Airports and planes make me feel clasutrophobic. And I don’t have a drivers license. Therefore trains are my favourite means of transportation for longer distances, and usually I listen to music while on my way. Railroads are also featured on the cover of this album. No coincidence, because “Transient Travels” was presented in a ‘Sound train’ during the World New Music Days in Switzerland in 2004. Jan Schacher (aka Jasch) and Marcus Maeder were appointed as travel agents. They hired four more contemporary computer musicians as staff of the temporary travel agency. This resulted in six different interpretations of the term ‘sonic journey’, which could be experienced in the carriages of the train. They are also compiled on this cd, which contains mainly rather abstract, often minimal soundscapes, with varying levels of complexity and accessibility.
In the exemplary booklet the artists explain (often rather academically) the ideas behind the compositions they came up with. Some of them were quite literally inspired by moving with various forms of transport. Like COH, known for his releases on Raster-Noton. In his interetsing track you sense accelaration and slowing down, helicopters and trains, movement and trains. Marcus Maeder on the other hand translates the concept of crossing distances to his (piano) sound material in ‘Od kraja do kraja’ (Croatian for ‘from one end to the other’). By slowing the sounds or extremely lowering them, they become unrecognisably blurred. My favourite piece is also the most accessible one, AGF’s ‘Trainen fluss’, a dreamy composition for violins, cello, piano, moog and voice. This one makes the dullest journey agreeable.
More info about the project at transienttravels.net.
