ABKRATZEN

The good, the bad and the way out: A new, provocative take on the images and sounds of the Western from the ensemble zeitkratzer.

From the pioneering explorations of John Ford, Fritz Lang and Samuel Fuller to spaghetti westerns of Sergio Leone, Western bestowed the art of cinema with a whole new visual and musical language. When Ennio Morricone integrated avantgarde music with sound effects in his legendary soundtracks, it turned out that they can speak more powerfully than dialogues. Now zeitkratzer appropriates this musical wealth to give it a new form – live on stage.

With ABKRATZEN, the pan-European ensemble approaches the Western genre on its own, anarchistic terms, suggesting that the ‘wild west’ is a fiction that can be constructed anywhere on the planet, including North-Sicilian coast, French Cévennes, Norwegian Rondane National Park and the Alps of Tirol. Visual dreamscapes shot there will be juxtaposed on stage with zeitkratzer’s suspense sounds à la Morricone, inverted cowboy songs from the collection of Alan Lomax, ritual dances, microtonal saloon music on out-of-tune instruments, squeaking swinging doors, funeral bells, tense drones, harmonica choirs and gunshots at the final shoot-out – and all of it accompanied by acting of Maximilian Brauer

ABKRATZEN is the latest in zeitkratzer’s acclaimed reinventions of contemporary music, from Iannis Xenakis, Karlheinz Stockhausen and John Cage to Keiji Haino, Lou Reed and Terre Thaemlitz.

no language, approx. 1 hr. 30 min.