"Fragrance" (from 1998)
is a composition of pure electronic sounds in 4 parts on 4 CDs to be played all at the same time.
The 4 CDs should be played simultaneously: with 2 or more stereo sets you can listen to 2 or 3 or 4 parts of the composition in parallel. Precise simultaneousness is not necessarily required. Each part can mingle with an other part, as for example fluids or fragrances mingle with each other.
"Fragrance" is music, that corresponds in its structure with our perception of perfume. You can hardly say, where a fragrance "begins" or where it "ends". The starting and the final points are largely obscure: one hears extended passages of sounds symphonically assembled into one another. Their starting and final points can hardly be identified - there is only a "room", a "state", a "situation" which has a sometimes increasing, sometimes decreasing tendency.
* More about the Fragrance CD-Box:
[ http://www.niehusmann.org/disx/fragrance-2.html ]
An early version of "Fragrance" has been developed for an open-air sound-installation, which was presented 24 hours a day in a fragrance- and sound-garden on the premises of the closed coal-mine "Teutoburgia" in Herne/Germany from 1995-1997.
Press-reviews about Fragrance:
Frank Niehusmann - Fragrance
You've got four autonomous stereo sets at home? Four CD-players,four amplifiers, eight speakers? ... So we've got something for you: This box with 4 CD's ... What happens then if you play all 4 CD's asapproximately simultaneously as possible? Rising or dying away synthetical sounds overlap each other, a new, bizzare time-space feeling turns up. All this has been conceived by Frank Niehusmann, an experimental electronic-musician from Essen ... an unexpected surreal surround-sound event and a chance to re-define the term "ambient music". Try it out! You've done that already? So you will have certainly realized, that making experiments is not only great fun, but it also awfully addictive. Take good care of yourself!
(Albrecht Piltz, in: Keyboards-Magazine, Cologne, March 1999)
Tributes ...
... a piece of spheric-electronic-instrumental and ambient music a la Fripp and Eno, that you can appreciate endlessly ... composed for more or less parallel playing on four CD-Players ...
(P.E. Hillenbach, in: Marabo-Magazine, Bochum/Germany, January 1999)
***
More about the first Fragrance sound-installation inside the
"fragrance and sound-garden" on the premises of the closed coal-mine "Teutoburgia" in Herne/Germany
- in the book
"Industrie Natur - Ökologie und Gartenkunst im Emscherpark"
Hg. Jörg Dettmar und Karl Ganser; Verlag Eugen Ulmer, Stuttgart, 1999;
ISBN 3-8001-3521-3
Michael Schwarze-Rodrian: "... 'Der Duft- und Klanggarten' von Gudrun Banf und Frank Niehusmann liegt auf einer großen freien Fläche vor dem alten Förderturm. Düfte und Klänge werden hier zu einem sinnlichen Erlebnis verknüpft. Minze, Zitronenmelisse, Maggikraut oder Baldrian sind mit vielen anderen Gerüchen in Beeten gepflanzt, zwischen denen große quadratische Holzpodeste liegen. Ein Geheimnis dieser Podeste sind die Töne, die aus den darunter angebrachten und damit unsichtbaren Lautsprechern erklingen ..." (p. 122f.)
Donata Valentin: "... Duft- und Klanggarten ... ein leiser Platz zwischen den hohen Bäumen. Einfache Holzplattformen liegen zwischen Kräuterbeeten ... Bis man die Klänge hört, die man nicht einzuordnen und zu orten weiß, denen man dann nachspürt von Punkt zu Punkt, immer neuen Klangentdeckungen folgend, eine überraschende Erfahrung und ein Vergnügen der Sinne ..." (p. 130)