The Breakdown
How do I explain something I don’t fully understand? How do I introduce a music theatre piece that overwhelms but continues to elude me? Van Wersch’s musical score is part of the miraculous, frightening machinery of this production at the Deutsches Theater Berlin. Like the treadmills themselves, the music is something the performers struggle against and yet which propels them irresistibly forward. It is the pulse, heartbeat, breath, electricity that courses through the bodies of actors, musicians, and audience alike. It is the shaky ground beneath our feet.
This Psychose is not “about” madness or suicide, it rather performs the basic process of consciousness itself, which is never single but always multiple—there is always an inner conversation coursing through our brains. Recently I was reading about trance music in India and how it quiets that inner dialogue, which is something that happens in clubs, too, with the persistent beats and the deep, throbbing bass that seem to take you over. Bodies vibrate, pulse, dance in the flickering half-light and fog. We are transported.
Without the mise en scene, Wersch’s iridescent music leads to an even more magical place. Using polyrhythms, drones, microtonal chords it changes our bodies and our environment. The world becomes more fluid, time passes more slowly (or quickly), meanings change. Our ears see and our eyes hear. When I saw Einstein on the Beach in the 1970s it was clear to me that it announced a new kind of music theatre. The world is very different today, but I see and hear the future in 4.48 Psychose: “bitte öffnet den Vorhang. – David Savran /Distinguished Professor of Theatre and Performance / City University of New York
Check Out: Psychose 9 Here:
Verdict: A pulsating rhythmic delight with foreboding undertones. Layers of held notes help to create the atmosphere, as the percussion leads us through varying musical landscapes of delicate and calm spaces surrounded by unrelenting fever swirling dimensions of sound. The third and last in this series of wondrous releases, treating us to music created to enrich a theatrical performance that now can be enjoyed by a wider audience. Superb.
Vinyl Track List:
- Psychose 22
- Psychose 9
- Psychose 3
- Psychose 12
- Psychose 10
- Psychose 5
Digital Track List:
Psychose A – 18:11
Psychose B – 20:11
PSYCHOSE_ALBUM Credit: Music written by Nico van Wersch, Percussion by Katelyn Rose King and Spela Maŝtnak, Synthesizer by Carsten Brocker and Christopher Lübeck, Bass by Thomsen Merkel. Produced by PC Nackt. Recorded by Gogo Engst at Chez Chérie Berlin. Mastered by Gogo Engst.
Available Now @ https://naked-records.bandcamp.com/album/psychose
Also: https://music.apple.com/us/album/psychose/1763858204?ls=1 and https://open.spotify.com/intl-de/album/6Vgy0Avdk27Ti400NLFjyL
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