IGNOTUM PER IGNOTIUS

The seventh re-issue in the Hafler Trio re-issue series is Ignotum Per Ignotius.

"something approached, and it was embraced, thorns piercing the anonymous functions and the ways in which all the secrets had been help in high esteem. traces of the places yet to come, and those to be left far behind. the first outing in the digital domain, and all the difference the day made when it appeared, startling those in need of a jolly good lie down. and so it went, out with the new and in with the old. dressed up to the (significant number), polished so that even the lowliest louse can admire themselves in the obsidian entities we call an aid to beauty. without a doubt, the flowering of nothing evil, but certainly the full spectrum of the shades. and a small wander through some of them. unable to be be defeated, it carries on with a huge flag at the beginning of the procession." — the hafler trio

Originally released on CD by Touch and never re-issued.

Price is 20 euros including postage worldwide. All direct orders made with paypal (to: info [at] kormplastics [dot] nl) will receive a free of charge pin, related to Ignotum Per Ignotius

reviews:

THE HAFLER TRIO — IGNOTUM PER IGNOTIUS (CD by Korm Plastics)
Already the 7th release in the highly impressive re-release series by Korm Plastics. Originally released by Touch in the summer of 1989, this was the first CD by The Hafler Trio. Ignotium Per Ignotius stands for unknown to the very unknown, which is as much a mystery as the other Hafler Trio CD with a Latin title from that period "E Causa Ignota" — by unknown cause). Releases by The Hafler Trio are never "easy listening" and Ignotum Per Ignotia no exception. This is a brief CD (clocking in at 36 minutes), which for once is a good thing, as there is much to experience. The music seems based upon silence and noise. There are long periods of silence and then suddenly there's an outpouring of noise. The noise is multi-layered and even though this is a difficult Hafler CD to listen to, there is a strange quality and attractiveness in the music. McKenzie obviously knows what he is doing. There are track titles listed on the sleeve, but the music is coded as one long piece. The CD comes packed in the usual high standard of this series in a wrap-around sleeve with a booklet featuring beautiful graphics and a text in mirrored writing. Not that the text is very helpful towards explaining the music (Hafler Trio texts never give the game away but only add to it), but it is an interesting read. This is a good-looking release and, if you give it some time and attention, you will find the music equally good (or even better)! (FK)
Address: http://www.kormplastics.nl
(Vital Weekly)

Die THE HAFLER TRIO — Reissue-Reihe ist bei Ignotum Per Ignotius (paragraph 39, subsection 11) angelangt. (To explain) a thing not understood by one still less understood ist ein Titel, der in nuce den Hintersinn und die Ironie der gesamten Hafler Trio-Philosophie reflektiert. ,Musikalisch' sind diese erstmals 1989 auf Touch veröffentlichten 36 Minuten Field Recordings, Noise, Metal Sheet-Percussion, und Silence eher ein überdurchschnittlich fesselndes Beispiel des von Andrew McKenzie Erwartbaren. Schritt für Schritt läutert er die ,Materia Confusa' zu ,Gold from the Blackness'. Und das nun in aller Pracht wieder gedruckte Booklet ist dazu zweifellos ein visueller Höhepunkt von H3Os irritierenden Mindfucks — weiße Spiegelschrift (!) auf lila Grund, mit alchemistischen Illustrationen aus Lambspringks De Lapide Philosophico libellus von 1625. Was soll ich sagen? Wenn jemand fragt, wofür Bad Alchemy steht, dann wäre, 'Ignotum Per Ignotius' eine der bestmöglichen Antworten.
(Bad Alchemy)

The Hafler Trio - Ignotium Per Ignotius [Korm Plastics - 2007]

The hafler trio who is mainly one Andrew M. McKenzie, have made a career out of making some of the most puzzling, confusing and down right odd & hidden agenda art. Both with their strange and often jarring soundworlds which fall some were between noise,ambient/drone,Musique concrete, and their often over the top packaging.

Ignotium Per Ignotius stands as the seventh re-issue by korm plastics of 1980's albums previously released on Touch. With the superb and deeply head scratching artwork, booklet etc been as important as the enclosed near on 40 minutes of sound. We first have a picec of tracing paper sheet of art paper that's watermarked with bizarre and puzzling text wrapped around a cardboard fold which houses the disk and a 30 plus page booklet again wrapped in art paper like the first piece. The booklet is filled with backwards text and old black and white prints that get progressively odder. The text consist of strange and often surreal tales and dialogue, which goes from plain odd to bizarrely amusing.

