterranean Music Water”. Ranging from his legendary use of animal sounds as instruments, to theatrical ambiences drawn from Sicily and the sea, once again we're treated to the remarkable inner world of one of the 20th Century's most visionary creative minds.

Since their founding during the early years of the new millennium, the Italian imprint, Holidays Records, has stood at the vanguard of forward-thinking sound, building a carefully curated catalog of releases that collectively build context and conversation across numerous avenues of exploration - contemporary and historical sitting side by side - within the wider field of experimental and improvised music. Every step of the way, they’ve seemed to step up the game. The last year or so alone has witnessed stunning LPs by James Rushford, Jean-Yves Bosseur, Delivery Health, Pygmy Unit, and others. Now, within their latest batch of new releases, Holidays returns to one of the artists whose legacy is closest to their heart, the late great Danish multi-disciplinary artist and composer, Henning Christiansen. Back in 2017, the imprint delivered three incredible releases dedicated to Christiansen - “Hesteofringen”, “Stone-song”, and “Schafe Statt Geigen / "Verena" Vogelzymphon” - all of which took crucial strides toward widening access to the artist’s important body of work during a period that it was only being rediscovered by a new generation of fans, before falling quickly out of print due to demand.

Less than a decade ago, the legacy of the Danish multi-disciplinary artist and composer, Henning Christiansen (1932 - 2008), had fallen into obscurity and remained almost entirely out of view. Outside of a small but devoted following of sound-art fans and scholars, he ranked among the most obscure figures in 20th century music. Thankfully, over the years since, due to the devotion of a small number of labels, his work, in the form of reissues and archival releases, has come into focus as one of the most important and distinct practices of experimental sound to have emerged during the second half of the 20th Century.

A strikingly unique and visionary composer, Christiansen was the most notable member of Fluxus’ Danish arm. A bridge between the world of fine art and realms of avant-garde sound, over the course of his career he continuously dismantled the boundaries and definitions applied to the arts. The purity of his work and ideas is striking, refocussing the very notion of what experimental and avant-garde practice can be. He was a radical collectivist as much as an assertive individualist - contradictory and reactionary - theatrical and inward facing - possessed by a singular vision which drove him down uncharted paths that rewrites the place music occupies in our lives. While there were a fair number of albums to appear during his lifetime, the majority of these were issued by small artist imprints and remain particularly hard to find. It was only after his death in 2008 that the momentum began to slowly build, with labels like Slowscan, Penultimate Press, Institute for Danish Sound Archaeology, Holidays, and The Henning Christiansen Archive bringing forth a wealth of material that indicated how prolific in the field of sound he had been. The latest to join this pool is Holidays’ “Mediterranean Music Water op. 203”, a never before issued tape composition recorded at Teatro Gebel Hamed in Sicily during December of 1991.

“Mediterranean Music Water op. 203” belongs to a body of work embarked upon during the 1980s and 90s connected to Sicily, the other most notable and available being “Op.201 L´Essere Umano Errabando, La Voca Errabando”, issued by The Henning Christiansen Archive in 2020. These works were an extension of Ursula and Henning Christiansen’s meeting and befriending the Sicily based couple Carlo Quartucci and Carla Tatò, with whom they regularly visited and collaborated.

Like its predecessor, the aforementioned “Op.201”, “Mediterranean Music Water op. 203” is a conceptualization of abstract theatricality at the connection of place and its relationship to the sea. Performed by Ursula Reuter Christiansen and Henning Christiansen and recorded at a small performing arts theatre in Erice, Sicily - Teatro Gebel Hamed - during December of 1991, the abstract for this never before released work reads: “In the morning (after the storm), on the beach. The sea has thrown some things on the beach. Blue light - some mist? On the ground. Ursula's slides on the wall. Henning is rolling from the background of the stage slowly, very slowly, towards, in a fish net. I come in looking for the things the sea has left and discover him. I roll him out of the net, he's nearly dead, and try to get life in him. Light in the background in rainbow colours. Ursula wears a partlett dress, as a siren.”

These images lay a foundation and context for the sounds that emerge over the album’s two sides, a fascinating conjunction between the power of water and the human spirit. Through the processing of heavy delay and reverb, each sending sounds ricocheting in the vastness of space, we encounter the howling utterances of violin tones, vocalizations, and countless unplayable instrumental and non-instrumental sound sources, gathering in a vast and sprawling series of sonorous expanses that seem to echo the power, movements, and myths tied to the Mediterranean.

Truly stunning and an unquestionable standout in the recording career of Henning Christiansen, it’s hard to understand how it’s taken “Mediterranean Music Water op. 203” more than thirty years to see the light of day. Thankfully, Holidays has remedied its absence from our ears.

“Schafe statt Geigen” (Sheep instead of Violins) and “Verena Vogelzymphon” (Bird Symphony) were composed in 1988 and 1990, and were first released as a tiny CD gallery edition issued by Bernd Klüser in 1991. Both works, each occupying a single side of this LP edition, draw upon Christiansen’s long standing conceptual strategy of deploying recordings of animals as stand-ins for musical instruments, sheep (with dogs) and birds respectively. Describing it at a performance of “Schafe statt Geigen” in 1988, the artist stated: “I have worked together with sheep before.. Originally most instrumental sounds derived from animal voices or other sounds of natural phenomena. The violins, for instance: someone found out that stretched intestines, dried bowels, could produce a sound. This has simply been civilized, refined". In this case, he built a "Concert-Castle" from hay blocks where thirty sheep could perform music.

While each of the respective works that appear on Holidays’ vinyl reissue of “Schafe statt Geigen / Verena Vogelzymphon” allows the sounds sources of animals to take the natural lead, at times masquerading as field recordings, both feature subtle tonal and electronic interventions by the composer, creating strange and brilliant compositions which shift the terms and subjects of music as they were long understood. While both are unquestionably avant-garde in both their makeup and conceptualisations, the way that Christiansen manipulates and augments his material creates markedly different results. “Verena Vogelzymphon” (Bird Symphony), for example, with its root in birdsong and resonating metal, inadvertently flirts with the calmer realms of ambient and new age, while “Schafe statt Geigen” (Sheep instead of Violins) veers toward the general proximity of experimental electronic music and synthesis. Both, however, are truly incredible immersions in sound and Christiansen’s wryly brilliant ideas, the heights of which have been rarely bested, within his output or otherwise.

Out of print and nearly impossible to find since Holidays’ original 2017 vinyl edition sold out not long after its appearance, this brand-new pressing is as welcome as they come.