Echonomy Split Series #4

Format: CS

Label: Otomatik Muziek

Cat No: OM24CS

Felix-Florian Tödtloff and Schweven/Philipp Hager are acquainted since years, but never recorded together. Long ago, Felix played in the Berlin-based screamo band Petethepiratesquid, Philipp put up DIY shows somewhere in the swamps of southern germany. Then Philipp started playing in the motorik krautrock duo Zement, and as Felix had been building a reputation of his own as an audio engineer with Aetherweight, he mastered some of their releases. Then came 2020 and all its hegemonial narratives. In May of that year, Philipp played a livestream solo/soli show for a club he was involved in back in the days. 10 tapes were made. Felix used a number of recordings done all over the globe and built the song ``Volta“, released in June on a split tape of 50 Copies with the great Jeans Beast on Mönchengladbach's Econore label.

Upon hearing both recordings around the same time, the similarities were so obvious they sounded almost like two solo recordings of a duo. In a nutshell: these two vibed smooth as fuck.

Built on a groundwork of time-stretching synth drones, both rise slowly into an anti-climactic ride through repetitive patterns. As Schweven takes the driveway to a dance show of mumbling sequence lines, Tödtloff puts on the grand gesture and throws himself into a deep -level minimalist piano etude. Both sides carry the character of exercises of the mind and the body, controlled loopholes and examinations of two things which feel lightyears away now and are so crucial to freedom and an open society: club culture (Schweben) and traveling (FFT). A third element is remembered and exercised in the tape itself: mutual dialogue and communication.

The Echonomy Split Series puts out recordings which have already been released in small numbers; it brings together two artists who are kin to each other, be it in terms of genre, approach, aesthetics, or other similar relations. In recontextualizing these works, new dynamics and associations evolve.