PENUMBRA II by STEMESEDER LILLINGER

PENUMBRA II offers further insight into our compositional work as a duo—conceived, developed, and manifested in real time. Each composition was realized and recorded in the context of a live performance at Schwere Reiter in Munich. Here, considerations of space, strategic approaches to process and composition, performance posture, aesthetics and texture are articulated with structural precision. This body of work emerged from a three-day residency at Schwere Reiter, following an invitation to work with, and within the space.

Expanding our concept, we incorporated and documented the visual dimension of the performance. Video works by Christian Lillinger, projected onto our bodies and instruments, act as distinct aesthetic impulses for each piece, influencing posture and spatial arrangement and adding a visual layer to the sonic discourse which offer both insight and new perspectives. Hearing alone is  a color; together, sound and image allow for a renewed understanding of the work, letting structure and movement breathe together.
The pieces on PENUMBRA II thus chart the acoustic and physical space in which we find ourselves. Point-signals define contours, whose bluntness is interrogated by transformational processes and recast into passages of varied materialities. Instruments, performers, and space do not appear as separate entities, but as elements of a unified embodiment in a process that renders itself visible and renegotiates the charting of its own topology, moment to moment.


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STEMESEDER-LILLINGER is the collaborative producer-duo of composer-performers Elias Stemeseder and Christian Lillinger. Drawing from various strains of contemporary and historic music and sound art practices, the duo’s work makes use of a wealth of compositional strategies, instruments, and production methods, seeking to create an uncompromisingly personal sonic idiom through synthesis of disparate modes of musical thought. This has been documented via the LP releases PENUMBRA, ANTUMBRA, and the upcoming PENUMBRA II (all on Plaist Records), as well as through a series of video works. A central pillar of the duo’s artistic practice is collaboration with contemporaries, which has been documented in their UMBRA catalogue on Intakt Records and features guest artists such as Craig Taborn, Peter Evans, and DoYeon Kim. Their work has been presented at unerhört! (Zürich, Switzerland), BIMHUIS 50 (Amsterdam, Netherlands), Casa del Libro UNAM (Mexico City), De/Semble (Vienna, Austria), Cerkno (Slovenia), A L’Arme! (Berlin, Germany), and Schwere Reiter (Munich, Germany), among others.

PLAIST
is a label founded by Christian Lillinger.
It represents a genre-free, excellently produced and creatively structured art form – all manifested here as a music label.

plaist-music.com