S S S S – Walls, Corridors, Baffles
June 28, LP/Digital – Präsens Editionen
1 DESERTER
2 A TUNNEL OF DENSE FOG
3 THE WALLS, THE CORRIDORS, THE BAFFLES
4 SHIFTING PLACES I
5 SHIFTING PLACES II
6 ANYWHERE IS BETTER THAN HERE
7 AND ALL OF THIS CAN BE BROKEN
8 NOTHING BUT CIRCULATION OF AIR
Walls, Corridors, Baffles is the debut album of Swiss musician and producer Samuel Savenberg aka S S S S. Following various releases on Haunter Records, aufnahme+wiedergabe, and LUX Records, Savenberg the LP tries to find an approach to an artistic expression beyond tropes of darkness, harshness and excess.
Thus, the aesthetic of Walls, Corridors, Baffles is radically and uncompromisingly sober. Instead of focusing on a conceptual or symbolic treatment of sound as an abstraction, Savenberg emphasizes its materiality. The album consists of eight pieces strung together into a manifesto which calls for a febrile embrace of an unheard-of, intense sobriety.
In Walls, Corridors, Baffles, unadulterated percussive force meets an astoundingly precise and frugal vocabulary of electroacoustic sounds, as for example on the opener “Deserter”. Passages extended over long melodies invite the listener to lose oneself in the contrastive emptiness. Central to the work are the affective qualities of the music which lapses only at moments into a more defined emotional quality – as on the final track “Nothing But Circulation of Air”.
The cover was designed by the Berlin-based artist Han Le Han. The artwork was inspired by the Japanese tradition of Ikebana, a practice of arranging flowers that allows for the interleaving of sobriety and intensity explored in Walls, Corridors, Baffles, which also is referenced in the quotation from Roland Barthes that serves as the album title.
SAMUEL SAVENBERG_ 