Nervöse Leute – Nervöse Leute (2015)

Too long to read? Now you can watch the video of this review!

Now, it’s a little sophisticated one. To cut a long story short, it’s a long-play album of radio sound collages, noisy, (post-)industrial one, messing around with shortwave stations, mixing real shortwave recordings and then even deconstructing this idea.

Of course, we’re aware of what The Conet Project was doing, but Nervöse Leute are way different. First of all, The Conet Project’s goal, as we can understand, was to document the shortwave stations’ recordings; unlike them, we consider shortwave collages as a form of sound art. None of Conet Project’s samples were used in this album; it was all originally recorded for the album (at least that’s what I’m told).

Moreover, Nervöse Leute didn’t claim any copyright for this album, instead, Nervöse Leute used Creative Commons license (Some Rights Reserved); so if you’re a copyright owner of any samples Nervöse Leute used in this album, please contact us, and your samples will be removed from the album.

Also, Nervöse Leute is not just about shortwave; playing with this idea was the goal of the first album; now Nervöse Leute turn to different methods while working on their second album, which, as I want to believe, will be released next year. Tasks and methods may vary, but the primary purpose of Nervöse Leute is to show the anxiety spilt in daily life. It’s like – you gotta be scared if you listen carefully. Or you may laugh – it’s basically the same reaction.

You see, creating such kind of sound collage requires a lot of time, hours and hours of recording and editing (no major computer effects were applied to the records: only editing, volume changing and occasional delay), so it took Nervöse Leute about a year to finish the album.

I was involved in this project: it was me who made all the mixes from previously recorded stuff. Also, I sometimes recorded samples, added some spoken word, found objects, and “Sell My Car” is actually my song. But Nervöse Leute was a collective project, at least in 2014 when it was formed – I had to finish the album alone at some moment, but I hope I won’t continue this project just on my own.

The name “Nervöse Leute” (Nervous People) comes from a short story with the same name by awesome Russian writer Mikhail Zoshchenko, known for his humorous stories, but we highly recommend you his later works “Youth Restored” and “Before Sunrise”, especially the second one, the true masterpiece of Russian modernism.

Have a listen to our collages:

 

The album is available for free listening here (SoundCloud) and here (YouTube)


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Sincerely yours,

John “Grey Lenses” Grey