artist: ERNST KAREL
title: Swiss Mountain Transport Systems
label: Gruenrekorder
country: Germany
format: CD
title: Swiss Mountain Transport Systems
label: Gruenrekorder
country: Germany
format: CD
9 Tracks (77′50")
Swiss Mountain Transport Systems consists of location recordings made during the summer
and fall of 2008 of the various transport systems which are specific to mountainous terrain –
gondolas (aerial cable cars), funiculars, and chair lifts – of different types, of different
vintages, and accessing different elevations, in different parts of Switzerland. In this way the
album is a sonic investigation of the integration of such technology into the Swiss social-
geographical landscape. Recorded from within mostly enclosed mobile environments, this
emergent music includes mechanical drones, intermittent percussiveness, and transient
acoustic glimpses of a vast surrounding landscape inhabited by humans and other animals.
“Ernst Karel’s Swiss Mountain Transport Systems is a perfect example of how machines give
us a plethora of unintended compositions for us to appreciate. They offer amazing sonic gifts
like the unique irregularity of their rhythms and their quasi-harmonic drones. Without
consciousness. Karel’s careful attention and respect for all these things, as well as his focus
and coherence in putting them together, have resulted in an excellent small constellation of
transport systems sound matter variations. To my ears, a delectable album.”
(Francisco López)
"There is little evidence of human activity in these wonderful recordings other than
beautifully stark and repetitive rumbles and shifts of machinery. Human voices occasionally
appear, but they are mysterious and fleeting. The machinery in this isolated sonic
atmosphere paradoxically acquires the pristine quality of a natural landscape. Ernst Karel
has succeeded in capturing the vastness of the surrounding mountain landscape through the
smallest of mechanized movements.” (Olivia Block)
*Featured in the and/OAR top 300 list at Discogs.
Swiss Mountain Transport Systems consists of location recordings made during the summer
and fall of 2008 of the various transport systems which are specific to mountainous terrain –
gondolas (aerial cable cars), funiculars, and chair lifts – of different types, of different
vintages, and accessing different elevations, in different parts of Switzerland. In this way the
album is a sonic investigation of the integration of such technology into the Swiss social-
geographical landscape. Recorded from within mostly enclosed mobile environments, this
emergent music includes mechanical drones, intermittent percussiveness, and transient
acoustic glimpses of a vast surrounding landscape inhabited by humans and other animals.
“Ernst Karel’s Swiss Mountain Transport Systems is a perfect example of how machines give
us a plethora of unintended compositions for us to appreciate. They offer amazing sonic gifts
like the unique irregularity of their rhythms and their quasi-harmonic drones. Without
consciousness. Karel’s careful attention and respect for all these things, as well as his focus
and coherence in putting them together, have resulted in an excellent small constellation of
transport systems sound matter variations. To my ears, a delectable album.”
(Francisco López)
"There is little evidence of human activity in these wonderful recordings other than
beautifully stark and repetitive rumbles and shifts of machinery. Human voices occasionally
appear, but they are mysterious and fleeting. The machinery in this isolated sonic
atmosphere paradoxically acquires the pristine quality of a natural landscape. Ernst Karel
has succeeded in capturing the vastness of the surrounding mountain landscape through the
smallest of mechanized movements.” (Olivia Block)
*Featured in the and/OAR top 300 list at Discogs.
