Brief Farmers Manual Biography
Unconsciously founded 94 - Vienna.
Officially constituated 95.
Founding members: Mathias Gmachl, Stefan Possert, Oswald Berthold.
Additional members: Eugen Danzinger, Gert Brantner
plus various occasional temporary external virtual contributors
Momentarily:
Farmers Manual present their esoteric exercises in mobile computing. In addition to performing lots of buzzing, cracking and beeping sounds, they put out lots of buzzing, cracking and beeping sounds on CD. "With the aid of electronic computers, the composer becomes a sort of pilot: pressing buttons, introducing coordinstes, and supervising the controls of a cosmic vessel sailing in the space of sound, across sonic constellations and galaxies that could formerly be glimpsed only in a distant dream".
(Iannis Xenakis 1971)
A euphoric comment:
"(again). Pop-music for the year 4000."
www.ptuch.ru/muznews.html
Done:
- uncounted public performances (at, de, cz, hu, uk, fr)
- web-projects (hosting of other artists-organisations-individuals, tele-concerts via netcast own netcastign program)
- conceptual reasoning
- audio-cd and print publications
Discography:
fm LP mego (a)
no-backup cdda/cdrom mego (a)
does-not-compute EP tray (uk)
fsck cdda tray (uk)
viennatone compilation K7 (de)
alt.frequencies compilation worm-interface (uk)
five comp. sabotage (a)
loops2 loop-vinyl serotonin (usa)
chillout comp. sabotage (a)
teleform comp touch (uk)
explorers-we (double)CD or (uk)
five, the magazine sabotage
timing zero, japanese grafics pseudo regular
Quotes on Farmers Manual:
Test One, Sheffield:
"In a perfect illustration of Virilio´s ´law of least action´, Viennese Powerbookworms Farmers Manual are spitting their fidgety noises over the churning pistons and hissing convection currents of a 1905 River Don steam engine, high as a terraced house. Every hour, the 25,000 horsepower engine cranks into action, foaming and whirring the Farmers do little more than prod their keyboards and idly scratch their noses, but volume for volume, the grease monster can´t compete."
(from The Wire, issue 172, June 1998)
"This music comes literally nowhere near either the dancefloor or the laboratory, ditching both lycra and whitecoat for a naked run through suburban shopping malls or luxury car dealerships. In other words, it doesn't make much musical sense at all, which is also part of its appeal."
(www.urbansounds.com review of fsck)
Warum die Firma Apple Farmers Manual nicht an vorderster Front ihrer "Think different" Kampagne anfuehrt, ist mindestens so unverstaendlich wie Bill Gates´ Versaeumnis das Internet zu kaufen. Can you stand the FM-Test?
(from a de:bug review of exploders)
At FARMERS MANUAL the taking into account of the relations which exist between the musicians, the medium, I´ objetdisque/le support, the reader CD and the listener is complete.
(revue corrige, rev of fsck, France, 98)
The Basic Strategy.
total automation vs. human interaction.
During the performance we seek to shift the local atmosphere from dissolution and clumsiness through manual change and ecstatic fiddling into an imaginative state of complex monotony, structured calm and chill, or endless associative babbling. So that towards the end the authors become the audience and the audience can be confronted with a stage populated by machines only which cant get out of infinitely rendering a stream of slight semantic madness. The setup then is what is normally considered a sort of installation. all this with the help of extreme frequencies and distorted, flickering images.