GABEL/OSSLER - Gabel/Ossler (Gatefold Black Vinyl LP)

Facts GABEL / OSSLER

A Map of Places That Don't Exist

This is an album of music that until now has had no home. Over the years we have made many recordings together in various forms. Some of this has been released on various albums under different artist names, both our own and others'. But most of what has been true collaboration in the proper sense of the word was made in fleeting contexts, such as theater and installation music, where the music exists only as long as the play or work is shown, and then ceases when the context disappears. It has therefore only been possible to hear it if you happened to be in the right place at the right time. When we once talked about this, one of us suggested that we could compile a selection of this long-forgotten or recently forgotten music, rework it, and make it available for everyone to listen to. So we began going through the archives, listening, sifting, and choosing a collection of pieces that we felt could work together as a whole.

As we looked at the choices we had made, it struck us that the common thread running through the rather disparate pieces was that they all related to places: physical, imaginary, historical, forgotten, or contested. The collection of songs seemed to form a map of both where we have been and the music itself, and of what it was meant to physically illustrate, which places and spaces it has tried to conjure. It became clear that if a theme for the album could be discerned, it was precisely place or space, from the smallest personal room all the way up to vast geographic areas and regions.

This feeling was further reinforced by the fact that we live in a time when primitive geopolitics dominates every impression we encounter daily, where all events and conflicts ultimately seem to boil down to mundane questions of property and territory. This way the world has come to relate to itself has ultimately annexed us all, our bodies and our thoughts. The battle over mine and yours territory begins to be fought already in the laundry room.

Naming places, however, is never more than just that: a name for a figure of thought about what a place is. And if a map is an incomplete attempt at representing reality, then perhaps music is too. So this became partly a kind of logbook of where we have been. But also a map of places that don't exist.