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The first album by Semuin (Jochen Briesen) "Province" was released in 2005 on
the Portland/Oregon based label Audio Dregs. The record was critically acclaimed
and loved by fellow musicians: The WIRE spoke of delicate musical structures
and strong passions. And Greg Davis simply wrote in the press info "It's a really
fucking great record. I love it." After this well received debut, Ahornfelder is
proud to announce the second full-length album by Semuin: "Circles and
Elephants".
In contrast to the debut the new record is not merely focused on the organic
mixture of acoustic intruments, field recordings and digital manipulations of the
material. "Circles and Elephants" is more concentrated on composing interesting
and sometimes experimental pop music with the use of midi-instruments. The
results of Jochen Briesen's midi-experiments have nothing to do with Gameboy-
Aesthetics or midi-pop-songs like the music of Max Tundra. The mostly
instrumental music rather reminds one of Frank Zappa's Synclavier compositions
or some of the electronic tracks by Nobukazu Takemura or - with respect to
some melody-lines - Igor Stravinsky. Especially the first track, which is even
named after a Stravinsky miniature-piece "Greeting Prelude" shows a rich and
wonderful melodic interplay of midi-oboe, -clarinet, - strings, and electronics.
The sounds on the album reach from very "real" sounding midi-instruments, e.g.
midi- wind instruments, -drum-sets, -vibraphone, etc. to more trashy sounding
elements, like a midi- choir or a midi-electric-guitar-solo. This tension and the
mixture with "natural" sounds of field recordings, hand claps, human voice or
whistling, etc. creates an intense and unusual sound experience. Some
instrumens sound impersonal and digitalized others sound natural at first sight
but after a while you realize that you do hear a clarinet but you never hear
anybody breathe. And as soon as you realized that you are confronted with field
recordings of kids and animals. The same sort of diversity can be found with
regard to the musical structures on the album. You can hear polyphone settings
of melodies over straight drum beats with rhythmical complexities hidden in
detail, rhythmical free developments captured in close circles which are variable
enough to bundle the listeners attention, or very loose musical forms of noise
and field recordings. The careful and sensitive combination of all these elements
amounts to a very rich and unique record that grows each time you listen to it.
Semuin is Jochen Briesen, who was born in Heidelberg and has been living in
Berlin since 1998, where he studied musicology and philosophy. In 2009 he is
finishing his ph.d. thesis in philosophy. Besides Semuin Jochen Briesen is
working as a musician/composer and released records with different projects
(Semuin, Gaston, Taunus). The latest Taunus record "Harriet" was released on
Ahornfelder in 2008.
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