the avian kin, by alien kin

the avian kin

by alien kin

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Cassette + Digital Album
Cassette with 4 panel J card. Edition of 80 copies. 50 available through bandcamp.

Includes unlimited streaming of the avian kin via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

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edition of 80

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Streaming + Download

Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

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1.	the hunter must be active 04:55	buy track
2.	searching for an owl 02:50	buy track
3.	in orthogonal spruce 02:23	buy track
4.	the long tunnel (for morgan) 07:40	buy track
5.	transspecies communication 05:48	buy track
6.	bugs on the cilia 02:13	buy track
7.	panting in limewash 03:30	buy track
8.	critical mass 02:16	buy track
9.	thin strings of silk 04:03	buy track

about

The Alien Kin is an itinerant research and sound project playing with biomimicry and collective music making. Starting in 2022 with a sojourn in the Black Forest, the ensemble started to explore the sonic worlds of meadows, monoculture forests, train tunnels, bogs and imaginary places.

A long walk with Klaus-Peter, a hunter who cares for an area of forest near Triberg, raises questions like – what does it mean to interfere in the forest, for instance by hunting down roe deer when they no longer have predators? What does it mean to live in a world which is, as he says, a completely cultural or cultured landscape (reine Kulturlandschaft)?

All materials on the A side were recorded outdoors. Field recordings are haunted by a nearby highway; the spruce trees planted rectilinearly provide only limited shelter for birds, insects and mammals in the area. Their crowns tower 20 or 30 meters tall, and the grounds are systematically cleared of any bushes, scrubs, and dead wood. Stumbling in the tracks of giant pruning machines, two players follow a whimsical tawny owl and try to learn her tunes. Later, with Joan Jordi Oliver on Saxophone and instrument builder Joe Summers playing a duophonic flute, the group of three venture into a long train tunnel in search of resonant frequencies and timbral oscillations.

Side B brings into play more instruments by Summers & Barbé –bird calls, whistles, flutes - alongside vocal, musical and textural contributions by Mariana Carvalho and Pablo Diserens. The four players came together to listen to the instruments, twist them, pet them and generate compositions that were recorded at the studios of Morphine Raum in Berlin a few months later. The context is urban, the background is blank. The landscape is only an imagination, and the instruments take on new voices.

Alien Kin is curated by Diane Barbé. It has taken many different shapes and continues to grow, with workshops and instrument building sessions that currently involve ceramics and river canes.

The Alien Kin ensemble has performed at Vogelklang festival in the Black Forest, in Morphine Raum in Berlin, on the acousmonium of the GRM in Paris, at the Euphonia studio of Marseille’s Radio Grenouille, and most recently on Archipel community radio, live from 90mil in Berlin.

This tape was made possible by the residency space and art centre Global Forest e.V., in the Black Forest.

Related links:
> Diane Barbé on 15questions discussing the making of this album: www.15questions.net/interview/diane-barbe-about-field-recording/page-1/

> Diane Barbé, “’I Call, You Respond?’: Game Calls, Hunting and Sound Mimicry in the Black Forest”, in PULSE: Journal of Science and Culture, Vol (9): 2022. www.pulse-journal.org

> dianebarbe.com/the-alien-kin/

credits

released November 17, 2023

Compositions by Diane Barbé. All the pieces on side A were recorded outdoors in the Black Forest (Schwarzwald), Germany, April 2022, during a residency at Global Forest e.V. with special support from Irene Pérez Hernández and Olsen Wolf.

All the pieces on side B were recorded by Rabih Beaini at Morphine Raum, Berlin, Germany, October 2022, with support from Musikfonds e.V.

Special instruments were built by Joe summers and Diane barbé.

Mixed by Diane Barbé. Mastered by Joe Summers.

Tree trunk painting by Lou Croff.

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First Terrace Records London, UK

Independent record label from London

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