Disrupting contexts

When listening to Superterz, free improvisation, beats and cuts, noise storms and dissonant soundscapes collide wildly. The music is barely placeable. Ravi and Marcel Vaid from the Zurich long-term collective tell Norient why.

Superterz sounds like a streetmarket in Delhi, wrote one journalist. This phrase reflects everything the Zurich collective does not aim to be: Indeed, Superterz is looking for the variety of sounds and rhythms. Breaks, U-turns, interferences and displacements are acoustic routine – but does their music therefore sound like Delhi? Ravi and Marcel Vaid are born to an Indian father and an East German mother, growing up in Zurich. The association with «street market Delhi» could suggest: both of them carry chaos and tonal diversity of India in their genes – a pretty naïve, romantic an even racist knee-jerk reaction. The metaphor «Delhi» is bothering Superterz not just because of this reason. If Superterz would work with field recordings of a Delhi market, they’d be alienated beyond recognition.

Podcast (27′)

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Ravi und Marcel Vaid - Superterz

Superterz wants to make music beside any contexts – which, on one hand, may be an unfeasible stretched goal, but the approach is certainly fascinating as well as relevant.
When Superterz work with guest musicians, which is very often the case, guest guitarists are never asked to play blues guitar or rock riffs. Consequently, an Indian sitar-player should never sound like Indian music. This, however, would be very difficult, the brothers emphasize in the interview: «that’s the way it is – a sitar always sounds like India!» This is probably why Superterz never worked with a sitar virtuoso before and why they most certainly never would. They stopped working with rising Swiss pop musician Sophie Hunger. Hunger was too clearly classifiable into a genre.

Within the music of Superterz, origins, originals and sources of inspiration should not be directly recognisable. This is acousmatic music in its true sense. Superterz locates their acousmatic not only within “Musique Concrète” or contemporary music but at least to the same extent within free improvised music. In addition, since the 1990s there are electronic sequencers in the centre of their music. Plus there is always a drummer alongside them – currently Simon Berz from Zurich. Definitely music to listen to!

The Video: Superterz & Simon Berz feat. Norbert Möslang, INSOMNIA-Sessions, 29. December 2010, Starkart-Galerie.