Object 2 by EKG (Ernst Karel & Kyle Bruckmann)

Object 2 was EKG's first full length album, released in 2003 as the second of Dawson Prater's impeccably curated (with consistently droll packaging) Object Series on Locust Music.

The original CD contained a mastering gaffe that has been corrected here, so that the music can be enjoyed as the duo intended, and so the collector of physical media still has some wabi-sabi to cherish.
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“. . . a set of six austere, slow moving soundscapes in keeping with the prevailing tendency in new improvised music to move away from rapid-fire interplay towards territory more traditionally associated with contemporary classical and electronic music. . . as much a landmark of the genre as the highly acclaimed releases on Jon Abbey’s Erstwhile label. Bruckmann has in recent times preferred to downplay his dazzling virtuosity on the double reed instruments in favour of patient exploration of the microtonal and micro-timbral inflections of long-held tones, which combine with Karel’s plaintive trumpet and the grainy analog electronics, blasts of white noise and crackling static to create music of an extraordinary intensity which richly repays repeated listening.” (Dan Warburton, Paris Transatlantic Magazine)
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EKG is the collaborative electroacoustic duo of Kyle Bruckmann and Ernst Karel. The music is situated between acoustic and electronic, improvised and premeditated, disruptive and meditative; it crackles and hums with precariously restrained potential energy. Combining winds with anachronistic electronic processing, EKG carefully sculpts a bizarre yet organic soundworld of shifting tones, sudden and creeping textures, elusive suggestions of possible melody, and microscopic noise.

Formed in the hotbed of Chicago’s mid-90s experimental music community, EKG has slowly, quietly, continued sporadic work as Ernst and Kyle have drifted apart across the continent (and, for one short period, the Atlantic Ocean), releasing four full-length albums on another timbre, Formed, Sedimental, and Locust Music, following their debut EP on Crank Satori. Notable performances have included the 2013 San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, the Crow with No Mouth Series (Minneapolis/St. Paul), Bowerbird (Philadelphia), the Stone (NYC), and Non-Event (Boston). Their music has appeared in such video/film works as Rebecca Baron’s "Detour de Force" and Brett Story’s "The Prison in 12 Landscapes."

They have recently been geographically reunited as fellow residents of the San Francisco Bay Area, and are continuing a new phase of exploring interpretations, both radical and faithful, of existing scores by composers such as Feldman, Braxton, Lucier, and Pisaro.

Ernst Karel makes electroacoustic music and experimental nonfiction sound works for multichannel installation and performance, and collaborates with filmmakers and artists in making audiovisual work.

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