Artist
Martin Küchen
Title
Homo Sacer
| Catalog id | Released date | Limited edition |
| SILLON4 | 2007-09-24 | 250 copies |
Musicians
Martin Küchen - alto and baritone saxophones, pocket radio
About Homo Sacer
SILLÓN is very proud to finally release the long awaited solo from Sweden's saxophonist ”extraordinaire”, Martin Küchen. His music is at it’s very best on ”Homo Sacer”, and it is a joy listening to his original research in the world of saxophone. He is without a doubt the most interesting, improvising reedplayer coming out of Scandinavia today. Check out this fabulous disc !
Liner notes
Homo Sacer (latin for «the sacred man») is an obscure figure of Roman law: a person who is banned, may be killed by anybody, but may not be sacrificed in a religous ritual. The person is excluded from all civil rights, while his/her life is deemed «holy» in a negative sense. This according to Wikipedia.
According to Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek, Homo Sacer could be described as «a creature legally dead while biologically still alive». Giorgio Agamben was the one first bringing this subject up in contemorary political philosophy; homo sacer resembles the states of political refugees, those persecuted in the Holocaust and the «enemy combatants» imprisoned in sites such as Guantanamo Bay, who are also similair to each other. As support for this, he mentions that the Jews were stripped of their citizenship before they were placed in concentration camps.
Except for the title and the track titles of this CD, obviously corresponding to today´s world of severe conflicts almost everywhere around the globe - the music of Homo Sacer is not at all intended to be programmatic, on the contrary. But you may hear the titles of each piece as something shadowing the sounds, like sublayers or like something overlaying; transformative tissues of abstractions criss-crossing the «concréte» sounds.
All the titles of this CD live a life of their own and so does the music.
If they collide or/and interplay, I really dont know. Simultaneously they may exclude and include both the listener and the performer.
Martin Küchen
Reviews
Touching Extremes
Those are the moments in which the magic of this understated, yet significant music is revealed in full. -- read the whole review»
Gazetta
Who would've thought saxophonist Martin Kuchen was capable of conjuring up sounds that were this alien? -- read the whole review»
Orkesterjournalen
Kort uttryckt skulle man kunna beskriva «Homo Sacer» som minimalism eller stillsam noise, en avlägsen släkting till Terry Rileys Reed Streams eller Kevin Drumms Sheer Hellish Miasma. Och Küchen klarar sig bra i den jämförelsen. -- read the whole review»
Sands zine
il pregio della purezza. -- read the whole review»
Bagatellen
A rough, very strong set. -- read the whole review»
http://grisli.canalblog.com
Küchen s’éloigne d’un Homo Sacer primaire et inquiétant, au point de séduire partout l’auditeur évolué pas mécontent de faire une pause. -- read the whole review»
Sound of music
det är väldigt utrycksfulla kompositioner -- read the whole review»
www.lira.se
Det är märkvärdigt uttrycksfullt -- read the whole review»