Beethoven für Anrufbeantworter: A Wild Ride Through Sound and Silence
Alright, let’s talk about this wild little gem of an album—Beethoven für Anrufbeantworter. Yeah, you read that right. Beethoven… for answering machines. It’s not every day you stumble across something so bizarrely creative it makes your brain do a double-take. This thing is like a collage of sounds, ideas, and emotions stitched together by Milan Knížák, Kommissar Hjuler, Hermann Scherchen, and the good folks at Psych.KG in Germany. The genres? Oh man, where do I even start? Non-Music, Classical, Electronic—it’s all over the place. And styles? Contemporary, Spoken Word, Experimental. Basically, it’s like they took everything conventional about music and threw it out the window.
Now, let me zoom in on two tracks that really stuck with me because, honestly, how could you forget them? First up: “Allegro Ma Non Troppo.” At first listen, it feels kinda familiar, like classical music you’d hear in some fancy museum or whatever. But then BAM! Something shifts. The melody starts breaking apart, like it’s unraveling before your ears. There are these weird electronic glitches sneaking in, almost as if Beethoven himself got into a fight with a synthesizer. It’s chaotic but also strangely beautiful, like watching a storm roll in. You’re not sure whether to run or just stand there and soak it all in.
Then there’s “Answering Machine,” which is exactly what it sounds like—and yet nothing like you’d expect. Imagine old-school voicemail messages mashed up with eerie ambient noise and fragments of piano melodies. It’s unsettling, but in the best way possible. Listening to it feels like eavesdropping on someone else’s life, except their life is happening inside a dream (or maybe a nightmare). One moment you’re hearing a robotic voice say something mundane like “Please leave a message,” and the next, it morphs into this haunting symphony of static and strings. I swear, I haven’t stopped thinking about it since my first listen.
What strikes me most about Beethoven für Anrufbeantworter is how unapologetically itself it is. Like, who else would dare to mix answering machine recordings with classical compositions? It shouldn’t work, but somehow it does. Maybe that’s why it lingers in your head long after the music stops—it doesn’t give you easy answers. Instead, it leaves you sitting there going, “Wait…what did I just experience?”
And here’s the kicker: this album isn’t just music; it’s more like a question mark disguised as sound. By the end of it, you might find yourself wondering if Beethoven would’ve approved—or if he’d be too busy laughing his wig off. Either way, one thing’s for sure: you won’t forget it anytime soon.
So yeah, go ahead and hit play if you’re ready to have your mind gently scrambled. Just don’t blame me when you can’t stop humming along to a dial tone later.
