BIST DU BEREIT?

‘Are You Ready For Jumble Hole Clough?’ (Dominic Rivron)
in: International Times. The Magazine of Resistance, January 2025

American-born thereminist Andrew Levine now lives in Hamburg. His music explores the manipulation of the theremin sound using modular synthesis. He also incorporates other electronic devices into what he does, such as the cracklebox (he has, in fact, created a series of ‘4 Études 4 4 Crackleboxes’ – see links).

Austrian composer and improviser Karlheinz Essl has been composer-in-residence at both Darmstadt Summer School and IRCAM, as well as being a featured composer at the Saltzburg Festival. He has also been a Professor of Composition and Electroacoustic Music at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna since 2007. Since the 1990s he has been increasingly involved with improvisation.

In November 2024, Essl and Levine got together on stage for the first time – at the Centro Sociale in Hamburg – and improvised a concert together. In the original concert programme, Levine is credited as playing theremin and modular synthesizer, as well as singing , while Essl is credited as playing granular and modular synths. As Essl says on his website, ‘Fortunately, Andrew recorded the performance and it sounded so good that we decided to release it to the public.’ The title they gave it, Bist Du bereit?, translates into English as ‘Are You Ready?’.

The music is as playful as the titles often suggest. ‘Bleeps and Lines’, for example, is exactly what it says. In ‘Out of the Maelstrom’, the sounds often seem to be spinning and, in places, the music even has a hint of Poe’s Gothic-Romantic sensibility about it (elsewhere, Essl refers to Poe directly in relation to his work). The sadness of the ‘Elegy’ has a comical, clown-like feel to it, more bathos than pathos. The latter part of the album contains the two longest tracks and some of the most involved music. The original concert included projections by Essl, which, sadly, we don’t get to see here.

Anyone involved in creative work of any kind knows how sometimes things can just come together and happen in a special way that’s impossible to repeat. Listening to Bist Du bereit?, I get the feeling that’s what happened here. We’re indeed fortunate that Levine recorded it. And it’s great when music manages to be serious and involved while being fun at the same time (although the sound-world is completely different, I found myself thinking of the work of British improvisers Steve Beresford and the late Alan Tomlinson). An album definitely worthy of attention that left me hoping Essl and Levine just happen to record some more of their encounters.

Updated: 1 Feb 2025