Structural Music by Fragment King

This is without a doubt the most violent and destructive music the Nexialist Organization has to offer. Structural music as the name for this collection of pieces covers both studio and live recordings created with a method that I have termed "digiscrub". I developed this method in early 2002 as a means of real-time and live "playing" of the PC laptop as a music instrument. The highlight/loop-section of a 2-track recording is continuously changed in real-time by use of the laptop input tool. In the case of the IBM Thinkpad I was using by then, this was enabled by triggering the little red knob in the center of the keyboard very much like a joystick. In essence, this produced a jumping back-and-forth within the track, as if someone would lift the stylus of a record player up and down again and again and drop it in random positions on a vinyl record. But not only this. By zooming in scale, microscopic events within minimal time loops could be generated, creating almost microtonal "playing" of semi-melodic sound. But do not be confused by the hint of harmony: in essence, the digiscrub method results in brutally hacked sound splinters. They have their counterpart in the graphic works of Daniel Libeskind, John Zorn's approach to composition and William S. Burroughs' writing and tape experiments. The creation of a splintered soundscape that passes by incredibly fast and abruptly is more so similar to looking out of the window of a train passing Tchernobyl while on some heavy relaxant and then time-compressing the whole thing into 1/1000th of the original time. Pretty harsh, so to speak. Or more so, insanely violent. This is purely improvised music. It is a point of departure from the early sequencing driven phase of Fragment King, breaking free from the dictatorship of the "track", totally destroying linearity, leapfrogging repetitive cyclicity and jumping into the burning grey ash of the end of music – which is also a war on silence. After that, the bass-heavy Fragment King "one-man-band" emerged, the "total incarnation" of FK, where the human body takes center stage by force, yet not against the machine, but with it. The collection focuses on structural music produced for/as Fragment King. It features the original 4 structural music tracks plus 2 additional pieces, all of which were based on pre-recorded material using laptop, bass guitar, and field recordings (the screaming child is something I picked up in a social housing complex in southern Germany, on occasion, which, what a coincidence, introduces a spatial and social aspect). The live tracks cover the 2002-2004 period of FK's live performances, in which structural music played a central role in conquering the audible space of the live environment. Two of these live edits were recorded during the infamous "Nexialist Exposition" in – really – a decorated shed in an industrial park in southern Germany. The 2003 live performance was recorded at WMFU radio upon invitation from Jason Forrest aka DJ Donna Summer. Finally, the last piece of the collection is a recording from a performance at FLUC in Vienna. Structural music is confrontational, violent, destructive; a bad dentist session, a 500 pound Bill Burroughs on steroids, your girlfriend fucking everyone else except you. Structural music has it all when you need full force catharsis.

Dystopian mechanized blues of futures past.
Logo illustration exclusively created for Nexialist by graphic artist Liis Roden linktr.ee/7115

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