// CTM.05 Special Focus
This year’s special theme Splendid Isolation runs through the whole festival and takes a closer look at music production outside the world-famous heavyweight creative hotbeds, London, New York and Berlin. What’s been going on beyond the city limits? More than a decade of Internet has fostered a new generation of young musicians, well-equipped cybernauts who regard their seclusion not as a drawback, but as a source of creative potential; and, indeed, they have frequently come up with a fresher, more interesting and uncompromising sound. Seen from this angle, one can begin to appreciate the extent to which the rich experience of wide-open spaces and quiet retreat and of tranquillity in the heart of nature manifests itself in idiosyncratic aesthetic forms. Current music, from northern Europe in particular, evinces a wealth of sounds and a keen sense of atmosphere that one would search for in vain amongst the more decidedly urban music genres. One is almost tempted to conclude that music’s function in the city is that of a designer drug, customised for particular social occasions, whereas “out there”, it’s about the search for contemplativeness and the individual’s “inner” journey. It stands to reason, does it not, to ascribe this development to those regional peculiarities? Nowhere in Europe is so sparsely populated, nor so invested with a primordial natural presence. And, one might suggest, nowhere else is currently producing such interesting music. CTM this year explores this link.
Seclusion and contemplation furthermore play a central conceptual role regarding the musical aesthetics of this year’s festival: “Listening-in-and-of-itself”, music as film for one’s inner eye, Drone and minimalist repetition, boredom as a path to inspiration, the “Headphone Experience” and experiments in spatial sound which demand that listeners redefine their sense of what it means to be present are the themes that weave through the programme. Splendid Isolation presents current music from northern Europe. The Breakcore-Special Wasted and Le Placard give centre-stage to strategies for interweaving internationally dispersed and isolated artistic cells into loosely affiliated local networks.
> Programme> LE PLACARD 8 – PROLOGUE
> AMBIUNIX
> and see also WASTED
