International Winners is a Brooklyn, NY-based collective of friends who organize shows and release music in digital and limited-run cassette formats. Seeing as organizing shows is currently impossible, the collective has been focusing on releasing music, particularly of the esoteric and abstract avant-garde variety. To date, Intl. Winners have released 16 records from a wide variety of artists, including residents of the collective and NY-based acts but also international or simply untraceable artists.
While many of the collective’s early releases involved residents, it seems they have expanded their scope beyond their inner circle for their most recent releases. As case in point, they enlisted Tbilisi-based sound-shifter Levan Shanidze for their first release of 2020, the beguiling Confused Sketches. On June 25, Intl. Winners will follow that up with mimikry, the debut album from Vienna-based producer Treibgut.
Although this is Fabian Lanzmaier’s first official release under the Treibgut alias, mimikry exhibits a fleshed-out and elaborate sound design. Working within the domains of electroacoustic processing and FM audio synthesis, Lanzmaier produces tactile sound environments that confound the listener’s perceptual apparatus.
On singles “A Bug’s Dream” and “Through the Window,” the listener is met with modulated tones that flicker like intermittent electrical signals coursing through a circuit. These tracks feature textured soundscapes that Lanzmaier manipulates through the addition and subtraction of multiform sonic patterning.
On “Chimera,” acoustic sound effects are refracted and re-processed through digitized, mimetic gestures. The track glides fluidly through acousmatic sound sources, effectively re-producing raw sonic material as synthetic forms. With mimikry, Treibgut channels theories of mimesis and re-appropriation through the methodology of computer processing, conjuring surrealist visions of digital detritus.
mimikry is out 25/06/20 on International Winners. Purchase here.