Quirlschlängle / Germany / 2024
Incredible compilation assembled by, and including nonetheless than Brannten Schnüre. Gathering together unreleased tracks by Vox Populi! Limpe Fuchs, Läuten der Seele, Christoph Heeman and more, this is the most pleasant surprise we could get from Quirlschlängle. Still two months before Christmas, but the greatest gift is already here. ** "Nebengleis“ is one of those strange and rare German words that seem to be born both out of the dust of a bureaucratic, functional grammar and a wild yearning to escape the tight fabric of this material world. „Nebengleis“ translates as „side-track“, the track on which abandoned and unused waggons are being left upon. Waiting to be pulled out into the blue of distance again or slowly corroding, fragmentising within the uncoiling threads of time. For a while, for ever. Unnoticed, unhinged. Not seen by the tired eyes of the busy day-to-day traveller that hops on this train, that train, always running from the main-track. Inspired by the almost cosmogonal qualities of obscure and cult compilations like „Terra Serpentes“ or „Music The World Does Not See“ and guided by an infallible artistic instinct, Christian Schoppik (Brannten Schnüre / Läuten der Seele) has curated a record that flourishes with an unconditional love for things that are otherwise unseen, tales that are untold, small fabulous creatures that are stuck in between this world and the pantheon of better-canonised mythologies.
There rests a funny haziness between the semantics of the words to curate, to care and to cure. Cure what?, you will ask. An unearthly frightfulness to be at wrong pace with the rest of the world. And then take this fright and turn it into a celebration, a paean to all the crooked, hidden ways of being creative, of being otherwise alive. Making music on the side-track however doesn't necessarily mean to be structurally marginalised by whatever powers are in control to do so. If there is a programmatic aspect to this compilation it's clearly not a political one but something that is purely poetic. „Musik vom Nebengleis“ is an inter-generational and inter-continental gathering of artists whose spiritual kinship runs deep into near-mythical terrain and transcends the limitations of genre or being part of any particular scene. The first side of the record is introduced by a soft spoken love poem, recited in Farsi by Mitra from legendary French ethno-industrial outift Vox Populi!. Much like Christoph Heemann (Hirsche Nicht Aufs Sofa) and Limpe Fuchs (Anima-Sound) Vox Populi! have continously shaped their very own oblique artistic language within the experimental underground for several decades already. But there is also a younger generation of „Nebengleis“ artists, probably much influenced by the aforementioned names, and waiting to be discovered by those with eyes to see and ears to hear.