Premiere announcement: “The Calm Before the Storm“, TO)pot 2026 Festival of Radical Soundwalks, “Walking with Silence”, production: Cona, venue: Cukrarna Gallery, Ljubljana (SI), September 2026
The Angstmachine is a series of electroacoustic, quadraphonic compositions for a custom-made friction idiophone of the same name. The sonic material interweaves atmospheric field recordings with friction, oscillations, resonances, and restrained electronic processing. The composition unfolds as a processual layering of sound, in which performative gestures (strikes, slides, pressures, bowing, spins, and rotations) are transferred into the instrument, generating sensations of unrest, tension, and the foreboding of an approaching collapse. The instrument, tuned to 31edo, is simultaneously bowed, plucked, and struck; it produces pulsations, reverberations, and rhythms, making an unusual sonic landscape.
The electronics act as a quiet extension of the instrument, through decay, modulated feedback loops, spring reverb, and seemingly random movement through the quadraphonic space, with real-time gesture recording taking the lead role. Through tiny frictions, muffled resonances, and sonic impositions, the artist creates an acoustic metaphor for social anxiety. Uncomfortable relationships between tones, unstable vibrations, and overtones evoke the contemporary experience of uncertainty. What begs the question is, what kind of poetry can be made during a time of war?
The first composition in the series, “The Calm Before the Storm,” evokes states of anxiety, ranging from subdued tension to ominous sonic shadows (unease, apprehension, tension, sinister foreboding, torment). “A Field of Noise” foregrounds the city’s noise and the low-frequency seismic sound of construction work (fear, nervousness, distress, anxiety, confusion). “Collapse in Slow Motion” is the result of the war machine (horror, turmoil, horror, pain). The Angstmachine is a sonic ritual that, through the tension between the acoustic and the electronic, reveals the unrest of the contemporary world and invites listeners to confront its echo.
1. The Calm Before the Storm, 22 min
2. A Field of Noise, 22 min
3. Collapse in Slow Motion, 22 min
Note: The Angstmachine is a custom-built instrument that combines elements of the hybrid acoustic instrument Apprehension Engine by Canadian film composer Mark Korven, the electroacoustic wooden experimental bowed instrument Daxophone invented by Hans Reichel, and the modular electroacoustic instrument Resonant Garden produced by Folktek. The electronic processing is performed in VCV Rack 2, an Eurorack simulator.