For Kings and Queens:

MERZ / cdr / April2008

The first release on Subterranean Sonic .

10 tracks for the soundtrack of Berlin. Dense layered ambient sounds.

Spex writes:

Man tut For Kings And Queens womöglich Unrecht, wenn man behauptet, diese Musik klänge wie ein Tribut an den charakteristischen englischen Sound, dem David Keenan mit »England’s Hidden Reverse« ein ganzes Buch gewidmet hat. Und doch ist die Liebe zu Nurse With Wound und die typische Stimmung der verwandten Projekte schon in den ersten Minuten vollkommen unüberhörbar. Das Projekt-Debüt »Merz« (Subterranean Sonic) profitiert nun von der Sorgfalt, mit der diese vertraute Atmosphäre nicht nur eingefangen, sondern weiter fortgeführt und interpretiert wurde: In seinen besonders ›musikalischen‹ Momenten schleppt sich das Album dahin, so scheinbar lethargisch, wie man es von den zähesten Dokumenten der aktuellen Free-Folk-Bewegung kennt (etwa von Jackie-O Motherfuckers Schaffenshöhepunkten »Wow!« und »The Magick Fire Music«). In dieser entspannten, von spannenden Geräuschen bereicherten Umgebung können sich die inspirierten Improvisationen stimmig und lebhaft entfalten.

Heathen Harvest review:

for kings and queens name and Hugo Ball samplers made me think I was on to a world of theatrics and tricks. Of vibrating music and circus sounds. Of dada and absurd. But it was better than that. More complex, and darker. Greyer into the shades of grey, like a canvass of lines made by drops of rain than cover the wall like thin shadows. for every composition that is created by lisping matter and creaking sound there are short melodies, round violin notes, or repetitive chiming into the thick aftermath of dismembered sound. for kings and queens is post industrial sound, my readers, but way beyond industrialism. In counted moments does it move into machinery world and slithering underground constructions, like in ‘part 1’, ‘part 4’ or ‘part 9’, yet the rest of the time it goes way beyond simple evocative screeching and crackling into deconstruction of space and time. Voices, that shed their attribute of voices and become sheer instruments; gnarling wind instruments and menacing grunts. It is like a surrealist play, churned into a mixer and thrown out, have chewed, into the world of sounds. ‘Part 2’ could easily be called so, without it blushing.
‘Part 3’ is a blurring, disintegrating plane that moves from an almost laughing game of frequencies into a wonderful background for simple moving percussion lines. One can hear the wind, the overlapping of oriental and occidental; the quotidianity of movement and the strangeness of layers – with the attention fluctuating wildly between forward and backwards, until everything becomes an undulating circle. ‘part 5’ thrashes between wildness and uniformity at the same, glancing into an unorganized mesh of sounds and shouts while walking at the march of chanting. It gets more violent, until it almost becomes the soundtrack for some sort of twisted war game of confronting spirits. After the cutting images of ‘part 5’, ‘part 6’ is a winding mixture of textures, melancholic and languid. It slowly adds new ingredients until it has crept into a pseudo ritual composition without a blink, looking for the sensations that lie deep within one’s stomach.
With ‘part 7’ for kings and queens examine the meaning of rock music, chopping the sound of guitars, notes and distortion until there is nothing left but moaning and pure, single notes that can be gathered together and knit at will. ‘part 8’ picks up those notes and pushes them into the complexity of noise, where the melodies melt slip and fall, and then gather themselves together again and try to stand up in a slow and painful motion. In ‘part 10’ some sounds almost seem alive – like frightened animals calling out their last desperate breaths in the sounds of ‘Merz’.

you can listen at:

http://profile.myspace.com/forkingsandqueens

you can buy for 10Eat:

Subterranean Sonic