Incantations
To explore sonic incantations, electric landler and spectral relations I play a just-tuned electromagnetic-hammered-dulcimer.
I employ the dulcimer as a transcultural stringed instrument used in various forms and tunings between the Himalayas and the Alps. As the grandmother of the piano, it takes on an important role in various folk musics of the regions under the former Austro-Hungarian monarchy as well as in classical Ottoman and Persian music forms. My sonic interest is not the museum of tradition but the possibilities and contemporary tensions that arise from it. Worlds without Ends.
“The billowy array of scrapes, plucks, and tickles he puts the dulcimer’s strings through is uniformly beautiful, diverging a couple of times away in favour of booming doom that lingers in the slowly decaying sonics of the space. The amplified strings veer between melodies and noise washes, and never stop being engaging and provocative for over an hour. Entering the room feels quite like a barrier between worlds too. It’s almost entirely pitch black aside from the gentle light on Fraunberger seated on a small stage in the middle of the crowd. It takes several minutes for one’s eyes to adjust, so new audience members can be watched walking in from the outside, temporarily blind. They shuffle slowly, arms outstretched, helpless and ghostlike in the darkness. Fraunberger’s soundtrack couldn’t be more appropriate." (The Quietus)