RLW – C​.​D. 2CD

Colonia Dignidad was the settlement of a German evangelical sect. After being prosecuted for child abuse in Germany, the group fled to Chile in 1961. Like similar religious sects, it was characterized by the outward appearance of a unified, godly community with well-tempered cultural activities and social welfare, but inwardly and in its environment by oppression, sexual abuse, and exploitation. In the 1970s, it unquestioningly inserted itself into Pinochet’s regime of terror, aiding in the imprisonment and torture of political prisoners, weapons production, etc. Since the end of the 1980s, there has been a legal reappraisal of the C.D.’s crimes in Chile.

Its successor organization makes a living from tourism.

The C.D. project uses, on the one hand, a series of documentary recordings of contemporary witnesses, and on the other, a set of melodic improvisations (MIDI files), improvised in the spirit of the impressions of terror, tension, claustrophobia and fear associated with the Colonia. CD 2 (Knochenstückchen) directly reflects this atmosphere. CD 1 (Reue?) on the other hand, is characterized by the contradictory breadth of the statements found after the dissolution of the sect: Denial of atrocities to glorification of the C.D. by leaders who returned to Germany against the professed traumas of formerly abused inmates and exploited community workers.

For this purpose, the eyewitness recordings were sound-modified to a considerable extent. The MIDI files were played back with a variety of virtual instruments (piano, guitar, sax, turntable, lung machine, barrel organ, synths, etc.) in a multitude of modifications (speed, pitches, loops, harmonic and tonal variations), so that the 11 pieces from CD 1 and the 16 pieces from CD 2 each represent a closely interwoven overall composition.

Ralf Wehowsky is one of the most respected practitioners of radical music of our day. He was the founding member of the seminal German group P16.D4 and ran the legendary experimental label Selektion whose ground-breaking releases influenced many working in today’s experimental music scene. Previous releases have seen him collaborate with such well known and diverse artists such as Merzbow, Andrew Chalk, Jim O’Rourke, Achim Wollscheid, Lionel Marchetti, Kevin Drumm, Kouhei Matsunaga and Bruce Russell.

Reviews

RLW – C.D. (2CD by Penultimate Press)

I am sure I haven’t heard all the works by Ralf Wehowsly, also known as RLW, but I have heard a lot. I am racking my brain if I encounter a work of his of political meaning. It may be, but I am no longer aware. On
his latest CD, called ‘C.D.’ there is. In this case, the title doesn’t mean compact disc, nor is it RLW‘s tribute to Oval, but it is the acronym for Colonia Dignidad, the Chilean settlement of a German evangelical sect. They went there in 1961 after being prosecuted in Germany on accounts of child abuse. On the outside, it all looked great, like all sects; on the inside, there was repression, sexual abuse and the support of the Pinochet regime. RLW uses documentary recordings of contemporary witnesses (I am sure I saw the same documentary on Netflix), along with a set of melodic improvisations “improvised in the spirit of the impressions of terror, claustrophobia and fear”. This is on the second CD, and the first is all about the denial of atrocities and the glorification by the former leaders who returned to Germany. As I said, I can’t remember RLW being this outspoken. Last week, I wrote about absolute and programmatic music, that 19th-century notion about music having no meaning or being a story. Here we have a story. Yet the story is on the cover (basically what I wrote above), and then the question arises: what if one doesn’t know this background? What is left? What do we understand? A difficult question, and one I would carefully answer with, ‘I am afraid a lot would be lost’. The music is very much musique concrète-like, with cutting up sounds, pitch shifting, looping, reversing and whatever other techniques are at the disposal of the composer, who uses MIDI to play back various virtual instruments (piano, sax, guitar, turntable, lung machine, barrel organ and synths). Along with cutting up voices (plus all the other musique concrète techniques), this all sounds very much like an excellent RLW release, but at the same time, there is also the question: do we hear anything that is a direct link to Colonia Dignidad,? I am afraid I don’t, but there’s always a possibility I am missing out on something. Granted, by adding voices, there is surely a radiophonic aspect to the music, and as said, this is all classic RLW music. The use of musical instruments, finely chopped into small pieces, re-contextualised into new music. That’s what he does, and that’s what he is great at. (FdW) – Vital Weekly