Jochen Arbeit & Sonja Kosche link on new release

Returning to deliver their first full-length collaborative album following the release of the 2022 EP Tier Macht Toene, Jochen Arbeit and Sonja Kosche bring us their new record titled Das Bett. Once again released via Dymaxion Groove Records, the pair use a palette of strings and various percussive materials to craft a mind-bending avant-garde musical experience. Attached tines, membranes, metal plates and even human bodies on a steel bed to act as a resonator which was built, along with many of the instruments, by Yuri Landman, who’s previously created guitars for Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth.

Across the album, Jochen Arbeit and Sonja Kosche present a masterclass in sound design and experimental composition. The record opens with “Fear (The End)”, and introduces the sound with a twelve minute odyssey of eerie tones and jarring percussive strikes. “Awakening” offers subtle melodic structures over a rhythmic focal-point, resulting in a highly original and mesmerising ambient piece. The fourth track, “Stand Up”, features Chandra Sukla with a sitar performance, creating a delicate musical journey of soft rhythmic shots and intricate instrumentation.

With “Nervous Breakdown” they spin a hazy sonic tapestry full of erratic buzzing tones which slowly build into an elegant and melodic minimal piece of sombre energy. The album closes with “Warm Breathe (The Beginning)”, a deep, droning composition that captures the stunning resonance of their production with an ominous, bass-focused sound.

Das Bett is a stark set of 12 tracks from Jochen Arbeit (Einstürzende Neubauten) and Sonja Kosche. It is their second release on experimental, Brooklyn-based label Dymaxion Groove, a follow up to their ground-breaking 2022 release Tier Mach Toene.

Das Bett (The Bed) was recorded in Berlin at Zuhaus Studio in Winter 2021/2022. The recordings centered around the use of a metal bed as a reverberating sound generator. Wires attached to Das Bett were bowed with a traditional bow, an ebow, a vibrator, and vibro eggs. Other instruments used in the recording were metal plates, kalimba, loops, a synth, “feet effects on Sonja,” and metal sticks. Sitarist Chandra Shukla joins the duo on track 4 “Stand Up.”

In addition to the soundmaking toolset that would be at home in a David Cronenberg film, Jochen and Sonja used instruments like the Homeswinger and Harddrive; inventions of Hypercustom guitar founder Yuri Landman. Landman is well known as an experimental guitar-maker having provided his self-designed guitars to the likes of Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo as well as Micah Levi and Melt Banana’s Ichiro Agata.

Landman is also a familiar figure to Dymaxion Groove, which sells his Otonality/Utonality/3rd Bridge Posters. Yuri appeared on the label’s 2017 release “I Said No Doctors!” with his band Bismuth.

Dymaxion Groove founder, composer and multi-instrumentalist Tom Tolleson also performs with Landman’s instruments in his own “I Said “No Doctors!” track Kosciuszko. The track takes its name from a stop on the Brooklyn J train. “I noticed that the conductors mis-pronounced the name of the stop but each conductor mis-pronounced it differently,” he said. “So I started sampling the station announcement for a few days and got a few of the more extreme outliers and used those on the track.”

It was Yuri Landman who brought Jochen, Sonja and Dymaxion Groove together. Mr. Tolleson explains “Yuri connected us and told Jochen that I’m the only label he knows of that releases really noisy music. I don’t know if that’s actually true, but I was flattered to know I was the first label to pop into his head.”

Much of Mr. Landman’s work has centered around his build of Otonal, Utonal, 3rd bridge and Just Intonation-focused string instruments (with occasional forays into noise-generating hard drive instruments and other experiments). Just intonation is a tuning “system” which is based on the natural harmonic order and ratios of pitch based on string harmonics. For example, If a pitch is based on string vibrating, it has a ratio of 1/1. One octave above that pitch can be achieved by fretting the string at the halfway point, 1/2. A perfect fifth would be a ratio of 3/2. The importance of this approach is that it creates pitches that are in tune rather than with the western “equal temperament” system which was designed to allow transposition of a piece of music from one key to another, not to stay in tune all the way up through multiple octaves. How does that work?

In the above example we can increase pitches along octaves as 1/1, 2/1, 3/1. For example, the A (La) pitch is 440 hz or 440/440 or 1/1. The A one octave up would be 440:880, or ½ (a string fretted in half is a good real-world analog). These octave ratios will always be in tune if they are based on the octave ratio. However, the equal tuning system tunes along an “equal” spacing of tunings based on the interval relationships within the octave. If you tune that A to a fifth above, E and then a fifth above that, and then continue B to F#, F# to C#, C# to Ab, Ab to Eb, Eb to Bb, Bb to F, F to C all the way up seven octaves, the final A in the sequence will actually be a little bit sharper than the initial A; it will not quite be in tune. It will have lost that perfect ratio increase and will not be 1/7. Mr. Landman has built his instruments to work along a perfect set of ratios to stay in tune.

However, his work is not merely limited to a simple tuning system. He has designed instruments based on a variety of sound-making approaches from around the work such as sympathetic strings, moveable bridges and electric pickups placed in non-conventional places on the instruments. Visually his instruments take inspiration Supermatist painter Kazimir Malevich. Malevich’s contrast of art-without meaning and peculiar mathematics resulted in a style of rectangular parallelism and ratios that blend well with Mr. Landman’s exploration of music theory. For those interested in learning more, he has produced a trio of visual explanations of the theory behind huis music in the Otonality, Utonality and Third Bridge posters.

Dymaxion Groove was founded in 2010 by Tom Tolleson and released indie and experimental music from France including French “Glue Wave” band Le Club des Chats. Living in Baltimore at that time, Tolleson struck up a friendship with True Vine record store owner and Half Japanese member Jason Willett. Dymaxion Groove later released Half Japanese frontman Jad Fair and Jason Willett’s album The Greatest Power. The album featured a piece of cut-out art by Jad Fair which was then laser die-cut on each gatefold album. This was the first time laser die-cut was used on an album and earned it a place in John Foster’s compendium Album Art.

Listen to Das Bett below