Rescued From The Fire: Felix Kubin
An ongoing series in which we ask artists the record they’d risk life and limb to save from a burning inferno
This time we hear from the synthesized, longtime Neue Deutsch Welle Dada-king himself, Hamburg's Felix Kubin, as he talks about his most valued possession: the futuristic, militant musical collages of SAT Stoicizmo. Join us...
SAT Stoicizmo - Mah 2
"To gain the full simultanistic effect it is suggested to listen both with headphones and loudspeakers at the same time." (Instructions from the liner notes)
There are two types of records. The first one you listen to few times and then simply relegate it to collect dust. The other type you keep listening to again and again because it’s impossible to comprehend its entirety. Every listen reveals another paring of the onion.
Mah 2 by the (Ex-)Yugoslavian futurist group SAT Stoicizmo is such an album. Although I bought it 15 years ago, I am still figuring out its sonic and conceptual complexity. The album is named after the Austrian physicist Ernst Mach (1838-1916) who explored supersonic velocity and the shock wave phenomenon. The four sides of the double LP are dedicated to four main aspects of futurism: simultaneity, acceleration, power and machinery.
What strikes me about this record is its sheer energy and the fact that the music defies categorization. There are elements of L’Art de Bruits, industrial noise, plunderphonics, film sound, tape cut-ups, prog rock, punk rock, distorted muzak and manifesto declamations. According to the liner notes, “the group itself regarded its both radical and extremely diversified approach as an attempt to combine the achievements of punk-rock music with the classical concept of futuristic bruitism created by Luigi Russolo in 1913”. The recordings were made during the socialist era in 1984/85. At that time, SAT Stoicizmo was "practically nonexistent in public, even in their Slavonian native country.” Two years later, the band split up. One of the members died in the Yugoslavian war in the 1990s.
As soon as you put on the record, you will descend into a maelstrom of sirens, morse code patterns, fast forward voices, factory noise, explosions, trains, aircraft and diverse musical instruments. All these sounds are organized with magnificent musicality and dramaturgy. The acoustic assault maintains an elegance of poetic dynamism.
Why in hell, you may ask, would I rescue a record from the fire that is so full of incendiary composition itself? Why go for such an outburst of aggression? Isn't that pretty unsuitable for curing a burned soul? The answer is: this record perfectly sums up the 20th century with all its hysteria, technological revolution and acceleration. Its music spirals into a maximum of energy, poetry and madness that reminds me of celebrating the dissonances of life instead of just bearing them.
