The Sudden Infant

Interview
by Michael Spahr,
Thomas Burkhalter

Joke Lanz alias Sudden Infant arouses with dark-poetic, childish-dadaistic and very physical noise-sounds. Norient has met Joke Lanz in Lausanne, where he set to music a fashion show with his turntable-performance.

Since 1986, Joke Lanz has been working solo or in various formations as a noise-musician. He explores sounds from every day life and transforms them into impetuous soundscapes. 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.

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

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:

Biography

Michael Spahr (VJ Rhaps) is a historian MA, journalist, and media artist. He was on the board of Norient from 2008 until 2014. He developed the website norient.com. He was the co-founder and co-director (2009–2014) of the Norient Musikfilm Festival. He contributed with his video art to the audio-visual scientific media performances of Norient. He was the host and DJ of Norients monthly radio show Sonic Traces on Radio RaBe. He works as a freelance artist, film maker, and journalist in Bern (Switzerland). Follow him on his Website.

Biography

Dr. Thomas Burkhalter is an anthropologist/ethnomusicologist, AV-artist, and writer from Bern (Switzerland). He is the founder and director of Norient and the Norient Festival (NF), co-directed AV-performances and documentary films (e.g. «Contradict», Berner Filmpreis 2020 + Al-Jazeera Witness), and is the author and co-editor of several books (e.g., «Local Music Scenes and Globalization: Transnational Platforms in Beirut», Routledge, «The Arab Avant Garde: Musical Innovation in the Middle East», Wesleyan University Press). He teaches regularly at universities, and runs workshops for arts institutions. Since 2022 he produces the Norient Mixtape for Swiss National Radio SRF3. Currently, he is working on his new music project «Melodies In My Head», and on the podcast series «South Asian Sound Stories» with musicians from the UK, Bangladesh, India, Maldives, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan. Follow him on Spotify, Research Gate, Academia.edu, Instagram, X, or Facebook.

Published on October 14, 2011

Last updated on April 09, 2024

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