Trialog

With their successful 2013 self-titled debut album (SVT 098 CD) and five EPs (including SVT 097EP, SVT 102EP, SVT 118EP, and SVT 142EP) HVOB (Anna Muller and Paul Wallner) have crafted a unique sound: intelligent and driving, challenging and melodic. They have established themselves within the international music scene with these releases and with their performances, which they invariably play live, with a drummer. They played in 20 countries in 2014, and appeared at Cape Town Electronic Music Festival, the Berlin Festival, and South By Southwest. Their second album, Trialog, is, above all, an interdisciplinary art project; a discourse between the disciplines of sound, video, and installation, centered on ten ubiquitous physical processes which are documented and interpreted interactively in live performance on three artistic levels: the lyrics and sounds of HVOB, the visuals of VJs lichterloh, and orchestrated processes of visual artist Clemens Wolf. As an album, Trialog depicts the transformation of ten physical processes in ten tracks, tearing, mixing, bursting, melting, oxidizing, breaking, imploding, etching, bending, burning, track to video, video to artwork, artwork to track. HVOB's sound distinctively shapes the album, yet the duo now interpret their acoustic palette in darker, more accentuated, techno-leaning shades. Each of the ten tracks pursues it's own individual dramaturgy: the opener Azrael tears apart it's built-up percussive tension, Clap Eyes inches along frailly, The Anxiety to Please deepens and condenses until it implodes. References, inspirations, and associations between materials, processes, and artistic disciplines create an artistic depth, which renders the album a highly complex and complete work of art.