Marc Behrens
Architectural Commentaries 4&5 CD (E45)

“An Architectural Commentary is a form of ‘reviewing’ architecture
in which functional, symbolic and aesthetic aspects of a building or
a bigger architectural structure are analysed. Inspiration for this cycle
of compositions is drawn from architectural criticism, structures,
buildings, involuntary cityscapes (‘architecture without architects’)
and technological noise within buildings.

One special recording session took place at Resonance FM, the London-
based radio station, in June 2004. Patrick McGinley of Resonance FM
and I recorded the studio equipment itself, the drive noises, ventilation,
vibrations in the machines, the studio’s air conditioning, doors…
This particular array of sound forms the sole and exclusive basic material
for Architectural Commentary 5: Some Models for Resonant Behaviour
and links the cycle to earlier music pieces I constructed with sounds from
computer labs. This part was commissioned by Resonance FM.
In Architectural Commentaries I composed some structures (mainly in
parts 4 and 5) loosely based on Luigi Nono’s idea of ‘isole musicali’.
This means that encyclopaedic variations of themes are generated and
often highlighted by silent breaks, like islands, between the individual
parts, all different in form and size, but topologically similar.”

Frankfurt-based Behrens is presently best described as a ‘sound artist’,
working across performance, installation and audio-visual recorded
media. He also creates photographic works, designs record sleeves,
and has even produced a bottle of white wine...

See also Marc Behrens and Outposts

First edition of 300 copies
£8





Sascha Renner at Earlabs




Marc Behrens (or is it?), 2007. Photograph by Sony Ericsson W880i


German artist Behrens is known to us through his very severe and
conceptual audio experiments, but he has also produced installations,
sculptural objects, and gallery-based events for many years.
Even this release is something of a hybrid, embracing an interest
in architecture, the presentation of his own ideas about that field,
very particular field recordings, and radiophonic composition.
Behrens’s black and white photographs of architectural details are
printed on the insert to illustrate some of his ideas. Indeed, this CD
is but one fragment of the larger body of investigation he’s been
undertaking in this area; Architectural Commentaries is all about
analysing the meaning of buildings, from the standpoint of function,
symbolic and aesthetic aspects, and reviewing the results in a very
critical way. He’s been building up a library of architectural field
recordings for some 15 years, making sound recordings of building
interiors, doors, equipment, floorboards, heating systems, activity
which has required standing around in stations, computer labs,
and construction sites. Besides these aural documents, photographs
and line graphs have resulted from his investigations; the line graphs
are copies of screenshots, which he makes when working with multi-
tracking software as he edits his sound pieces. All highly integrated
and conceptually unified, I am sure. Behrens likens the process of
sound editing to a form of composition; “small events, short slices,
are isolated and often given elaborated volume curves,” he reckons.
“This comes very close to composing with instruments”.

The finished results are of course as esoteric as you might expect
from the above, and these highly elaborate electro-acoustic constructs
produce listening experiences which are rarely identifiable as anything
to do with buildings, architecture, or indeed anything remotely familiar.
This is all the more surprising to me personally, since one of the pieces
was partially made inside the Resonance FM radio station in London,
a building with which I have had some familiarity. This was done in
2004 with the help of Patrick McGinley, and anything in the Denmark
Street building was fair game for their sweeping microphones,
including the ventilation ducts and all the broadcasting equipment.
Behrens has a very singular vision; you get the uneasy feeling he’s
just peeling away layers of assumptions and certainties with his sharp,
x-ray eyes. What he reveals may involve facing up to uncomfortable
truths about our physical environment. He is not the only artist to have
revealed the secret life of buildings with the help of microphones,
but this work is enriched by his very incisive critical eyes and ears.

Ed Pinsent in The Sound Projector


The logic surrounding Marc Behrens’ artistic output is often inflexible,
not really open to chance except for slight and mostly controlled
intermissions (or is it?). But, at the same time, this scarcity of
openings results in a rarely seen coherence which, on a sonic level,
guarantees that each one of his releases sound absorbingly attractive,
placing the listeners in a space that might appear either like the
restricted area of their interior conflicts or a symbolic representation
of human thought in its most inaccessible corners. The aural
constructions that Behrens is able to conceptualise, elaborate and,
ultimately, exploit are indeed unique, in this case facilitated by his
choice of presenting successions of events separated by short silent
segments, a concept based on Luigi Nono’s ‘isole musicali’ (musical
islands). The author writes that he was inspired by ‘architectural
criticism, structures, buildings, involuntary cityscapes (…) and
technological noise within buildings’. The latter point is expanded in
Architectural commentary 5: some models for resonant behaviour;
the segment starting around minute 13, an awesome humming moan-
cum-oscillating high frequencies, is purely and simply a thing of beauty.
The opener Architectural commentary 4 shows at times a strong
conceptual link with Asmus Tietchens’ work, even if Behrens’ coldness
still possesses a degree of humanity — barely visible in the distance,
yet it is there — that attributes a ’faraway-light-in-a-thick fog‘ aura
to the piece… The album’s overall quality, excellent in any circumstance anyway, will be enhanced by your own preference of setting as this is
the kind of music that, while revealing more details on close listening,
yields the most satisfactory outcome when we let it manifest its grayish
blackness in the rare, precious moments when the world’s asleep.

Massimo Ricci at Touching Extremes
—

There are sounds like stone on stone, for example, large stones. To the
extent they offer images of cityscapes, they do so in a de Chirico sense,
one of empty concrete canyons and long shadows. There’s a brief bustle
or two, a sudden flurry of traffic, but then it’s back to the urban desolation.
A short track separates the two main pieces; though it’s entirely of a piece
with them, its concision serves to orient the listener with regard to the
others. The first half of Commentary 5 is even emptier than its predecessor,
a place of drips, vague, distant echoes of machinery, the occasional low
thrum of some subterranean engine. Midway through, an eerie, silvery drone
emerges accompanied by quasi-musical pings, backwards tape swatches and
gurgles. It’s kind of like coming upon a barely functioning outpost in the
ruins. It dissipates after a few minutes, bringing us back into the ozone-
tinged vacuum. Behrens has created some evocative work, very effective
and accomplished of its kind.

Brian Olewnick at Bagatellen