IMPORTANT: If you’re based in Zurich, we will deliver the booklet and poster personally – we will derive the shipping adress from your order and will pop it into your mailbox within a couple of days of your order.
The Vakuum Festival would have taken place at Dübendorf airfield, a business aviation center over a hundred years old, located in the outskirts of Zurich, Switzerland.
On this Saturday, sneakers would have been strolling around in a room of sound, which would have been raised by a 16-channel speaker system between the walls of hangar number 3.
We would have listened to the performances, sitting, lying or standing, immersed in the world of light. Music from dark cellars in fresh air, specifically composed for this day. October 10th 2020 would have been a nice Saturday.
Would have been - we all know why we have to choose this tense when writing about this event. Under normal circumstances, the Vakuum Festival would have been past by now. But you’re holding the new reality in your hands: Sounds are laid flat on paper and this booklet isn’t trying to be an alternative to Vakuum, but something instead of it.
If you are reading this booklet, it is probably quiet around you. As quiet as it is in a bed at ten o'clock in the morning when you’re trying to fall asleep. It is quiet, but your auricles play bass in an endless loop and in between there is a whistling sound disappearing somewhere. It is quiet now, but it isn’t silent. A loud emptiness has taken the place of those nights. The absence of something is not nothing. A vacuum creates a suction that fills itself.
Silence can be loud if you listen to it. Listening is active. Listening is activism. Deep listening is an active process, of listening to the music, to the world. Silence can be active and political. Listening is the prerequisite for change.
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Colin Andrew Sheffield (Elevator Bath) repurposes heavily manipulated jazz samples into gorgeously eerie soundscapes. Bandcamp New & Notable Jun 20, 2023
Less a solo act than a one-man megalith, Khôra builds impressive experimental soundscapes from modular synths, flutes, harps, and more. Bandcamp New & Notable Feb 19, 2020
The first release on Cacophonous Revival, from experimentalist Samuel Goff, uses avant-garde approaches to get at personal narratives. Bandcamp New & Notable Feb 4, 2020
