Andrew Pekler
Andrew Pekler was born in the Soviet Union, grew up in California and currently lives in Berlin, Germany.
Andrew Pekler was born in the Soviet Union, grew up in California and currently lives in Berlin, Germany.
Padre, fammi partire! (a tribute to Franco Battiato)
“Padre, fammi partire!” (Father, make me leave!). Franco Battiato, orphan of a father, sings this verse in "Da Orienta a Occidente". He declaims it solemnly and decisively. More than a request for a blessing, it is a declaration of intent. The force with which this prayer is recited admits of no weakness, no compromise and no obstacle. To leave is necessary. The volcano is there, showing the way. The power of this phrase reflects the impatience of a hawk that, tied to the arm of its falconer, wa…
Palimpsests (LP)
Andrew Pekler and Giuseppe Ielasi stunning collaborative album
Tristes Tropiques
** 2021 Repress ** Tristes Tropiques' – named after & dealing with Claude Lévi-Strauss' landmark ethnographic writing of the same name – is an album of "synthetic exotica & pseudo-ethnographic music". Sounding like the field recording from an imaginary landscape, Tristes Tropiques deals with the meaning of Exotica & ethnographic recordings (without using them) as well as with cultural categories like "Otherness". As smart as it is, it's also totally stunning, free-floating music, RIYL Dolphins I…
Sounds From Phantom Islands
** 2021 Repress ** Faitiche presents a new album by Andrew Pekler: Sounds From Phantom Islands brings together ten tracks created over the last three years for the interactive website Phantom Islands - A Sonic Atlas.With his 2016 album Tristes Tropiques, Pekler created a highly unique cosmos of ethnographic sound speculations. Sounds From Phantom Islands continues and simultaneously expands this concept: finely elaborated chordal motifs float like fog over fictional maritime landscapes. A master…
Two Views of Amami Ōshima
**Edition of 300** In 1958 the painter Isson Tanaka (°22 July 1908 –*11 September 1977) moved to Amami Ōshima, an island in the Ryukyus. There, in self-chosen isolation, he committed himself exclusively to his art until his sudden passing in 1977. In 2018 Seiha Kurosawa, Kanako Azuma and Hideki Umezawa visited Amami Ōshima to create a video installation about Tanaka’s insular life. The work, entitled “Dokkyaku” (tr. The Lone Visitor), shifts between the texture and materiality of Tanaka’s painti…
Cue
First vinyl edition of Andrew Pekler's Cue, originally released as a CD by Kranky in 2007. Reissued by the Kiev, Ukraine-based Muscut label (founded by Dmytro Nikolaienko) under exclusive license from Kranky, Ltd. Limited edition of 300. From Andrew Pekler: "Typically, library music albums were not available to the general public but were marketed directly to film, TV and commercial production companies. Judging by the information provided on the record sleeves, these consumers of library music …
The prepaid piano & replayed
**Restocked**In line with the prepared works of John Cage, Pekler has also tackled the piano with a modern twist that we could only imagine Cage would delight it. The A side of this long player contains participatory recordings wherein audience members of a performance in Berlin were invited to call mobile phones placed inside the performers piano (hence Pekler’s play on Cage’s original title) which would vibrate the strings and the signal would be passed along to a modular synthesizer via conta…
Ex Tempo Ra
Andrew Pekler makes his first recorded appearance since 'Sentimental Favourites' for Dekorder with these two dippy radiophonic charms for Plant Migration. Much like his sometime bandmate in Groupshow, Jan Jelinek, your Berlin-based protagonist has a canny knack for making the cutest modular melodies, as evidenced on the flowering bleeps and dusted machine pulses of 'Ex Tempo Ra'. Whereas 'Encounter In The Resonant Void' is more isolated, spacewise, drifting out on sparse, trickling martian melod…
Holiday for Sampler
** One-time pressing edition limited to 250 copies. ** In April 2011 Giuseppe Ielasi and Andrew Pekler met for a three day recording session at Pekler's studio in Berlin. In a comfortable atmosphere and with a minimum of preparation, the two artists endeavored to find common musical ground through their shared interests in sample manipulation, layering the texture and improvisation. Some months later Ielasi auditioned the recordings and then mixed down his favorite passages. To a few of these se…
Cover Versions
Andrew Pekler selected 300 different covers from second-hand records and, using colorful geometric elements to cover over all titles, performer’s names, and label logos, removed traces of the covers’ original contexts. The sunsets, couples in silhouette, alpine panoramas, roses on pianos, female faces in close-up, and seascapes no longer serve as the packaging for easy listening and exotica. Instead, the romantic, bizarre and intriguingly bland images of the original covers are free to lend thei…
Sentimental Favourites
Vinyl Lp, edition of 300 copies. The work of the Berlin-based composer Andrew Pekler has been been documented in various releases for labels such as ~scape, Staubgold and Kranky. When asked by Giuseppe Ielasi for some material to be released on Schoolmap Records, Pekler immediately considered the possibility of taking the many unused music fragments that had been collecting cyber-dust on various hard drives and bringing them into some kind of order. Raw sketches, orphaned sounds, finished pieces…
Entanglements in the orthopedic sensorium
Vinyl Lp, edition of 300 copies. The work of the Berlin-based composer Andrew Pekler has been been documented in various releases for labels such as ~scape, Staubgold and Kranky. When asked by Giuseppe Ielasi for some material to be released on Schoolmap Records, Pekler immediately considered the possibility of taking the many unused music fragments that had been collecting cyber-dust on various hard drives and bringing them into some kind of order. Raw sketches, orphaned sounds, finished pieces…