Lately I've been exploring Roland Kayn's music, which has been nothing short of a revelation to me. He was a German composer who lived between 1933-2011. It's a shame he's little known, as his electronic music (he wrote contemporary classical music, too) is the best electroacoustic/electronic music I've ever heard. His music is unique; he very rarely utilised the kinds of sounds and motifs that are characteristic of academic composers. Often, his music is a kind of very intense ambient, with huge blocks of sound shifting constantly (I don't like ambient, but I can get totally lost in Kayn's music). The vast, expansive sense of space that's characteristic of his music is just amazing.
It seems Kayn's name has become somewhat more well-known after the release in the last couple years of the "A Little Electronic Milky Way Of Sound" 16xCD box set and the 3xLP reissue of "Simultan". While I like these works (although, ironically, his most well-known and easiest to get release, "A Little Electronic Milky Way Of Sound", is the least exciting in my view), the real deal for me are the CDs he released on his own label, Reiger-records-reeks. This is a lot of music: 12 double CDs and one single CD, not counting his contemporary classical works. He classified his music into several categories: cybernetic music (these are the CDs I least like at the moment, but I haven't really familiarised myself with them yet), electroacoustic music and what he termed multiplex sound art (almost all of these works contain surprising elements, like samples of techno-like music or classical music).
If I had to pick a favourite of his works, it'd be "Gärten Der Lüste", which is a totally unique electroacoustic piece. Play it on a good hifi at night (which suits the music's atmosphere) with no distractions of any kind, and you'll be transported to a strange place. It's as if you're walking through a dense, organic, constantly changing and alien environment at night with various sounds and sound textures surrounding you at different distances. I'm reminded of the movie Annihilation where the protagonists enter a strange world. "Gärten Der Lüste" is like being in such an alien and mysterious world. (Unfortunately there are no sound samples from any of his CDs on his own label on YouTube.)
I highly recommend Kayn to noise fans and people into strange and innovative electronic music (some of his early works as well as parts of the above-mentioned 16xCD box can be heard on YouTube). And for those who already like his music, there are good news concerning reissues: following "Simultan", the rest of Kayn's mythical and impossible to get LP box sets from the '70s and '80s will also be reissued by Die Schachtel ("Tektra" should be out this spring), and Reiger-records-reeks will release a CD box this year.
