Jo
Photo: Claudia Brijbag
Jo puzzles crooked tone songs from field recordings. In live performances she is playing the glasambel, an unique instrument, which she developed to present her music in her own way. In each of her songs she deeply steps into the world of her sound sources and discovers her own musical terrain by falling in love with hidden and dirty sounds, shaping them sensitively and developing a unique feeling for combining them. The amazing Claudia Brijbarg had captured Jo’s musical world in a single stunning photo!
Sound Capture
Whenever Jo tries to look like a reel field recordist, she doesn’t like the sound recording.
Creeping around strange objects seems to be more satisfying for her.
Out of the Silence
This is Jo’s documentation of her sound recordings on Iceland 2024.
Recording the radar of Norröna is like a dance: stepping forth and back, left and right captures all variations of electromagnetic radiation in the contact mic.
All those details are urgent triggers. At first, they only tiltilated me visually. But their audio tracks are also convincing traces of hidden gems.
Wind is a powerfull tool for ruining field recordings. Therefore recording the wind itself is a special task. It requires the minimisation of bothersome signals hitting the mic directly without the loss of the sounding parts.
The harshness of the rain can drown out the rhythms of the water drops.
A rope on a flagpole was the first sound inspection I ever did on Iceland. There are so many flagpoles. Each one is worth a sound check.
This toilet door has a voice. It sings in a language without words and from time to time it beat boxes.
Fences are promising resonating objects. In this case, all audio takes of the hollow struts were frustrating by a metallic dull reverb like a deep sink. Instead the thin solid vertical struts were intriguing conductors of the ambience.
Bolted boxes in the middle of nowhere are generally not my favourites of sound capturing. By chance I found a strange, irregular crackling in this one like a masked Geiger counter.
I took this photo without any sound. But the dragon kite desperately wants to have an appropriate soundscape. The search with the shotgun mic revealed the nervous, high-frequency buzzing of a camera surveillance drone.
The first sofa after more than 1400 km on the Icelandic Ring Road is a breather, also for the ears. It took me several attempts to place the contact mic properly within the soft, sound trapping chushons. Then the releasing coil springs sounded like a multi-layered glockenspiel in slow motion.
Washing takes out all the dirt of clothes and turns it into noise. Here I catched the hum from heavy soil and the hiss of light dust.
Endless surfaces are one of my favourite sounds. Each one has its own character, from harsh scratching to soft wiping, although both have a grey scale colour.
A technical error does not always have to be debugged. Especially not if it causes a marvellous squeaking noise.
Effect chains are nowadays appropriate manipulators to find a unique sound. It’s often hard and time-consuming to build up the right chain for yourself. I played around with this simple one and was amazed at its endless possibilities.
In this mounting rope from the highest radio antenna on Iceland I expected to find some weird code signals. But there were none. Then I started playing it as a long, long string. I was rewarded with the most persistent sustain I had ever heard.
„Throng of the Spoondrift“ by Jo – Stöðvarfjörður, August 8th 2024
It was a little premiere because Jo and Frank performed at the same event for the first time. Many thanks to the lovely people from the Fish Factory who made us feel so welcome. We had the concert hall to ourselves all day and really enjoyed setting up, practising and creating a unique evening for the very interested audience.
Empty Salt
Released: November 17th, 2023
Video: The Tangible Tryst
Once, when Jo worked in a salt mine, she switched off the headlight in a deep mining tunnel and found herself in the greatest silence and darkness. Apart from the taste of salt, the only thing that was present was absence. For decades she kept this feeling of emptiness.
On this album Jo opened up some dots of this empty token and a 10-kg sack of Asian flour burst onto a humdrum leeway. On this own run a grained crow flew untamed into a tangible tryst and leaving nothing but blunt salt.
framework radio #842: 2023.04.23
Jo is so flattend to be featured on framework radio in April 2023. framework radio is always worth to listen: It broadcasts a awesome selection of works based on field recordings.
Gigs winter 2022/23
BRUITAL NIGHTS # XXII at Loophole
The Sunday Matinee #59 at Villa Kuriosum
2nd BRUITAL BERLIN FURORE at Backsteinboot
FLUS-S Festival at Ausland
Do Not Leave Them Alone
Released: April 10th, 2022
One very early morning a little girl woke up in the large improvised sleeping camp for refugees at Central Station, Berlin. Quite sleepy, the girl picked up a toy keyboard and started to play. Jo heard the girl playing and sat down beside her to drift into the haunting island of sound that emerged in the utter bedlam.
This and other audio documents of Jo’s volunteer shifts during March 2022 at the Central Station became the source of „Do Not Leave Them Alone“.
This song is dedicated to all the people in the world who are forced to leave their homes.
By downloading the song, you take the opportunity to look one of these countless people straight into their eyes and give that human a smile.
EPISODE #9 Solange Bunte Balken Durchlaufen by ALLIGATOR GOZAIMASU
Amino Titu
Enjoy a glance at Jo’s recent album Amino Titu.
The record release party took place at WestGermany Berlin on Oct. 8th 2021. Jo played her glasambel and Lisa Simpson brought her amplified sewing machine. Two edgy concerts in one of our favourite venues.
