Lume Lume

Alexander Balanescu, To Rococo Rot, Rupert Huber, Sergio Messina, Isabella Bordoni, Siegfried Ganhör
 

During the Austrian Ars Electronica festival in September 2000 eight musicians led by well-known Romanian composer Alexander Balanescu came together to build a session group creating a 57-hour live soundtrack that was accompanied by daily performances. The recordings of these sessions made by Austrian national radio ORF show a fascinating
confrontation of differing musical methods and styles through the collaboration of internationally renowned artists representing different generations.

Balanescu himself edited the recordings to 17 pieces of various lengths, picking only the finest moments of this extraordinary four-day jam.
 

Alexander Balanescu about "Lume Lume":

"I have experienced and come away with so much from Linz this year, working together with Sergio, members of To Rococo Rot, Siegfried, Rupert and Isabella. I was able to bring aspects of my music-making into sharp focus that would otherwise remain peripheral. These artists, with their own very particular areas of creativity, through an almost miraculous chemistry, managed to bring out the best of themselves and each other.
I also learned how to play for and with the river, rain, wind, the changing sky, the back-drop of Linz's buildings, the passing ships, the people, dogs, the darkness and ourselves."
 

Reviews

"The starting point is the work of Romania's most popular singer, Maria Tanase, who died in 1963. The eight musicians, working together and apart, each approached the traditional material differently, and they're merged and overlapped into a well-mixed journey of lilting Romanian melodies, mournful, slippery violin, funky electro, samples of water, staticky shards of musique concrete (reminiscent, to me, of Varese' "Poeme Electronique", only with more modern electronic beats and flippant clicky sounds), with singing and speaking surfacing like debris caught in the Danube's whorling eddies.

If it sounds like too many ideas stuck together, it's not -- they move from mood to mood and between disparate forms with a seamless ease. The whole is like a knife, in that it has sides of polished liquid mirror next to a sharp edge and point."

(Other Music)
 

"Auf 'Lume Lume' (Titel eines der 4 vorgegebenen Tanase-Songs, zu Deutsch: 'Welt, liebe Welt') fließen live gestrichene Minimal-Pattens, Spoken-word-Passagen, programmierte Beats und sphärische Synthi-Layers auf so magische Weise ineinander, dass nur auf beiden Ohren sitzende Verfechter der reinen Elektronik-Lehre 'Zu viel Akustik!' reklamieren werden – und sich mit ihrer Beschwerde dramatisch blamieren.

Denn auch wenn der öffentliche Raum hier zu einem Privatissime zusammenschrumpft und das konzentrierte Lauschen im eigenen Musikzimmer das von diesen spannenden Klängen begleitete Wandeln an Donau-Ufern nicht ersetzen kann: 'Lume Lume' weitet den musikalischen Horizont des vorurteilsfreien Hörers gewaltig und definiert nicht zuletzt 'Ambient" neu. Von wie vielen Veröffentlichungen der Jüngstzeit, liebe Welt, lässt sich das sagen?"

(Keyboards, CD des Monats 03/01)
 

Photos: Ars Electronica, Pascal Maresch