Viscera is stretched out, bursting and tearing open. Ancient pain, which had crawled deep and crept into the most remote folds of their skin, to be sheltered there by eternal darkness, wails and moans as it coils up.(1) And all of mankind's sorrows howl from the depth of a trumpet: Europe... you nickering ghost! Europe... wretched of the earth!(2)
But who or what rolls and rumbles over there in such an ear-splitting manner A listener's first impression may suggest the enchanted soundscape of a fatigued electronic soloist, but 1115 are a duo: FEHLER KUTI and GREY provide us with a sonic vision that can only emerge from the synthesis of two radical minds. Think of the meetings of Suicide, Yello or The KLF: A pop big bang of conceptual art and bodily music.
The fusion of FEHLER's onomatopoeic vocal tracks and GREY's bass/organ/808-drum machine elements create a unique and original work, an afrofuturistic Musique concrete, which could not be heavier in its psychedelic might. Totally hypnotised, we hear old instruments, lost along an ocean passage. Flutes, spinets and oboes propel themselves through the helium mist out of purgatory towards the light. People Get Ready.
The plot of this supposed instrumental music is, in short, a story of invisibility'(3) - and of how this invisibility, experienced as negation and extinction, is given a visually audible' expression through the invention of a new language.(4)
To be part of all the noise and anguish(5) these two phantasmal sound warlocks gulped(6) down several generations of collective experience across the Black Atlantic (7) to spew out something new: An acid bath(8) of gastric juices lends first contours to the invisible's negative exposures: A thrown-up group photo stretching multiple generations. This musical carcass begins to pulse, and interlinks with overtone choirs and the ephemeral angel dust of deported heavenly children. Thus a new language is born.
It is a way of speaking that resembles the description of a multi-layered(9) or even completely removed(10) graffiti. In fact, it is a description of the existence of humans(11), who live or have lived. Be it in the parallel world of Italian plantations, whose fruits are displayed in supermarkets such as Rewe, Lidl and Tengelmann. Be it in the jungle of Calais(12) . Be it in deportation and social isolation. The European Union, which opened and revealed itself to PoC(13) , does not appear to exist at all.
If we follow 1115(14) down their Underground Railroad(15) , a mythology that becomes more vivid with each station emerges, and takes on a cartographic form. A spatial sculpture made of music! FEHLER KUTI performs the role of the Invisible Stranger - without any use of language in the semantic sense - not in a dissimilar way to Caetano Veloso on Araçá Azul or Miles Davis, though different and novel. Once you understand that Miles Davis did nothing else but tell stories of racism and alienation throughout his career, will you then understand Post-Europe.
Post-Europe is therefore not only music, just as an opera(16) is not only music. Drawn into the deep through subtext and shiftwork, 1115 dive through a stream of electronic music alongside colleagues like Arca and Dean Blunt, Drexicya and Dopplereffekt, as well as Juan Atkins and Moritz von Oswald, Rahsaan Roland Kirk and Sun Ra. But the voices of the libretto belong to the non-musicians and non-artists, the erased and forgotten. The invisibles.
If we listen to the phonograph patiently while playing this music(17) , unheard sounds surface. In time, voices tear off, and become distinct. They say what they need to say. They let others speak. And suddenly there is a space... that unfolds, that speaks. Deep inside it, an ancient lament emerges, wrapped within the invisible words: What did I do to be so black and blue
1115 don't simply play on a stage in front of an audience. They absorb time and space!(18) Last December, they could be experienced at the legendary Alien-Disko-Festival at Munich Kammerspiele.
Post-Europe was produced by Markus Acher and Cico Beck (The Notwist, Joasihno). According to the rules of pop music, this record should not even exist.(19) The sirens are booming. The dance floor is ready. It's just getting started.
Text by Pico Be
