Grunewald, Weichselbaum, Finkelstein & Ziolkowsky – Yannun yannun

Grunewald, Weichselbaum, Finkelstein & Ziolkowsky may sound like a firm of lawyers, but it is in fact a collaboration of a group of experimental artists from Israel. “Yannun Yannun”, consisting of an audio cd and a disc with a divX movie, is the result of an improvised audio-visual performance. With analogue and digital mixers they created a mixture of minimal electronic structures, full of little bleeps and noises, and harsh industrial sounds. Overall the music is quite minimal and inacessible, but there are some louder industrial parts which even make me think of Haus Arafna. An interesting sonic experiment, but the playing time of half an hour is enough.
On the video disc a 40 minute film is presented, with hazy images of Palestinian farmers in the occupied territories of the West Bank. It resembles a political documentary, asking for attention for the difficult situation the people live in. The structure and images are too manipulated and fragmented though to tell a clear narrative. The musical soundtrack is combined now and then with spoken word and environmental sounds. Again it has a mixture of minimal electronic experiments and harsher industrial sounds. It’s certainly special, but also hard to digest.

artist: Grunewald, Weichselbaum, Finkelstein & Ziolkowsky
label: Fact Records
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