REMUHMURATION: Bu.d.d.a.

This month sees a new release by the project Bu.d.d.a. Bu.d.d.a. is the project of Chris Sigdell & Sascha Stadlmeier.

I first came aware of the work of Chris back in the late 1990's and his work as Níd through the Tochnit Aleph released "Tarm-Stad" cassette. A friend at the time had some Mercury 4ºf singles .. but I don't really remember them standing out ... Níd were a trio of Chris, Jürgen Eberhard and Oswin Czerwinski. Jürgen and Oswin were releasing as Feine Trinkers Bei Pinkels Daheim at this time. Chris began his BºTong project in 2005 after the demise of doom rock band Phased. In 2012, a couple of years after releasing the CDR "Ov Elf And Haarp" on the Attenuation Circuit label, BºTong released a split album with Attenuation Circuit label boss Sascha's project Emerge. It's one of those albums where artists swap sound samples and remix / reinterpret each others sounds.

In 2018 Chris and Sascha began working as Bu.d.d.a. (Bund Des Dritten Auges - The Order Of The Third Eye). "All Der Guten Dinge Drei" was released in 2019 by Attenuation Circuit, a document of a live improvised performance at Màgia Rosa in Barcelona that took place in 2018. And now we have "The Mourning Of The Midnight Diner's Menu Card" (A title that sounds like it should be a King Crimson live bootleg from 1970).

Recorded last year live in Karlsruhe (a place I have played live with BºTong not so long ago ... at the University), "The Mourning Of The Midnight Diner's Menu Card" is a 37 minute piece of improvised electronics. It plays like a audio sci-fi novel, a novel in three parts. The first part has empty, spacial sounds built with plucked electric strings and a bowed violin. A lunar landscape creating a disconnect is built from manipulated contact microphones and broken electronics. Lost commands, alien voices, pleas from the space station accentuate the loneliness. Around 20 minutes in to the journey the sound turns intense dense and more claustrophobic as if a sense of panic or confusion is aboard. The final third is more calm, realisation of the situation with breath sounds and a sound more natural to earth. Creatures and water ... lost in a forest, alone on an alien planet. It's a really good journey. Two masters of improvised electronic / experimental music at the top of their game. (I would have called it "Alien Soundtracks", but I think there's a band who beat me to it)!

There's a studio album out now too that features a shorter version of "The Mourning Of The Midnight Diner's Menu Card" released on the Spanish Marbre Negre label called "Erste Opfergaben".