a b o u t
PIRX mit Marion Wörle aka Frau W am Laptop und Maciej Sledziecki an der Gitarre benutzt das Vokabular der Geräuschmusik ebenso selbstverständlich wie Elemente von Psychedelic, Noise oder Krautrock. Auch die elektronische Popmusik der 1990er und 2000er Jahre dringt hier durch alle Ritzen. Erfrischend unakademisch und ausgestattet mit einem feinen Humor, legen PIRX eine große Vielseitigkeit an den Tag.
PIRX with Marion Wörle aka Frau W (Laptop) and Maciej Sledziecki (Guitar) uses the vocabulary of sound-art as it does elements from psychedelia, noise and Krautrock. The electronic music of the 90s and 2000s is also bursting through every crack of their music. Refreshingly non-academic and equipped with a fine sense of humor they bring great diversity to the day.
r e v i e w s:
" [...] Music which wants to be "new", experimental and preferably free, has a hard time of it these days. This is often down to the fact that it often seems so stale and aesthetically stubborn that it gets stuck in the constrictive rails of the surrounding music industry. Music that requires your undivided attention is rather something to be found elsewhere. For Example in Cologne. The music that Marion Wörle and Maciej Sledziecki make under the name PIRX makes bold steps into the unknown and moves within this area so naturally and assuredly that it is hardly possible to trace them in words. Whether there are even clearly defined criteria for what makes good music is probably the wrong question. Yet if one landmark of good music is that has to listen to it because one doesn＊t want to disturb its presence in the room, then PIRX have managed to pull off a damn good album. With an instrumentation comprising guitars and electronics, they create tones and noises that really sounds unique and at no point random, artificial or academically boring. Music which is "new" without having to make a label out of it.
TCB, DE:BUG.133, June 2009
" [...] The music is very much song based, with all of the 11 tracks based on a specific idea or sound. Well-disguised loops, vaguely familiar realworld sounds, stuttering piano, dreamy melodies, combined with subtly prepared guitar. Some tracks remind me of Fennesz, melodies coming in and out of more noisy structures. I like how they managed to make this clearly improvised music more accesible, more melodic. All in all a great record that has been stuck in my cd player for a number of days.
STEIMBLOG / Robert van Heumen
[...] The so-called "Deleted Scenes" certainly live from noise. And they seem to work really well. The accompanying psychedelic guitar sounds suggest a certain affinity to Krautrock. Which doesn＊t go without saying, just because PIRX are from Cologne. All in all, the record walks along atonal pathways and dives deep into dense walls of sound. Not always easy listening, but interesting throughout.
HARDMATE
[...] The interesting thing about Deleted Scenes (satelita / A-Musik) is, how sounds come into being - seemingly ex nihilo, which are hardly comparable with any other. There is neither a deconstruction, nor is a hermetical system built up. Which comes very close to the idea of freedom.
GROOVE
WARM NOISE An all-round pleasant and thankfully far removed from any stupid fairground pop noise music. Actually there is far too little of this kind of music in the world. At last, something more than an empty La-La-La, no mundane epigone, no choruses, no pop-doodle nonsense. [...] For example, one can mix the sounds of a factory with those of a dentists, or let notes sound like machines which are breaking down. The titles of the tracks quote films by the likes of Greenaway, Schlesinger, Kurosawa or Ulrich Seidl. [...] Just listen and enjoy it. Bratz-Schrumm, Fiep-Schnarr.
THOMAS BLUM, Jungle World, Nr. 35, 27. August 2009
Well Tempered Disharmony
Pirx from Cologne dedicate themselves to extreme musical situations. Through the work on the computer sound-paintings for a healthy human understanding come into being [...] This duo doesn＊t just master extreme situations - it goes out looking for them. The musicians layer imponderables one over the other and avoid predictability. Maybe it＊s a sign of a healthy mental faculty not to return to previously used melodies and rhythms? Pirx disassemble the music into its individual components. Sometimes just one single note. [...] The music of Pirx is well tempered disharmony - it only deviates from being purely detuned as much as the ear can tolerate. The result is always a break from what has gone before. But thereby never seems too harsh.
SEBASTIAN REIER / ZEIT online
Statements about the quality of music are always just references to the individual setting in which the music comes about. This applies to pop just as it does to art and new music, both are judged in terms of pre-existing canons. It would be a fascinating idea to set up for a change, an anti-canon - a cultural history of the forgotten, suppressed and deleted. And as long as this cultural history doesn＊t exist once can at least try to make music that is organized according to that chain of sonic-events, which cannot be heard. The Cologne-based duo Pirx do just this on their debut album in so far as they orientate themselves around ※Deleted Scenes§. The titles show that a large inspiration was the films of Ulrich Seidl, Peter Greenaway, or Akira Kurosawa. But even if the music takes deletion as its starting point, there is constantly something to hear. Maciej Sledziecki pounds all sorts of sounds out of his guitar, which really don＊t sound like guitar and then these noises are further processed electronically by Marion Wörle who also digitally adds material from her sound-library so that the finished work develops a lyrical quality. So in the end one is justified in using a variation of the silly cliche: ※Deleted Scenes§ sounds like the soundtrack to a film, which was shot a long time ago but which nobody will ever see.
Arno Raffeiner KÖLNER STADTREVUE 07/09
Midweek-Tip: Pirx
[...] One guitarist and one laptop musician attempt to unite free-jazz, ambient and new music. The result: well calculated off-notes mixed with warm soundscapes. But what am I saying 〝 just have a listen to it!
10. June 2009 vioworld.de/blog/2009/06/mittwochs-tipp-pirx/
[...] Basically this is about a piece of electronic music which uses a similar means of production to say Fennesz: Maciej Sledziecki uses his guitar as sound generator and his partner Marion Wörle further processes the material on the laptop. The result is an arrhythmic stream of sounds which cunningly builds tension and offers interesting dynamics of the course of the whole album.
(7/10) Werner Reiter
[...] Deleted Scenes has turned out to be a really sweet records,. It sounds very sophisticated and on top of that also has a discerning visual design. The two musicians have been playing together for quite some time, and this can be heard in the recordings. They distinguish themselves with a musical love of experimenting which is self-confident and convincingly expresses itself - sometimes with heavy interludes, noisy field recordings or ambient arrangements. Its particularly nice to observe how Sledziecki works his guitar - on one hand harnessing its typical sound reservoir and on the other hand using special playing techniques, which are in turn then supported by Wörle＊s intelligently applied digital play on sound.
Raphael Smarzoch, Partikel / Kölncampus Radio, Juni 2009