The cd it's self goes from been barely-there ambient sound sheen to sudden jarring and loud sound chaos to anywhere in-between those two states. Utilizing drone craft, electronic hiss and whoosh, creepy cinematic undertones and wavering synth tones. with long stretches of weird found sound, backwards dialogue, wind sounds, chattering ect. All to making a wonderful disorientating sound stew where you really don't know what will happen next.

A rewarding and strange piece audio-visual art, that deservers the time of those interested in challenge sound art and art in general. All to be taken with a pinch of humorous salt, Wether it all actually means anything is another thing or maybe that's the point?! 4/5

Roger Batty

http://www.musiquemachine.com/reviews/reviews_template.php?id=1185

The Hafler Trio: Ignotum Per Ignotius - Korn Plastics/A-Musik

"Something approached, and it was embraced, thorns piercing the anonymous functions and the ways in which all the secrets had been help in high esteem. traces of the places yet to come, and those to be left far behind. the first outing in the digital domain, and all the difference the day made when it appeared, startling those in need of a jolly good lie down. and so it went, out with the new and in with the old. dressed up to the (significant number), polished so that even the lowliest louse can admire themselves in the obsidian entities we call an aid to beauty. without a doubt, the flowering of nothing evil, but certainly the full spectrum of the shades. and a small wander through some of them. unable to be be defeated, it carries on with a huge flag at the beginning of the procession." - Andrew Mackenzie ::

It always irritates me to hear the phrase 'let the music speak for itself'. It obstinately refuses to acknowledge that the relationship between sound and the listener is mediated by countless preconceptions, preconceptions so strong as to determine whether the listener hears anything in the sound at all. I say this, for the Hafler Trio provides the perfect antithesis to such short-sightedness. From the moment one picks up a Hafler Trio release one is inundated with (dis)information designed to confront expectations and mould a context for the sounds one will hear. Ignotum Per Ignotius [unknown to the very unknown], the seventh re-release by Korm Plastics (originally released 1989 by Touch), comes (like the previous six) in beautifully sumptuous packaging and with an accompanying booklet of mythical looking prints and short stories - all of which are written in reverse. The stories are all childlike in nature but with a dark symbolism always just beneath the surface. They are also, as with much Andrew McKenzie does, soaked in wit (something sadly often missed in his work). The mirror reading exercise, which I initially thought a somewhat conceptual point, actually proved to add a great deal to the stories. The physicality of the text, as it floated around on the dirty mirror, was very much felt in the process of reading, making the experience feel singular and unique and perfectly preparing for the CD. I do not feel I can really comment much upon the audio on the CD other than saying that the contrasts are perhaps more pronounced and shocking than most other Hafler Trio releases. There would be no point trying to describe the sounds as beautiful, ugly, pleasant or unpleasant, for although they are all of these things, this proves inconsequential as regards their efficiency. All I will say is that as a means of communication the Hafler Trio's work generally, with adequate concentration, succeeds, this work being no exception; I cannot say what it communicates, but then if I could there would be no such need for the means employed. Andrew Mackenzie is neither an artist nor a musician but one feels that he succeeds in delivering what both fields promise and almost always fail to deliver, namely a medium created to fulfil its own communicative demands. You would be fools not to buy up his back-catalogue given that you have a second chance. ir

http://www.hairentertainment.com/music

The Hafler Trio
Ignotium Per Ignotius (Korm Plastics / Metamkine)

S'il est un univers musical particulièrement difficile à pénétrer, c'est bien celui de Hafler Trio. Mené depuis plus de vingt ans par Andrew McKenzie, et par ses nombreux collaborateurs parmi lesquels Chris Watson, co-fondateur de Cabaret Voltaire, The Hafler Trio a toujours placé la création et l'écoute musicale au niveau de l'expérience psycho-acoustique, reliant dans un mélange de collages abstraits et de drones ondulatoires les déclinaisons sinueuses d'un univers graphique conceptuel et philosophique particulièrement singulier. Du coup, la discographie d'Hafler Trio en est particulièrement hermétique, recelant nombre de projets aussi difficiles à percer qu'étonnement attractifs du fait de leur artwork toujours soigné, portant dans leur filiation inébranlable les fondations d'un ésotérisme post-industriel avant-gardiste. 14 de ces albums font actuellement l'objet d'une réédition en cours par le label néerlandais Korm Plastics, et Ignotium Per Ignotius est exactement le septième objet sonore de ce juste recadrage. Premier album d'Hafler Trio paru en cd en 1989, Ignotium Per Ignotius est sûrement un des disques les plus compliqués à s'approprier du groupe mais tenter l'expérience Hafler Trio par son versant le plus difficile réserve probablement les sensations les plus étranges. Introduit par un livret dont les textes sibyllins sont écrits à l'envers comme au travers d'un miroir, le disque évolue au gré d'intrigantes plongées et contre-plongées sonores, plaçant successivement l'auditeur au cur de couches bruitistes immergées, puis subitement submergées par un silence de surface qui oblige à tendre l'oreille au cur d'une matière grésillante et vacillante qui se dérobe. Autant que ces oscillations bruissantes, se faisant et se défaisant au gré de lignes de fuite rendues insaisissables par leur distanciation apparente, la capacité de chacun à s'ouvrir à ce contenu musical instable constitue une part intégrante de l'expérience menée par Hafler Trio. Une procession sonore qu'il vous faudra suivre comme un dévot fluctuant entre questionnement et fascination.

