Viennese musicians Burkhard Stangl (guitar) and Christof Kurzmann (computer), who together form SCHNEE, were among the first practitioners of what’s now usually called electroacoustic improvisation–a gestural, texture-oriented music in which an instrument’s traditional sound is often obscured and subsumed. (In particular, Stangl was a founding member of the paradigm-shifting group Polwechsel.) But Stangl has never been shy about letting his guitar sound like a guitar: on Schnee’s self-titled 2000 debut he complemented Kurzmann’s hovering, abstract sound sculptures with the occasional strummed chord or damped-string scrape, enhancing the music’s gorgeously meditative flow. Last year’s Schnee Live (ErstLive) adds spoken word, singing, and actual chord progressions, but the duo’s music is still built around subtle interaction and patient resolution.
