artist: HERIBERT FRIEDL
title: Raumzitate
catalog number: and/17
release year: 2004
format: CDR
status: sold out
This is the first release by Austrian sculptor/sound artist Heribert Friedl.
This 5 part work of fractured soundscapes subtitled "...to reserve the
necessary space" evokes a sense of spatial perception without the
use of familiar points of reference such as human voices or footsteps. The
word "raumzitate" translates in English to something akin to "room
quotations."
This text will be replaced
TOUCHING EXTREMES   (SEPTEMBER 2004)
Raumzitate is a brief essay on microsounds by Viennese Heribert Friedl,
whose work is centripetal towards silence - itself an important factor in
these pieces. Observation and purpose yield a series of sonic fingerprints
which stand alone or accompanied by suggestive faraway drones, like in a
fascinating segment of the final track "Proposal". The crumbling of patterns
juxtaposed with these distant evocations are always of interest, while the
rippling hiss of certain separated frequencies work well when listened
amidst the sounds of the outside world, provided it's not a noisy urban
ambiance. Friedl seems to know where his direction is and I'm willing to
trust him for future elaborations: for sure, there's more than glitches and
pops under here.  
(Massimo Ricci)
VITAL WEEKLY   number 437   week 35   (2004)
Debut release from this Austrian sculptor/sound artist, of whom I know
nothing else. The work is subtitled "...to reserve the necessary space" and
since the title can be translated as "room quotations", everything here deals
with the spatial quality of sound. It's hard to tell what it is exactly that he
does here, but let's assume that Friedl is using field recordings which he
processes with a lot of computer techniques. That sounds like a lot but in
fact, Friedl plays on the edge of softness here. A sound sounds for a while,
and then it dies out, some new sounds come in, dies out, silence etc. But
each new sound that comes in, shows a distinct development to the
previous sound. The sources are only used sparsely, maybe like the
recording of a rolling marble or the sound of a door being closed. Friedl's
work comes close to that of Richard Chartier, Marc Behrens or Roel
Meelkop, but is even more, and yes, that is possible, more austere and
silent. In that respect there is nothing new under the micro-sun, but
nevertheless the material is interesting enough by itself.  A most promising
start.  
(Frans de Waard)
E / I  MAGAZINE ISSUE 6  (WINTER / SPRING 2006)
In Friedl's Raumzitate, slap-back pointillism and faux-instrumental
extensions trade time with frontline drummerly textures that are respiratory
without being explicitly rhythmic. A Vienna-based "sensory artist" (famous
for using fragrances in his installation work), here Friedl paints with
crackling timbre, often able to sustain taut interplay well longer than he has
right to. "Raumzitate" must mean "hail on a tin roof," "Bayle in a reticent
mood," "prop planes outside and overhead," and stark, "matter-of-fact"
sonic punctuation performing syntactic acrobatics. The difference over
materially similar works by RLW or Stephen Vitiello is the difference
between dialog in space and monologue in a vacuum. The tracks do not
develop as much as reveal their structure; it is a rare gift that Friedl
understands the durations required for such revelation and does not extend
his compositions beyond them.
(William S. Fields)