The Evil of Banality (clarinet quartet)

An inverted string quartet, a surrounding swarm, a synchronized swimming choreography.

Three analogies to begin with—for general confusion. A focus of my musical practice lies in the in-between of tones—that which emerges between two sounds, not (or not only) as a poetic experience, but as a concrete and physical sonic phenomenon in space and in the ear. The event-space of beats and combination tones opened up for me not from theory, but from a state of astonished, practical, and experimental music-making.

Usually, I work together with colleagues of similar or complementary sensibilities. In the psychoacoustic context, my long-standing duos The International Nothing with clarinetist Michael Thieke and Los Glissandinos with Klaus Filip on sine waves deserve special mention. Only recently have I become interested in developing sonic scenarios compositionally or conceptually on my own. What interests me here is not the “soloistic,” but rather the dynamic interplay between sounds. Since my compositional imagination has its limits, I remain with my instrument and—with The Evil of Banality in particular—within a sound language that is both familiar and personal to me.

The string quartet serves as a fascinating model for a multilayered musical entity. By spatially expanding this entity—the four sound sources playing from the four corners of the room—a clearer and more transparent perception of the relationships and movements of sounds towards, with, and against each other through space emerges. Yet, the density and similarity of the sounds sometimes blur this web of relations into a diffuse swarm. The long tonal trajectories, often electronic in character, are repeatedly and humanly interrupted by short, deliberately coordinated surfacings and breaths.

One can indulge in all sorts of playful experiments with aspects of sound phenomena and sound projections. One might even say that such effects can be downright seductive in the moment, though they may not necessarily sustain a full evening on their own. So how does one find a musical form? For me, despite my love of abstraction and sound-as-such, it is always about shaping a subtle narrative. In this sense, for my little psychedelic road trip, the term science fiction seems quite an apt description.

I wish you an exciting listening experience!

Kai Fagaschinski, Berlin, September 2025

P.S.: With the premiere of this quartet, I am also presenting my new double album Aerodynamics (Ni Vu Ni Connu), which contains a clarinet octet composition and a nonet concept—both serving as direct precursors to The Evil of Banality.