Klaas Hübner
Music for Ceiling Fan and Tubes
Hear the 45 on Bandcamp.
Hypnotic driving percussion and flute-like sounds conjure traditional African, Gamelan or Irish folk tunes in a beautifully absurd musical piece.
Klaas has created installations and performances with ceiling fans since 2010. On this record, he uses his own hands and little tubes to touch the blades while lying underneath the hovering fan. A hose attached to one of the blades emits a constant tone as it whirls. The same tubes are used as accompanying flutes.
The artist first worked with ceiling fans for a sound installation in Guangzhou, China, setting off a long exploration that would lead to collaboration with Andrew Schrock in 2014 to create The Corrugarou, an instrullation for New Orleans Music Box Village.
A second Corrugarou was built in 2017 at MASS MoCA, where it is still exhibited. Klaas has performed music for ceiling fan and tubes in Berlin, London’s Cafe Oto, Erbil, Leuven, New Orleans and Sulaymaniyah.
These recordings were made in 2021 at Klaas’s studio in Kreuzberg, Berlin. You can hear the rumble of the subway and passing traffic.
PRESS
"A machine rhythm interlocking and falling apart, jumping the same gap over the uncanny valley that Nancarrow did. There is an alien familiarity that Klaas conjures here, sound that feels rooted in the traditions that live in our hands and bodies whether or not we're Trained Musicians. The muddled polyrhythms ride a line between carefully considered and emergent happenstance, I'm still not sure from where this music came."
Andrew Weathers, Musician
CREDITS
Sound by KLAAS HÜBNER
Photo by JOERI THIRY / STUK
Liner Notes by MAT KEEL
Object by Yes We Cannibal
Manufactured by Mobineko
One-time only pressing of 50
YWC019-2025
Released May 2, 2025
This is the first release in a new series -- STRATUM (MUT*ARTS) for Yes We Cannibal -- which produces small numbered editions of vinyl singles as fine art objects. They are available through YWC, from the artist(s), at select galleries in New Orleans, New York, and Los Angeles, as well as Printed Matter in NYC.
