Conny Frischauf: Noises become music

“Know No Tones” – what does an album with this title want to tell us? Is it a request or a description of the condition? Both are possible, just as a lot is possible on this album, after “Die Drift”, the second solo work by the Viennese sound artist Conny Frischauf.

She then moves again between pop lightness and electronic experimentation. Vocally, the songs are repeatedly reminiscent of the Cologne singer Stefanie Schrank, who recently released a new EP with “Schlachtrufe BRD”. In terms of sound aesthetics, however, Frischauf’s approach goes far beyond this and, in its expansiveness, evokes memories of kraut and ambient pioneers of the 1970s such as Cluster, Brian Eno or Tangerine Dream. Where Schrank has both feet firmly anchored in the depths of everyday life, Frischauf floats above things, so to speak, with her artistic approach. Your frame of reference is the dream, which by definition goes beyond any frame of reference. Sometimes she needs words, sometimes just a quiet hum, often no voice at all. “I love looking for sounds,” she recently said. Seen in this way, »Know No Tones« is her personal expedition.

Tones and noises form a dense sound cosmos that produces its own levels of meaning. With your eyes closed, the album is able to evoke a crazy film that is not committed to the strict linearity of realism. “Where are the clouds going/ They’re in a hurry or something/ They’re flying quickly over there/ I can’t blame them here either/ So I watch them/ And sit on them right away,” it says in the opening track “Fragrances” in an almost exhilaratingly infantile way «.

With its elegiac atmosphere, the song refers to the sophisticated pop of the British band Talk Talk around singer and frontman Mark Hollis in the mid-1980s. At that time they had already moved a long way away from the pleasing mainstream sound of the early years, but at the same time they were not as unwieldy as on “Laughing Stock” in 1991. Frischauf also moves in this space between artificiality and accessibility on “Kenne No sounds” repeated.

Last but not least, the piece “Two Minutes” placed in the middle of the album fits in well with this. With its continuous silence, it can be understood as a homage to John Cage’s groundbreaking work “4’33”” from 1952 without becoming conceptual art degenerate: Rather, it is like a welcome space that allows you to take a closer look at the acoustics of your own environment. Thanks to the special focus, noises that you wouldn’t normally pay any attention to become music for a fleeting moment, before a lively saxophone in “Adieu Araneus” ushers in the second half of the album.

There are no hits to be found in this tightly woven tapestry of sound, but it can be assumed that this is not what Frischauf is aiming for anyway. Rather, the 16 pieces are convincing precisely because of their open-endedness and sketchy nature. They thus open up a cosmos whose multidimensionality and vastness undermines any form of simplicity.

Conny Frischauf: “Know No Tones” (Bureau B)