New in our Moloko+ catalogue:
In September 2021 Hebbel am Ufer (HAU) in Berlin organised a series of events to commemorate the Zodiak Free Arts Lab which was founded in 1968 by Beuys student Conrad Schnitzler together with Hans Joachim Roedelius and Boris Schaak. One of the three HAU venues is the building where at the time Zodiak brought together visual art, performance, music and film. Taste Tribes performed live at that venue during the Zodiak celebrations, that is three musicians of the band, the fourth – Alfred 23 Harth – having been prevented from travelling from his hometown Seoul to Berlin because of the corona restrictions of the period. Like Alfred 23 Harth, who had founded his own free arts centre in Frankfurt around the same time as the Zodiak Free Arts Lab in Berlin, the other three musicians of the band have ties with Zodiak. Wolfgang Seidel’s first encounter with the concept of completely free music took place at Zodiak, Günter Müller developed a collage-like technique in music similar to Zodiak founder Conrad Schnitzler’s, and Hans Joachim Irmler is one of the founding members of Hamburg’s early experimental band Faust, of whom Wolfgang Seidel used to be a member too. All four musicians explore and combine various artistic disciplines in their works and question traditional artistic boundaries. As such Taste Tribes formed a fitting tribute to the Zodiak Free Arts Lab in September 2021. In Berlin they performed live as a trio, but on the CD ‘Nischen’, which has been released on Moloko Plus in 2023, Alfred 23 Harth contributions to this fine free-improv tribute have been included. Alfred 23 Harth also took care of the graphic design of the 7-track CD, Robert Schalinski provided the cover art.