poire_z (pronounced "pwar-zed") was an electronic

free improvisation Free improvisation or free music is improvised music without any rules beyond the logic or inclination of the musician(s) involved. The term can refer to both a technique (employed by any musician in any genre) and as a recognizable genre in its ...

music group A musical ensemble, also known as a music group or musical group, is a group of people who perform Instrumental music, instrumental and/or vocal music, with the ensemble typically known by a distinct name. Some music ensembles consist solely ...

formed in 1998. Its members all have long careers in improvised music; critic Fred Grand of ''

Avant AVANT, also known as AVANT street art guerrilla collective, was the artist group active in New York City from 1980 to 1984. By 1984 AVANT had produced thousands of acrylic on paper paintings and plastered them on walls, doors, bus-stops and gallerie ...

'' calls poire_z a "post- AMM supergroup."

Band history

At a music festival at Nantes,

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan area ...

in 1998, percussionist Gunter Muller and turntablist Erikm were scheduled to perform as a duo. The same festival featured a performance by duo

Voice Crack Voice Crack was a Swiss electronic free improvisation band. Formed in late 1972 by Andy Guhl and Norbert Möslang, Voice Crack began as a free jazz duo. Then they used pre-recorded tape effects and live sound processing. By 1983 they had elimina ...

. The four musicians made an unscheduled collaboration, and afterwards formed a semi-regular quartet. They recorded several albums and made a number of live appearances before disbanding. poire_z often invited a fifth musician as a guest:

Keith Rowe Keith may refer to: People and fictional characters * Keith (given name), includes a list of people and fictional characters * Keith (surname) * Keith (singer), American singer James Keefer (born 1949) * Baron Keith, a line of Scottish barons ...

Phil Minton Phil Minton (born 2 November 1940) is a British avant-garde jazz/ free-improvising vocalist and trumpeter. Minton is a highly dramatic baritone who tends to specialize in literary texts: he has sung lyrics by William Blake with Mike Westbrook' ...

Christian Marclay Christian Marclay (born January 11, 1955) is a visual artist and composer. He holds both American and Swiss nationality. Marclay's work explores connections between sound, noise, photography, video, and film. A pioneer of using gramophone records ...

Otomo Yoshihide is a Japanese composer and multi-instrumentalist. He mainly plays guitar, turntables, and electronics. He first came to international prominence in the 1990s as the leader of the experimental rock group Ground Zero, and has since worked i ...

Sachiko M Sachiko Matsubara (Japanese: 松原幸子; born 1973), better known by her stage name Sachiko M, is a Japanese musician. Her first solo album, ''Sine Wave Solo'', was released in 1999. Working in collaboration with Ami Yoshida under the name Cosmo ...

and others performed or recorded with the core quartet. As with much

, poire_z's music is generally focused more on a group sound, and given the musicians' unorthodox approach to their instruments, it is often difficult to discern who is generating any individual sound. Aside from glimpses of Muller's occasionally unprocessed percussion, their music is nearly all electronic blips, clicks and droning like a shortwave radio tuned in to an extraterrestrial broadcast; critic Ed Howard described the group's music as "all whir and purr and throb, the soldered electronic exclamations of the Voice Crack duo spurting around the steady rhythmic drive of Muller and eRikm ... a dense cycling drone with harsh electronic interjections skipping over the top." One piece is described as "delicate tones, crackles and light bubbling sounds, resting and intermingling with characteristic weightlessness, only occasionally being interrupted by glimpses of harsher textures." Voice Crack formally disbanded in about 2004, and poire_z have not recorded or performed since.

Personnel

* Erikm: 3K-PAD∞System * Gunter Muller:

percussion A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Ex ...

, effects *Andy Guhl and Norbert Möslang (who recorded as

) on homemade electronics.

Discography

1999 File:1999 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The funeral procession of King Hussein of Jordan in Amman; the 1999 İzmit earthquake kills over 17,000 people in Turkey; the Columbine High School massacre, one of the first major school shoot ...

