Going transnational

The Transnational Series tells eight tales of how music finds its way to the listener. Each record is a thoughtfully tailored whole made up of music, graphics, photographs and texts allowing the audience a glimpse into the artists’ musical worlds. In general it is not easy to get an idea of how things happen “there”, as these “worlds” often somewhat resemble scratching tickets; with each layer you remove something new reveals itself. Accordingly we want to invite you to do some “layer-scratching” yourself. Hopefully you will find your way by listening, reading, seeing, and feeling – jumping back and forth between Elias’ place in Biel, Switzerland and Kelley’s home in San Francisco. And on the way you might find something essential for yourself. 

All in all the transnational series encompasses a number of eight split records. Each of them brings the music of two artists together that we deem to match. The underlying idea is to place the work of an artist in a completely new context. However, we do not want to put things together that make no sense. It is important for us that each artist finds himself on a record with a counterpart that fits him or her. Thus we try to identify interesting parallels or contrasts between the musicians’ work and look for promising links in what they are doing. 

Going transnational implies the crossing of borders. Nowadays we do this all the time. Digitally on the Internet, and in person by flying all over the world to see what is going on. Crossing is a requirement for comparison and learning. For some it easier to cross borders, for others they represent unscalable obstacles. We like it when people cross borders - preferring to frame the act of crossing as a bringing together instead of focusing on the dividing aspects it might imply. 

The transnational series confronts artists of our homeland Switzerland with others from all over the world and invites you to do some “transnational travelling” of your own. The musical link between the split-fellows gets embedded in visual representations of the artists’ individual worlds made up of photographs of specific things, of places and events of their everyday life they provided us with. Ron takes up these stimuli of the artists and integrates them in his graphical artwork that will be the golden thread throughout the series, while I try to frame it all with a written story based on conversations with the artists and mental snap-shots that happened on the way to the final record.

Tracklist:
Kelley Stoltz – One Good Reason
Kelley Stoltz – Gotta Get Across
Kelley Stoltz – My Mouse
Kelley Stoltz – Whats the Tempo Tim
Kelley Stoltz – Onkyo Pools

Augenwasser – Do You Really Want To Know?
Augenwasser – Fire
Augenwasser – The Lost Weekend
Augenwasser – Only Tears Can Judge Me
Augenwasser – I See You

Black 12" vinyl (180g), special gatefold packaging including a 24–page booklet, Frontcover with a scratching colour screen print.
Edition of 500