CAMISSONIA by Larry Mullins

Larry Mullins, long time collaborator with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Iggy Pop and The Stooges, Swans & The Residents, has created a unique and personal solo album of minimal electronic sci-fi vignettes based loosely around both the writings and life of the German writer and botanist Adelbert von Chamisso.

The album, entitled Camissonia, is named after Chamisso's namesake plant species, penned by fellow botanist Johann Friedrich Eschscholtz. It is mostly an instrumental soundtrack journey through several remarkable events from Chamisso's book Peter Schlemihls wundersame Geschichte (The Man Who Had No Shadow 1814) and his real life overseas voyage aboard Otto von Kotzebue's ship The Rurik during 1815-1818 as a botanist.
The album is adorned with three rare woodcuts from 1915 & 1919 by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, who shared a similar fascination with Chamisso 100 years after Chamiso’s book release. Now another 100 years after Kirchner’s Expressionist masterwork “Peter Schlemihl Cycle”, Camissonia further’s the Chamisso lore, this time interpreted in music.

Camissonia was recorded in Vienna, Austria in 2020 during the lock-down period, which left the bustling center of Vienna in a state of an evacuated sci-fi dystopia. While working professionally in the Burgtheater, Mullins found his collection of instruments suddenly locked up in the orchestra pit below ground for the months to come. He did however have a small assortment of electronics in his apartment and the ability to record them. He also had a stack of books to read and atop was The Man Who Had No Shadow.

“The images of that story would not leave my mind day or night. I began to research Chamisso’s real life and found a wild adventure around the world on a ship! A parallel nightly obsession with Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s sci-fi films eventually blended into a bizarre moment of clarity. I set up what little things I had to see what sounds I could come up with to interpret those images in my mind. I discovered the limitations before me created its own atmosphere and I pursued a new piece of music every day just like that. Upon returning to Berlin, I wanted to close the project as quickly as possible and not add any more instruments, in order to preserve the strange quality it has. I invited two women I knew in Berlin to sing a choir on two pieces and I added a choir on another. Then I closed the door and threw away the key.”

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Mullins_(musician)>

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