The turntable keeps coming back as an instrument at BLAUES RAUSCHEN. Following works by artists such as Graham Dunning and Gida Labus, Ignaz Schick also puts the analog playback device at the center of his performance. In “ROTARY PERCEPTIONS for turntables,” however, Schick does not lead the turntables toward becoming sound objects or resonance bodies, but rather back to their original function. The starting point is a collection of around a hundred records with abstract sound material. This gives rise to improvised DJ sets in which the vocabulary of vinyl and turntables is exploited to its limits. Glitches, noise, and unexpected random sounds arise, records are broken and reassembled, and processes are constantly shifting. Schick’s practice thus ties in with experimental record practices of the 20th century and carries them over into today’s improvisational turntable culture. The turntable no longer appears as a pure playback device, but as an instrument with its own sonic logic, whose mechanical processes become actively audible.

Ignaz Schick has been working in Berlin for many years at the intersection of improvisation, composition, and sound research. With his setup “Rotating Surfaces,” which he has been developing since 2000, the turntable becomes an open sound surface. Through minimal interventions and targeted modulation, electroacoustic structures emerge between drone, rhythmic friction, and unpredictable material processes.