Graveyard Processions
Graveyard Processions is the first joint recording by Kai Fagaschinski and Yan Jun. Released as part of Ni Vu Ni Connu’s series documenting duo projects from Berlin’s Echtzeitmusik scene, it sees the duo enrich improvisation with field recordings and overdubs. The Berlin-based clarinettist and the sound artist and vocalist from Beijing blur the lines between improvisation on the one hand, and record production as well as composition-after-the-fact on the other. The four pieces on Graveyard Processions work primarily with Yan Jun’s voice and Fagaschinski’s playing and also add a plethora of other sounds to dizzying effect. This is the sound of two prolific artists — the former active across different media and as a vocal experimentalist, the latter a fixture in Berlin’s Free scene as a member of The International Nothing and other projects — vastly expanding upon their possibilities.
The pair first met in 2013 during a festival in China and bumped into each occasionally in the following years. Besides collaborating with each other on stage and as a composer-performer pair — Fagaschinski wrote the Stimmbandquartett für Yan Jun in 2020/21 — they also bonded over a love for good food and heavy metal music. Listening to and with each other also became crucial to their work together. “Kai is one of the few people with whom I sit down to listen to an album”, says Yan Jun. “For me this sitting together and facing the same direction means a lot, as it differs from the face-to-face protocol that European improvised music follows.” They put this into practice as improvisers while Jun was staying in Berlin in the summer of 2022.
Their recording sessions took place at Fagaschinski’s flat and were interrupted by long walks across different graveyards. Having spent so much time amongst the dead, it seems only fitting that the duo also decided to go beyond the live recordings. “Listening back to them, it seemed like something was missing”, explains Fagaschinski. Yan Jun adds: “There were some audio phenomena such as beat frequency, but conceptually that wasn’t strong enough and it lacked a live presence.” They started to play each other sounds that they had created with different objects: Yan Jun’s water-soaked slippers, emitting a “strangely animalistic twittering”, as Fagaschinski puts it, were integrated into the first piece, while Fagaschinski contributed the sounds of his umbrella and glasses. Both also added more vocal sounds to the recordings while also incorporating field recording from different graveyards into some pieces.
Little by little, the original duo recordings became just one source among many, and the two improvisers gradually took on the roles of producers and composers, orchestrating and arranging their source material into completely new pieces. While Graveyard Processions thus documents a highly unusual working process, none of what happened during that process was in any way premeditated, as Fagaschinski is quick to point out. “Everything developed organically according to our vivid imagination and penchant for absurd and dumb ideas”, he quips. “That’s true”, agrees Yan Jun. “We talked about how to continue to be stupid and travel to the kingdom of stupidity through the recording!” The resulting record is nonetheless pretty smart — full of surprises, twists and turns.
The music on Graveyard Processions is complemented by Laurent Daubach’s elaborate cover artwork, which combines the aesthetics of sound art and heavy metal iconography, as well as by a fold-out poster with a photo of the two artists taken by Carina Khorkhordina at a nearby cemetery. Of course, they are wearing their passion for metal music on their sleeves, literally speaking.
(Kristoffer Patrick Cornils, April 2024)
CREDITS
Kai Fagaschinski clarinet, voice, umbrellas, objects & field recordings
Yan Jun voice, slippers, objects & field recordings
A
Growls & Slippers 15:24
The Last Meeting of the OGs Got Caught on Camera 01:45
B
Beneath the Winds From Beyond 04:22
The Festival 13:00
Collectively thought-out and recorded during summer of 2022 mostly in Kai’s flat and neighbourhood in Berlin.
Recorded and mixed by Kai Fagaschinski with Yan Jun
Mastered by Andreas Lupo Lubich
Portrait photography by Carina Khorkhordina
Artwork by Laurent Daubach
Manufactured by Daniel Klotz, Die Lettertypen
All music by Yan/Fagaschinski
