Stefan Goldmann / Ensemble 180°: Input (The Sofia Versions)
Macro

Ever adventurous, ever surprising, and ever innovative, Stefan Goldmann continues his remarkable artistic journey on the just-released Input (The Sofia Versions). The German-Bulgarian producer is fortunate to have Macro, the Berlin-based label he founded with Finn Johannsen in 2007, as on ongoing outlet for his creative ventures, but his releases would reward one's attention even if they appeared on another label. That said, there's no denying Macro grants him a wide-open playing field that allows him to pursue whatever's interesting him at the moment. He's the kind of figure who might follow the release of an idiosyncratic techno set with an experimental electroacoustic work or ambient-electronic soundtrack.

In this collaboration with Ensemble 180°, the opening four-part work presents three separate recastings of his Input (2015) by composers Daniel Chernov, Adrian Pavlov and Lukas Tobiassen, with the original electroacoustic composition having been given to them as material to be reworked for acoustic chamber ensemble. The concept driving the project therefore inverts the standard remix process by having ensemble scores created from electronic source material. The treatments crafted by the composers were captured live at 180° Festival in Sofia, Bulgaria on July 22nd, 2016. A key source of fascination is witnessing the transformations the original material underwent in becoming the three versions presented. Unexpected congruencies emerge, but extreme contrasts too. Performing at the festival under the Ensemble 180° name were clarinetist Yavor Gaidov, flutist Delphine Roche, oboist Valentine Collet, pianist Gilles Grimaître, violinist Ivailo Danailov, violist Elitsa Bogdanova, and violoncellist Stefan Hadjiev.

Sequenced first is Tobiassen's high-energy treatment, whose insistent rhythmic propulsion might suggest some degree of overlap with both techno and classical minimalism; certainly traces of Goldmann's compositional sensibility are evident in the jittery syncopations of the rhythms and the way the piece moves fluidly between between animation and abstraction. Techno connections are also discernible in Chernov's “Big Drop,” specifically in the accelerated wind-ups that lend it forceful drive. Exuding even more restless energy than Tobiassen's, Chernov's is a combustible rhythm-powered workout that offsets its furious upward glissandos with occasional moments of calm. A tad less frenzied by comparison is Pavlov's “Gnomon A,” though it too has its share of lively and agitated episodes.

Augmenting their trio of treatments is a fourth Input part, “Extension 1,” a low-level reverberant drone that extends the finale of Pavlov's piece by eight calming minutes, and following that is a three-part work titled Études Spectrales (2025) that's based on additional recordings from the same concert performance, the nearly twenty-minute setting drawing on another Input version, this one by Dimitar Milev. Teeming with rippling textures, whooshes, convulsions, and smatterings of granular noise and static, its mutating electronic soundscape design distances it from the acoustic ensemble character of the opening triptych and is perhaps the piece most directly suggestive of Goldmann's hands-on presence. Techno surfaces here too, if tangentially, in the muffled boom-boom that makes a fleeting appearance in the central part alongside the industrial grinding and swirl that otherwise dominates.

October 2025