Jo and Klaus Erika Dietl at the Alligator:Go! festival, Munich Aug. 15th. 2021
Alligator:Go! is a festival for experimental music and art More than 30 musicians* and artists* from Munich and other places, cities and countries that were already connected online will come together offline for the first time from August 13-15. The open-air stage of IMPORT EXPORT offers space for improvised music. Electronic music reinterpreted with medical meters, dulcimer and cello, queer dream-pop and contemporary vocal performance mix up the raucous noise mantra – „in doubt for the contradiction“. Professional musicians* and artists* who never tire of experimenting further collaborate with people who have only recently discovered playing and producing together.
Irrimich
A cooperation of Bleedingblackwood and Jo, was released on „Solange bunte Balken durchlaufen: Episode #6“. Bleedingsblackwood’s cry out inside and backwards whispering proves once again that he is the master of the most touching and vibrant sounds.
The Tenter is a bit veered off just now
Performed Live at the Alligator Gozaimasu Special. Feb 28th, 2021
Jo wrote a unexpectedly multi-layered song. It was released on „Solange bunte Balken durchlaufen: Episode #4“.
Helena Hartmann (flute, sounds), Jo (production, sound shaping), Martin Krejci aka Institut für Leistungsabfall und Kontemplation (sound), Andrea Lesjak (sounds), Andreas Purkhart (sounds) + field recordings from the rainy ALLIGATOR GOZAIMASU pavement radio special featured by BELPs „Kleine Hässliche Dubstep Ecke“ on the 28th of July 2020
ALLIGATOR GOZAIMASU striked again!
Jo joined this huge sonic collaboration of unique individuals from all over the world. She took this chance to make her very first song from the sounds of real instruments! Jo has transformed Karl Hagen’s accordeon, the guitar of nunofyrbeeswax with some rattling of the snare’s chains and sounds of a neon tube recorded by Lachpillenonkel into „Idle Lane“.
Check it out, enjoy and most importantly, buy the album „Solange Bunte Balken Durchlaufen“: All the revenues go to Sea-Watch.
Dearest and deepest thanks to Rag Treasure, Gemma Meulendijks, Klaus Erika Dietl, Faust Ruslan for making this happen.
Jo feat. Drekka – Bluing Cast
Performed at the „My Private Orange ’Ear Livestream Vol.11“ May 2020
Drekka invited Jo to make a new song from a soundfile of his archive for this streaming.
Jo & Bleedingblackwood – The Boy Inside Me (You Killed) Remix
Sunday 10th of May was the anniversary of Jo’s debut on stage. In this special show at our Livestream „My Private Orange ’Ear Vol. 8“, Jo presented two new songs and her very own Orange ’Ear playlist.
Timo C. Engel alias Bleedingblackwood hosted the show for us and accompanied Jo on stage with his wonderful voice at a premiere.
In March 2020 Jo was on an artist residency at the Fish Factory – Creative Centre of Stöðvarfjörður, Iceland.
Here you can see her interview
SPLINTER GUARD
(released on Feb. 22th 2020)
Have a listen to Jo’s EP, on which a medical MRI scanner is the main instrument.
Jo love to thank deeply her comrades, who have given her their full support, backing and affinity along the way:
Simone G. operated the MRI scanner. Jo thanks her for the most energetic sequences!
Mute Swimmer gave his voice to All The Kings. Highly open minded, he stepped into a weird experimental recording set up … It turns out, that he is the perfect ambient singer in the silent darkness.
Frank Schültge did a great job in mastering: He handled all the quiet and fragile details with great sensitivity …
Timo C Engel is the most incredible companion: he follows every step, notices every turn of the work, encourages new experiments and is always curious to be astounded by Jo’s music.
Jo – All the Kings
Jo Performed „All the Kings“ at My Private Orange ’Ear Vol. 8 May 2020
Bumblebee by Jo. Record Release Concert May 11th 2019 at Orange ’Ear
Far Far Further
Have a listen to Jo’s crooked tone songs from field recordings of Iceland …
Special thanks to Robin Lochman for 2nd camera
Jo released her debut album „Bumblebee“ on May 11th 2019 and threw a great show at Orange ’Ear.
Jo is heartily grateful and deeply touched that so many people have encouraged her on her way to this album:
Thank you to all who contributed to capture some sound bits: DJ flugvel og gameskip speaking with Flydra the cat, the rooster of Berglind and Svavar at HAVARI, the unidentified woman at an escalator, Vinny Vamos with his tape machine at Studio Silo and Rex Beckett guiding us in the Greenhouse Studios and so many more … Frank Schültge mastered the album sensitively with his keen understanding of this kind of music. Thank you such a lot for your fascinating work! Timo C Engel passed his final clearance to every song immediatlely when Jo had finished it. This ritual strengthened their profound siblinghood in sound. Jo would never want to miss this bond any more.
An adventure began two years ago (2017) when Jo said: I don’t want shooting more stunning landscape photos of Iceland on our next trip to Iceland. Instead I want to record sounds and make a song out of them. Frank was a bit baffled because he knew Jo’s musical uncertainties well. But he loved the idea. Hence, the two travelled Iceland mainly with their ears. After the return Jo deeply stepped into the world of her recorded sounds and discovered her own musical terrain. She fell in love with hidden and dirty sounds, learned to shape them sensitively and developed a feeling for combining them. Soon, she realised that there was so much to explore that she made more than one song.