Trans Europe Postal Express

A 8 track electronic album (29m 44s) — released April 9th 2021 on Ways Of Hearing

A four-track cassette recorder Tascam Porta 02 along with a couple of blank tapes, a sketchpad and an instruction sheet were sent on a journey around various locations in Europe. The case made it back to Prague full of location-specific material and original music recordings that were used as a starting point for a new quasi-collaborative record by Oliver Torr, Trans Europe Postal Express.

Sudden restrictions on international travel and face-to-face meetings inspired a search for new forms of collaboration between the artists of the sixth edition of SHAPE, a platform for innovative music and audiovisual art from Europe.

Each selected artist (Clara de Asís; Elvin Brandhi; Fausto Mercier; Kӣr; Moesha 13; Peter Kutin + Rojin Sharafi; Poly Chain; Širom) was given three days to record sounds onto a tape, modify the medium's energy, draw in the sketchbook, leave their mark. Then, the case was sent to the next destination.

Another inspiration behind T.E.P.E was the idea of chance music (or aleatoric music) and its random, yet determined composition techniques where the chance element involves a relatively limited number of possibilities, pioneered by Pierre Boulez, Morton Feldman, John Cage or Karlheinz Stockhausen. Additionally, the case and its content represented Torr's energy in lieu of his physical presence while the fellow artists were working on their recordings and this remote exchange formed a foundation for their mutual freely creative transcendental process.

After a trip to Marseille, Vienna, Kyiv, Basel or Belgrade, the case returned back to its original destination packed with diverse audio-visual material. The collection of received sounds, noises, notes and sketches as well as the atmosphere of each city, together with the communication with the involved artists served as a source of inspiration for Torr, who then sampled the recordings, processed some into oblivion while rendering others in their raw beauty. The result is an eight-track record, Trans Europe Postal Express.

T-E-P-E.eu

  • Kudos happily ship all items worldwide.
  • Shipping costs and delivery times are available here.
  • UK items are sent tracked as standard at no extra cost.
  • We aim to dispatch orders placed before 2pm on the same day.
  • We are unable to ship orders on weekends or Bank Holidays.
  • If you purchase a pre-order item amongst an order of in-stock releases, we will typically hold your order until all items are in ready to send.
  • Although we use all reasonable means to ensure that your order is delivered within a specified time, we cannot accept any responsibility for late deliveries due to circumstances outside of our control. We will do our best to inform you of any unexpected delay.