Review | By textura
SOUNDS LIKE…VIENNA | Julia Bünnagel
As ever, appearances deceive. A photo on the back cover of Sounds Like…Vienna shows Julia Bünnagel standing behind a DJ-like setup at an outdoors city space, an image that suggests the twelve-inch release could possibly be a dance-related release from Gruenrekorder. But anyone familiar with the experimental imprint knows it would never do something so, well, normal, and sure enough closer inspection reveals that the release is consistent with its other products. Bünnagel, you see, has created a recording that doesn’t merely simulate the sound of the city, it is the city—or at least one representative part of it. For this project, she’s created a record using slabs produced from molds of the city’s sidewalk and streets; consequently, the sounds generated when the turntable’s needle rides the disc’s surface derive, literally, from Vienna’s physical surfaces. […]