Läuten der Seele - Unterhaltungen mit Larven und Überresten *Pre-Order

Some time ago, a few steps down from the place where I lived back then, there was this unkempt garden belonging to a smallish, rather bland-looking 1920s-era mansion. The garden was surrounded by a stone wall and one side of that wall had a huge crack running right through it. I've passed that spot every day on my way to work. The crack itself was shaped like a lightning striking through the stone or resembled something that would imply seismic activity even if no such thing is known to occur in these part. But its energetic radiance was undeniable to me. Often when I passed it, a rush of electricity flooded my thoughts and I would wonder – what microcosm, what kind of infinitesimal life, would rest inside there? It felt as if that crack could contain a whole reality of its own, different from mine, highly sensitive and yet perfectly encapsulated by the stupor of our mundane wanderings.

Listening to Unterhaltungen mit Larven und Überresten (trans: Conversations With Larvae and Fossil Remains) brought back the memories of that wall, that energy, that phantasmal presence of something beyond physical perception. In a way, this record feels like a live transmission from the inside of that crack – or better, every crack, every narrow gap and interstice gouging the thin layers of a reality we all seem to share.

Notorious for dwelling in these in-between spaces, Christian Schoppik's Läuten Der Seele
project has long since stirred the anima within the hidden reverse of quotidian objects by looping and re-contextualising obscure and disparate sample sources. With the addition of Jota Solo, these often oneiric and impressionistic collages and story paintings now open up to a more expressive and direct colour scheme, quite literally as if Schoppik's sonic phantasmagorias have been ultimately given a real human voice to speak their mysteries. But whose voice is that?

Jota has a long-running history traversing Austria's outsider art scene under a myriad of different pseudonyms, most notably in the group Novŷ Svêt, a duo he shared with Frl. Tost, formed in the late 90s in Vienna's seminal post-industrial underground. Often mislabeled as “neo-cabaret“ or “combat-folk“ for a lack of understanding the duo's immense genre-blind creativity, Novŷ Svêt always remained misfits in every scene they entered but garnered attention and cult following from a group of more open-minded listeners.

For as long as he can remember, Schoppik's own work has been heavily influenced by the iridescent and protean microcosm of Novŷ Svêt, not so much in sound, as in spirit. Such is the extent of that inspiration, he has also helped introduce their music to a new and younger audience with the release of their long-lost Desde Infiernos de Flores album on his own Quirlschlängle imprint. In part, the first long-form collaboration between Christian and Jota hence resembles the framework of the FRKWYS inter-generational series, but there is nothing clinical or conceptual about this work. Instead, we're eavesdropping on a chance meeting of the two in what feels like the fragment of a shared dream, sublimating each other's spectral antics through spirals of noise and song, most of which is sung in German with that snide Austrian accent. Jota's presence is that of a restless, troubled feu follet, guiding - - or, as it were, misguiding - the listener with his signature parlando through the nostalgic terrain vague of Schoppik's multi-layered spools.

If you're already familiar with Läuten Der Seele’s detailed kaleidoscopic sound topographies you might find yourself entering an even more adventurous zone of madness and bittersweet melancholy here. Be not mistaken by the turmoil though – buried deep inside these vivid granular textures there is a rhizome of harmonies of an almost folkloristic quality: ghostlike echoes of Rashad Becker's Notional Species, lost in reveries of what life forms they have left behind or will soon emerge from them. Infinitely small, infinitely meaningful. - Margot Benetti, Whitsuntide 2025

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