Laurent Catala

http://www.octopus-enligne.com/template.php?css=sommaire&page=oursinsc&num=637

Artist: HAFLER TRIO
Title: Ignotium Per Ignotius
Format: CDS (CD Single)
Label: Korm Plastics [ info {at} kormplastics {dot} nl  ]
Recently I've read the short but interesting interview to Asmus Tietchens done by Nuno Loureiro (see the interviews section) where he speaks about the fact while at the beginning he got fascinated by the industrial scene, successively he evolved into something else closer to the so called "music concrete". The Hafler Trio together with Tietchens, Waterman and similar musicians represents the epitome of that scene located in the nowhere land between experimental music, music concrete, industrial oddities and "space trips", but wasn't that what early industrial was about? Wasn't it striving to be the next step after the idea of punk? Wasn't it much more challenging and exciting that dressing like Douglas Pierce an acting like a Boyd Rice?. The fact is that the Hafler Trio in 1986 was much more ahead than many musicians doing the same things in the new millenium even if the hyper prolificity of the project sometimes prevented it to get always a top notch result. Tip of hat for the carrier here celebrated with a repress that's part of a whole repress project Korm Plastic dedicated to this english born artist, the packaging is simply rad and the music, while presenting some typical features like those concrete sounds, some powerful white-noise blasts, some sharp frequencies is fragmented and full of silence that interrupts the fluxus of the suite requiring a patient listening to get in symbiosis with the work. As I've wrote at the bginning of the review people like Hafler Trio, Waterman and Tietchens deserves a particular place in the history of music.
Review by: Andrea Ferraris

http://www.chaindlk.com/reviews/?id=3564 

The Hafler Trio - Ignotium Per Ignotius
CD - Korm Plastics

This is the seventh release by Korm Plastics in the special series of rereleases dedicated to the Hafler Trio. This work was first published by Touch in the summer of 1989 and is here repackaged in an elegant box made of cardboard and glossy paper, with a very refined booklet whose contents, quite surrealist and printed in reverse, are only readable with a mirror. This is undoubtedly a very important and complex project, almost rhizomatic in its sounds and listening facets, atmospheres and narrations, moments of fullness and studied voids. Elaborations suspended over new electronic experiments but still sharp in their flow, very suggestive and sensitive sound passages that highlight Andrew Mackenzie's long and productive musical career, still very lively and relevant.

Aurelio Cianciotta

http://www.neural.it/sound/2007/05/the_hafler_trio_ignotium_per_ignotius.phtml

Mysteriös und verschwommen, verwirrend und langweilig, essentiell und wegweisend, alles Aussagen die zu THE HAFLER TRIO und der musikalischen Arbeit von Mr. McKenzie gemacht wurden. Ich denke der Herr ist einfach schon so lange dabei und hat sich einen gewissen Status mit Ausdauer und Geschicklichkeit erarbeitet. Manches von THE HAFLER TRIO ist so grottenschlecht, manches durchschnittlich und einige Aufnahmen waren wirklich außerhalb jeglicher Kontrolle, also einmalig. Was aber immer passte, war die Verpackung und der Stil. "Ignotium Per Ignotius" (Korm Plastics/Target) ist ein Re-Issue und kommt in einem sehr schönen, aufwendig gestalteten Buch daher. Unlesbar in Spiegleschrift geschrieben, mit alten Holzschnitten verziert und eingebettet in einen bedruckten, milchigen Platikumschlag. Toll so etwas liebevoll verarbeitetes mal wieder in den Händen halten zu dürfen. Klanglich gibt es eine circa halbstündige Klangkollage zu hören, die nicht so recht begeistert und mit den üblichen Mitteln arbeitet. Unkenntliche Stimmen, kleine ausgewählte Noiseattacken, viele flirrende Töne, rohe und bearbeitet Fieldrecordings und viele Echo & Halleffekte. Der übliche experimentielle Gemischtwarenladen eben. (6/10) Carsten Vollmer
(paragraph 39)

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