In 1986, SPK's Graeme Revell released an album entitled "Necropolis, Amphibians and Reptiles". The recordings were based on the work of Swiss art brut artist and mental patient Adolf Wölfli. Some 15 years later, Austrian composer Bernhard Gal used Wöfli's poems as the basis for a sound installation at modern art museum Essl near Vienna.
Now, in 2004, Klanggalerie are proud to present you a CD version of this outstanding composition. There are male and female voices bordering between meaning and non-meaning, footsteps and field recordings. Headphone listening highly recommended! If you need comparison think Robert Ashley, Paul De Marinis or Trevor Wishart.
"In Hinaus:: In den, Wald, Bernhard Gal has based his sound art composition on the Art Brut work of Adolf Wölfli... He advises the use of headphones, which gives the listener the feeling of inhabiting Wölfli's mind."
(The Wire, July 2004)
"Wölflis sich auflösende Gedichte werden gebrochen, und in ein dunkles, klaustrophobisches Klanggemälde gegossen, das letztendlich passagenweise an Etant Donnes erinnert, wenn hier auch nicht der Schöpfung, sondern einem labyrinthischen Geist gehuldigt wird."
(Equinoxe, Ausgabe 24, 2004)
"The disc consists of recordings of Woelfli’s texts, which he wrote in German and in an invented language, recited by Gal and by a young Taiwanese girl. (Some of the texts are reproduced in the CD booklet.) Interspersed with these are field recordings of a man making his way through a forest. The sleevenotes say that the latter are intended to express Woelfli’s ‘permanent creative urge’. The overall effect is disturbing, for several reasons. The girl has an uninflected, naturally pure voice, while Gal’s own often whispered voice ranges in timbre from the idle to the threatening. Together, the voices uneasily register the presence of victim and assailant. The forest sounds, whatever the intention, strongly evoke Woelfli’s estranged status."
(Viennese Waltz, September 2007)