05/02/2026
Hugsten ( and , two Studio Baustelle members) have a new release on the Chinese experimental label (tailnia.bandcamp.com). Check it out!
Stains, Dead silence - Negotiating noise with the non-living, and Gastkram (Ghost hug) are three pieces that capture Hugsten’s field recording, composition and performance practices. They are all attempts to give voice to discarnate entities, be it the non-living or the screams of sick patients.
The sounds in Stains were recorded entirely on a phone during a hospitalisation in an infection clinic, where we had to give up control over our body. Being isolated and immobilised we heard the screams of agony from other patients through the corridors.
Dead silence - Negotiating noise with the non-living, is a composition from field recordings in a Berlin cemetery turned park, the last part with contact mics on tomb stones. This was part of an investigation into how the non-living can be given a silent voice in the negotiation of noise in the park to establish sonic citizenship for them.
Gastkram investigates the non-resonating body of a tombstone from the park by using it as an instrument in a live performance, enhanced with modular voices and drones.
“One of the basic human requirements is the need to dwell, and one of the central human acts is the act of inhabiting, of connecting ourselves, however temporarily, with a place on the planet which belongs to us, and to which we belong. This is not, especially in the tumultuous present, an easy act (as is attested by the uninhabited and uninhabitable no-places in cities everywhere), and it requires help: we need allies in inhabitation.
Fortunately, we have at hand many allies, if only we call on them; other upright objects, from towers to chimneys to columns, stand in for us in sympathetic imitation of our own upright stance. Flowers and gardens serve as testimonials to our own care, and breezes loosely captured can connect us with the very edge of the infinite.” [Charles Moore, foreword to In Praise of Shadows, Junichiro Tanizaki, 1933]
We may not be able to raise the dead, but we can raise their voices.