: Poire_Z - For4ears records * 2001 : ''Presque_Chic'' - Sonoris * 2002 : ''+'' - with

•

Erstwhile Records Erstwhile Records is an independent record label devoted to free improvisation, particularly the electroacoustic variety, contemporary, experimental composed music, and combinations of both. Erstwhile was founded by Jon Abbey in 1999, whose perso ...

* 2004 : ''Q'' - Poire Z's last performance, with guest vocalist

Allmusic Q album review
/ref> * Sampler *

2000 File:2000 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Protests against Bush v. Gore after the 2000 United States presidential election; Heads of state meet for the Millennium Summit; The International Space Station in its infant form as seen from S ...

: ''mottomo otomo'' -

Trost Records Trost Records is a record label located in Vienna. History In the early 1990s, Trost was founded as a tape label, releasing records of Austrian alternative and underground bands, such as Valina, , and Holly May. In 2011, the sublabel Cie ...

: ''Hairles_handle'' - The Wire tapper 6 * 2002 : ''fb50" - fals.ch * 2004 : ''The Wire Tapper 11 '' Poire_z + phil Minton - The Wire tapper 11 *

2008 File:2008 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Lehman Brothers went bankrupt following the Subprime mortgage crisis; Cyclone Nargis killed more than 138,000 in Myanmar; A scene from the opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing; ...

: ''A SHORT HISTORY 2000-2005''- Contemporary Art And Sound . Dolmen * Post-Poire_Z * Since 2004 Günter Müller & Norbert Moslang have also collaborated in trio or quartet. * 2002 : ''Buda Rom''

Günter Müller Günter Müller (born October 20, 1954) is a German sound artist who originally performed as a percussionist and drummer, active primarily in free improvisation. He was born in Munich, West Germany, but has lived in Switzerland since 1966. Ba ...

- For4ears * 2003 : ''Oystered''

Oren Ambarchi Oren Ambarchi (born 1969) is an Australian musician. He is a multi-instrumentalist who plays mainly electric guitar and percussion. Biography Oren Ambarchi was born in Sydney to an Iraqi Jewish family. Ambarchi has been performing live since ...

- Audiosphere

sub Rosa ''Sub rosa'' (New Latin for "under the rose") denotes secrecy or confidentiality. The rose has an ancient history as a symbol of secrecy. History In Hellenistic and later Roman mythology, roses were associated with secrecy because Cupid ga ...

* 2011 : ''Stodgy'' Erikm & Norbert Möslang - Mikroton Recordings *

2016 File:2016 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: Bombed-out buildings in Ankara following the 2016 Turkish coup d'état attempt; the Impeachment of Dilma Rousseff, impeachment trial of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff; Damaged houses duri ...

: ''Pavillon du Lac'' with

+ Norbert Möslang + Erikm - Dolmen * Sampler * 2011 : ''Mikroton'' eRikm / Norbert Möslang - Mikroton * 2011 : ''Below The Radar'' eRikm / Norbert Möslang - The Wire * 2005 : ''t-u-b-e / gebeugt 2005'' Norbert Möslang / eRikm -

Wergo WERGO is a German record label focusing on contemporary classical music. It was founded in 1962 by German art historian and music publisher (1903–1975) and the musicologist Helmut Kirchmeyer. Their first release, filed under "WER 60001", was ...

* Pre-Poire_Z * 1982 : Knack On - Norbert Möslang & Andy Guhl *

1990 File:1990 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 1990 FIFA World Cup is played in Italy; The Human Genome Project is launched; Voyager I takes the famous Pale Blue Dot image- speaking on the fragility of humanity on Earth, astrophysicist ...

– "Earflash" - V-Records, Uhlang Produktion * 1996 : Table Chair and Hatstand -

+ Jim O’Rourke - Uhlang Production

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Poire z DIY culture Free improvisation ensembles Electronics and society Experimental musical groups French electronic music groups Articles with underscores in the title German electronic music groups