The Sleeping Shaman is hosting an exclusive stream of TRIALOGOS‘ debut LP Stroh Zu Gold, ahead of the album’s release this Friday, the landmark 100th release for German label Exile On Mainstream.
TRIALOGOS – uniting Conny Ochs, Sicker Man, and Kiki Bohemia – is an experimental/cinematic rock collective, formed during the dark early months of the Covid pandemic. Stroh Zu Gold was recorded at blankstudio Berlin in October 2020, produced by Tobias Vethake and TRIALOGOS, with additional recordings by Conny Ochs. The album was mastered by Andreas “Lupo” Lubich and completed with artwork by the band members, primarily Ochs.
The Sleeping Shaman writes, “Have we got a treat instore for you as those who caught the TRIALOGOS performance over the Roadburn Redux weekend will know exactly what we mean. Featuring three inspirational musicians in the form of Conny Ochs, Kiki Bohemia, and Sicker Man, today it’s an honor to bring you the entire forty minutes of their debut Stroh Zu Gold, that also marks Exile On Mainstream’s 100th release, and to quote Martin in his recent review, where he said it, ‘offers up a wide variety of sounds, moods and textures,’ he’s certainly on point with that analogy.”
With the release of the album looming, Ochs writes, “‘Stroh Zu Gold’ is both an image and a quote from a famous and quite mystical German fairy tale by the name of Rumpelstilzchen. It embodies various rich imagery, one of them being a scene where a quite improbable task, turning straw into gold, needs to be accomplished. In fact, it is achieved through witchery. The strange and adventurous way in which we recorded the album made that image pop up in the process, and it stuck. It feels to me we had witchery on our side too. We just threw ourselves into this, without any recipe, not knowing at all what we would be cooked up to. I am very thankful for having the chance to work with Kiki and Sicker Man, and for that treasure of freedom in the unknown. I hope we can transmit this through the album, and that we have the chance to bring it to a stage soon.”
Exile On Mainstream founder and owner Andreas Kohl offers, “One-hundred releases, twenty-two years! Pinch me! Who would have thought we will make it this far? When Dischord made it to 100 in 1997 I hadn’t even started but couldn’t believe that you can keep the spirit for that long and still remain relevant and true to yourself. Truth be told, I had wanted to put it to rest a few times, but it was the artists themselves who wouldn’t let me, and in particular one Conny Ochs, who kept on telling me I can’t. So, this goes out to the artists on this label more than to anything or anyone else – they are the ones who got us this far. It’s all for them and because of them. And that’s why TRIALOGOS is so perfectly closing the circle because it perfectly illustrates what this is all about: the friendship, the family, the ‘anything goes’ and no limits approach. Wait a second, false modesty here, I’m the greatest! I put out 100 records. Eat that!”
Stream TRIALOGOS’ entire Stroh Zu Gold LP now through The Sleeping Shaman at THIS LOCATION.
Stroh Zu Gold sees release this Friday, June 18th, digitally and in a four-panel mini-gatefold CD, 180-gram pure virgin black vinyl LP including a download card, available through the Exile On Mainstream webshop HERE.
Following Tony Conrad’s concept of maximalism in minimal music, TRIALOGOS‘ widescreen Super 8 soundscapes and occasional haunted house vocals conjure up visions of Winter lost beaches, bats dancing upside down, and sojourns in permanent dawn. What we hear in these “trialogues” is one word sounding through the other. Like in a doubly exposed photograph, the individual elements become both more ethereal and more defined. They touch and blend, align and dissociate at the same time and take on the remarkable capacity of ghosts: the ability to inhabit one another, one voice speaking through the other.
In response to the altered living and working conditions during the pandemic, Sicker Man and Kiki had started a daily series of livestream concerts called Cleansing Drones For Locked Down Homes in March 2020, designed as an experimental musical ritual to comfort and express emotional and artistic turmoil during a state of emergency. When Conny Ochs joined in as a guest in the Autumn of 2020, they expanded the technique of those “dialogues” to include the voice of a “third,” taking collective soul searching and notion of self-transcendence to a further stage. Locked up in their studio in Berlin, seeking solitude and introspection, the trio recorded Stroh Zu Gold within just three days, gaining new artistic vision and transvaluation from this almost eremitic kind of lifestyle.
https://www.trialogosofficial.com
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http://www.mainstreamrecords.de