Hammerhaus
(2010)by Kurt Laurenz Theinert (visual piano) and Axel Hanfreich (sequencer). The music is insignificant in the positive sense, autoreferential, and its visual equivalent is the rectangles and lines with which Theinert fills the screen.
Hanfreichs Minimalist sounds resonate like impressions from an abstract world that knows no natural noises, not even diagonals but only right and left, top and bottom - as if Mondrian had painted the music. (...)
Form and content are of one here. The Visual Piano performances explore professional contemporary artistic practice through the abstract, ephemeral medium of light, but at the same time they are consciously located in close proximity to the genre of serious entertainment.
Source: Kurt Laurenz Theinert
Rustling is heard out of stillness. Then a blunt knocking. Gradually a beat develops, which at first raps arbitrarily but soon hammers challengingly, sweeping harmonies and tone sequences along with it to ultimately arrive at densely structured rhythms and sounds. The electronic music played by the Hammerhaus duo is strong on the escalation principle and combining club beat with sound configurations between ambience and experimental tone art. Axel Hanfreich is responsible for digital beats and analogue loops while Kurt Laurenz Theinert works with a Visual Piano, which which he can generate and modulate graphic elements in real time via a keyboard. The images he thus projects on the wall are an integral part of the overall concept.
The pieces which the duo play in half-hour sets are the result of improvisation and, moreover, leave the sound and video artists a great deal of scope. Sometimes Theinert's translations into graphics accompany the sound picture; at others they form a counterpoint to it. And Hanfreich turns out to be a virtuoso on the sequencer controls, who loves beats that seem to smack the the ground and stick there.
Source: ARTE