Roland Kayn

Roland Kayn - Scanning, 1982-1983 (2019) {10CD Box Set, Reiger Records Reeks KY-CD 1901-10}
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© 1982-83, 2019 Reiger Records Reeks | KY-CD 1901-10
Experimental / Avant-Garde / Modern Classical / Electronic

A hitherto-unreleased electronic masterpiece from Roland Kayn, singular pioneer of cybernetic music. Over a period spanning the late 70s through the early 80s, Kayn (1933–2011) issued a quintet of extended works that quietly but definitively redrew the map of electronic music. Informed by cybernetics and a desire to actualise analogue circuitry as an agency in the compositional process, this music adopted a form that can only be described as oceanic, as side after side of vinyl allowed a wholly new vocabulary of electronic sound to find its shape. This set features a staggering batch of mesmerising computer music realised in 1982-83, roughly between his totemic ‘Infra’ and ‘Tektra’ boxsets. Essential listening for fans of Xenakis, Æ, Cam Deas, Jim O’Rourke, Laurie Spiegel.

Roland Kayn - Tektra (1984) {4CD Set, Barooni BAR016 rel 1997}
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© 1984, 1997 Colosseum / Barooni | BAR 016
Experimental / Modern Classical / Ambient / Electronic

This set reissues the 6-LP box set from 1984 and was mastered off the original archive tapes. Discs are packaged in plain white sleeves inside a printed, letter-pressed and embossed box along with an insert and 12-page booklet. Tektra (1980-82) is a cybernetic project, an electro-acoustic composition which, as much as possible, originates from the interaction between electronic circuitry and processes carefully developed by the composer.

Roland Kayn - Cybernetic Music (1995) {2CD Set, Reiger-records-reeks ‎KY-CD 9503-4}
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© 1995 Reiger-records-reeks | ‎KY-CD 9503-4
Experimental / Modern Classical / Musique concrète / Electroacoustic / Cybernetic

Roland Kayn (1933-2011) was a German composer who studied in Stuttgart at the “Hochschule fur Musik”, and at the “Technische Hochschule” with Max Bense. He was a pupil of of Boris Blacher at the “Hochschule fur Musik” in Berlin from 1956 to 1958 and he later worked in various music studios in Germany, Netherlands and Italy. Despite its relative obscurity in the last years of the 20th Century, Kayn’s work can be considered as one of the most emblematic in the realm of cybernetics and in the general contemporary art production related to the electronic medium.

Roland Kayn - A Little Electronic Milky Way of Sound (2017) {16CD Set, frozen reeds fr7/22}
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© 2017 frozen reeds | fr7/22
Experimental / Modern Classical / Cybernetic Music / Electroacoustic / Electronic

Twenty-two movements, 14 hours and 16 CDs worth of spangling cosmic sound play: this premiere release of the magnum opus by German composer Roland Kayn is a colossus and a marvel. Roland who? In a profession that glorifies big egos and fetishises the kind of creative genius that demands total control, Kayn went to more selfless extremes. He worked in the pioneering electronic studios of Germany and the Netherlands in the mid-20th century and built fastidious command systems with the aim of making “self-sufficient cybernetic music”.

Roland Kayn - Etoile du nord & Ghyress für Ilse-Emily Kayn (2005) {2CD Set, Reiger-records-reeks KY-CD 005-1/2}
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© 2005 Reiger-records-reeks ‎| KY-CD 005-1/2
Experimental / Modern Classical / Cybernetic Music / Electroacoustic / Electronic

A pioneer of electronic, computer, and instrumental avant-garde music, for the majority of his life, the German composer Roland Kayn remained one of the great unheralded figures in the landscape of 20th century sound - a founding member of Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza, who delved into singular territories entirely his own. Fortunately, in the last few years, in part due to the release of his monumental work, A Little Electronic Milky Way of Sound, by Frozen Reeds in 2017, and Die Schachtel’s deluxe vinyl reissue of his seminal composition, Simultan, last year, the scope and depth of his efforts have begun to take centre stage in the public mind.

Roland Kayn - Electronic Symphony I-III (1997) {2CD Set, Reiger-records-reeks KY-CD 9701-2}
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© 1997 Reiger-records-reeks | KY-CD 9701-2
Experimental / Modern Classical / Cybernetic Music / Electronic / Musique concrète

In Kayn's Electronic Symphony series, the past and present continually encounter each other anew, each time casting new reflections on the given moment. Kayn's autonomous studio processes remove context from what he termed (markedly in the language of synthesis) the "carrier" material, for the most part music of the orchestral tradition at its most texturally oriented – even drone-like – but alternately seething and volcanic in its drama.

Roland Kayn - Matego I-II (2021) {Reiger-records-reeks}
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© 2021 Reiger-records-reeks
Experimental / Modern Classical / Musique concrète / Electroacoustic / Electronic

The master tape of Roland Kayn's final composition was still present in the machine when he passed away on January 5th, 2011. 'Matego', the last piece in a 60-year puzzle, is a tense structure of modulated crystalline bursts. Far from conclusive in tone, it suggests that Kayn could well have continued fruitfully on his path of exploration and discovery for decades longer. To mark the 10th anniversary of Kayn's passing, and to celebrate the enthusiastic response to the new availability of his work, we are proud to offer this music as a free download, with the option of a donation to the Lydia and Roland Kayn Archive.

Roland Kayn - Sound-Hydra (2020) {Reiger-records-reeks}
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© 2020 Reiger-records-reeks
Experimental / Modern Classical / Musique concrète / Electroacoustic / Cybernetic

A prismatic assembly with as many faces as the mythological beast which gives the piece its title, Sound-Hydra represents an endlessly regenerative encounter. An extended plunderphonic odyssey from a moment at which Kayn was acutely in touch with the music beginning to sprout up around his prior discoveries and innovations.

Roland Kayn - Spectral (2021) {Reiger-records-reeks}
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© 2021 Reiger-records-reeks
Experimental / Modern Classical / Musique concrète / Electroacoustic / Electronic

The cloudy, sustained tones of ‘Spectral’ find Kayn in territory almost as weightless as that of ‘A Pan-Air Music’. In its opening minutes, dense flute-like timbres amass in an echoing plane of sound reminiscent at times of Luc Ferrari’s most disembodied audio surrealism. But this is no derivative (nor pastiche), as Kayn’s time spent amid the Staaplaat racks is soon also in evidence. As the work progresses, we find him locating, digesting – and perhaps even repurposing – the spiritual heirs of his earlier, uniquely groundbreaking work.