The sudden infant

Joke Lanz alias Sudden Infant arouses with dark-poetic, childish-dadaistic and very physical noise-sounds. Recently a book was published about him.

Since the 1980s Joke Lanz explores sounds from every day life and transforms them into impetuous soundscapes. Marhaug Forlag just published the book «Noise in My Head – The Actionistic Music and Art of Joke Lanz» . Norient has met Joke Lanz in Lausanne, where he set to music a fashion show with his turntable-performance.

Joke Lanz tries to approach his own music. Further there are some extracts from his performance at the Ear We Are festival 2011 in Bienne.

Since 1986, Joke Lanz has been working solo or in various formations as a noise-musician. For sure, he stirred up the global scene with his “Schimpfluch” collective. Part of it Rudolf Eb.er (Runzelstirn und Gurgelstock), Dave Phillips (amongst others founder of the Swiss grindcore-legend Fear of God) and Daniel Löwenbrück (who runs the label Tochnit Aleph). From 1989 to 1995 he produced with Rudolf Eb.er and various guests the experimental radio show «Psychic Rally» on Zurich community radio LoRa. Today he lives in Berlin, his musical experiments started in Zurich.

Joke Lanz talks about how his biography and his music were influenced:

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For 25 years, Joke Lanz has been working with noise. Today though, he plays the noise differently than a quarter of a century ago.

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On 14th March 2008, Joke Lanz performed as Sudden Infant at «Unyazi 2: Fear of the Known – Festival of Extreme Listening» in Stellenbosch, South Africa:

Not only his artistic approach has changed, but also the business of noise music.
It is quite striking for Joke Lanz, that the people today perceive his project Sudden Infant completely different than at the beginning of his career:

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The interview in Lausanne and the video footage of Biel were taken in the context of the Norient project Sonic Traces: From Switzerland.

Links:
Sudden Infant website
Sudden Infant blog