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Joke Lanz & Petr Vrba — Mutants in Siberia
(Circum-Disc microcidi043, 2025, CD)

by Peter Thelen, Published 2025-06-20

Mutants in Siberia Cover art

The information sheet that came with this release stated that the two protagonists first met while standing in the line outside the Hermitage museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia. They never actually made it into the museum, instead opting to go and get some soup and wine instead, and decided to join forces and create a power duo of the strangest kind. Joke Lanz (who also goes by Sudden Infant) is an Austrian turntablist, noise artist, performer, and vocalist, now based in Berlin, active since the 80s. Petr Vrba is an improvising musician from the Czech Republic, who plays trumpet, clarinet, synthesizer, electronics, and anything else within reach; he is one of the most active experimental musicians in Prague. The duo has toured the Czech Republic twice as well as performances in Vienna and Berlin, but Mutants in Siberia is the duo’s first recording. Folks, this is some pretty strange stuff, as one might have already suspected, at least as strange as the image on the album’s cover. Experimental indeed. Think of all the permutations of what could be done with trumpet, electronics, spoken voice, whistling, turntables, laptop, and samples, and it’s probably here somewhere on the album’s twelve tracks. It’s a studio recording, though I suspect the duo wouldn’t have any problems making this happen in a live setting; all the ingredients are here, and the toolkit is pretty bizarre and downright wacky at times. One track titled “No Surprise” is anything but, with chaotic sounds and unusual electronics flying all around, with some spoken word passages often barely intelligible all tied together in a noisy package that defies description. Other crazy titles like “Ferry Boat to Your Brain,” “Submarine Inside Your Body,” “Ornette Coleman's Elephant,” and “Buster Keaton's Pork Pie Hat” all give some idea of the madness herein. Even repeated listens won’t acclimate the listener in any significant way, this is truly out there in every way imaginable.

Filed under: New releases, 2025 releases

Related artist(s): Petr Vrba, Joke Lanz

More info
http://circum-disc.bandcamp.com/album/mutants-in-siberia

 

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