Music - Object

Erwin Stache does not impose any philosophical questions upon his "sound objects", nor does he encase them in theories - he appears to want to leave the observer to draw his own conclusions about that sort of thing. The fact that the observer may recognise materials that he once saw at a building supply store, or parts of appliances long since discarded from his household, is not a insignificant effect which can cause a special sort of intimacy to emerge between the observer and the object. Perhaps one can call Erwin Stache an adventurer in the triangle of physics, music and electro-acoustics. A scientist among entertainers and an entertainer among scientists... His sense of paradox finds expression through his inventions and through the manner in which he places them in relation to one another, that is to say in which he composes.
Although Erwin Stache has neither borrowed anything, nor has he made any acquisitions from within the modern, some pieces have an effect similiar to variations on the infamous "Marriage of an Umbrella and a Sewing Machine" before the surreal marriage-altar. The original way in which Stache sees himself excludes epigonism. The originality of his works is a result of his ability to comprehend complicated things and relationships, in which he puts them into a selfmade sensory complex which allows the paralyzing  i t   i s  to become an activating  i t   c a n   b e . Behind the three hands within a simple wooden frame, turning at times clockwise, at times anti-clockwise, thus encroaching upon one another and suddenly coming to a halt, there could lie a concealed invitation to play mind games. Perhaps the three hands represent the three-dimensional perception of space, the iron laws of geometry. The fourth dimension, time, whose passing we usually perceive as linear is allowed for once in this work of Erwin Stache's to affect every individual dimension and cause confusion. Possibly, however, the three hands also symbolize past, present and future in puzzling synchronism, who knows. Perhaps the clock picture (Uhrbild) is more a prototype (Urbild) of the human tendency to generalize his experiences, his perspective on things. Or the endless conveyor-belt, running monotonously across a black base, which turns on rollers and is alternately black then white so that apparently constructivistic black-and-white figures can continuously be seen in slowly shifting metric patterns... is not some jester standing behind King reason's back rubbing his hands in glee ? It is a martial provocation when Erwin Stache points to that which is frail admidst a world of remote-control, in which, for example, he does not build a casing around his mechanics and thus exposes the works of his inventions to the observer. One may recognise therein a satire on the machine age which can still be valid as a foundation for the technological industrial age, or also the bafflingly bizzare products of a childlike and equally anarchic fantasy.
lt is possibly also the materialization of the wish of a lonely pianist for the musical accompanists with whom he can play the keyboard from sense to nonsense under his own direction. The aesthetics of the apparently functionless reveal themselves even more emphatically when we take up the artist's offer and operate the "sound objects" ourselves with the use of a foot-pedal. In this way the observer not only directly enters into the secrets of a physical junk-room, but also partakes of a charm which Erwin Stache's ideas possess.

Radjo Monk, Leipzig