“Miniaturen” or in English: “Miniatures” is Konrad Sprenger’s first solo album. The dictionary defines a miniature as “a representation or image of something on a small or reduced scale”. Sprenger worked for over two years to find a “grand form” in which to represent his myriad bagatelles; drawing from hundreds of finished and unfinished recordings recorded over the last ten years with a diverse palette of musicians, artists and friends.
The result is an unlikely juxtaposition of 32 abbreviated sonoric vignettes, each with its own internal logic, each a setting within a diverse range of musical styles (ranging from pop, kraut, baroque, american minimalism etc.), recognizable on the one hand, yet always unexpected. The instrumentation is equally abstruse: from mechanical bird organs and automated musical machines from the 1800 to sine waves, harmonium, timpanies, steel drum, siren and countless other examples; this is a sonic exploration of endless possibilities where each work takes the listener one step forward, building on perceptual
associations, so that one never knows where one will end up next.
The sonic “miniatures” function as reduced modules, always referring to some “other” music or sounds we must have heard somewhere, but which we are forever unable to pin down. After producing recordings by Ellen Fullman, Arnold Dreyblatt, Doc Schoko and countless others, and performing for years as Konrad Sprenger with such luminary bands as Ethnostress and Ei and the art group Honey-suckle Company, Sprenger has finally made his own artistic statement with “Miniaturen” once again adorned with a cover by artist Jonas Lipps. (Arnold Dreyblatt)