Hanno Leichtmann - The African Twintower Suite

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4...according to our Brett on Wed 23 Feb, 2011.

As far as I can glean, this record was made to function as the soundtrack to a film which then promptly morphed into an art installation, meaning that most of the music ended up not being used at all. Frustrating for the creator, I'm sure, but at least it's now made it onto the world's collective record player thanks to the good people at Dekorder. The description of the original film project paints a picture of a psychedelic audiovisual collage so it's probably not surprising that that's exactly the impression the music gives, except with the pictures left to be painted by your mind. They'd be pretty weird pictures I'd imagine, ones of dystopian railway stations collapsing in on themselves, post-apocalyptic folk bands mournfully soundtracking oblivion, cracked swamis playing themselves to sleep on sitars cobbled together from broken down car parts.. Or maybe that's just me. All sorts of interesting stuff going on here, in any case.

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October 2005: Seminal German director Christoph Schlingensief (R.I.P. 2010) shoots his latest feature film "The African Twintowers" in Lüderitz/Namibia with Irm Hermann, Klaus Beyer, Robert Stadlober, Patti Smith........ Autumn 2006: Schlingensief approaches Berlin musician/composer Hanno Leichtmann (Groupshow, Static, Denseland) regarding a soundtrack for the film. There were hours and hours of raw material; the concept being a movie with few dialogues and music throughout - a 90 minute psychedelic collage; an associative visual and sonic trip. With the help of John Nijenhuis aka Sir Henry as well as a trio of musicians playing indian music (tabla, sitar, tampura), they started to improvise in Leichtmann's recording studio projecting film sequences on a wall. Within 4 days and nights an enormous amount of tracks had been recorded and several rough mixes had been compiled. After a while though, Schlingensief decided to shift the concept. The film transformed into an art installation with 18 monitors showing sequences simultaneously (presented at the Berlinale and Steirischer Herbst), and later on, a kind of "Making of..." with 90% off-comments by Christoph Schlingensief and very little music was made. Thus, "The African Twintowers Suite" represents a lost soundtrack; compiling the most interesting recordings, newly edited, layered, collaged, shortened and mixed between 2009 and 2010.

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