GARDEN OF EDIACARA (Vinyl LP, -OUS, 2024)
Voice synthesizer, processed field recordings, physical modeling
«Music is a form of world building. I love to develop sonic characters and set them into fictional ecosystems with unique textures, acoustics and atmospheres. Each song forms a different landscape, through which a vocal character guides us and tries to tell us its stories.»
Ludwig Berger’s ‘fictional’ debut album «Garden Ediacara» unfolds as a musical eco-fiction, guiding listeners through a speculative ecosystem with synthesized vocals. Infused with storytelling techniques from sci-fi and fantasy, the album intertwines melodic songwriting with electroacoustic sound design. Inspired by hydrofeminism and eco-fiction novels, such as «A Door Into Ocean» by Joan Slonczewski, the album delves into the geological period of Ediacara around 600 million years ago — an era so remote it resonates as a glimpse into a possible future. The Ediacaran period was characterised by a peaceful and thriving ecosystem inhabited by soft-bodied creatures without eyes and bones, which were completely wiped out through the appearance of a new species. «Garden of Ediacara» alludes to this period, celebrating both the pleasures of biodiversity as well as mourning its inevitable loss. The narrative unfolds as an exploration of growth and interconnection in the shadow of a coming extinction.
The track titles, written by Daisy Lafarge, reveal themselves as a cohesive poem and contribute to the album’s narrative.
Informed by his practice of field recording that focusses on intimate encounters with plants, animals and geological phenomena, as well as his studies in electroacoustic composition, Berger expands his palette for his debut in ‘fictional’ music. The album prominently features a post-human, non-binary death metal voice synthesizer, physical modeling instruments, and microscopic field recordings of plants, insects, as well as aquatic and geological life. With impressionistic strokes, Ludwig Berger crafts vibrant worlds using glassy timbres and more-than-human voices, guiding listeners through emotionally ambiguous terrain, seamlessly oscillating between moments of intimacy and irritation, melancholy and playfulness.
"His Ediacaran landscape is far off and impressively developed […] Berger's sonic fictions are confusing, but a reflection of our garbled, cacophonous digital present - behind the tangled network of groans and hiccups, there's something new breathing." (Boomkat)
"Uunlike anything we can call to mind … Environmental Art at its best." (SoundOhm)
“The phenomenal new album from Ludwig Berger is real future-facing music. Heavily informed by field recording, the album lists through post-fictional worlds of sound, rather than gravitating towards anything concrete or constructed” (Reach Sound)
“Ludwig Berger ascends above the natural and the synthetic alike on ‘Garden of Ediacara’. Attaining an ineffably post-human position, Berger seems to stumble through an astonishingly plausible parallel world. Glistening, mythical sounds flutter and morph into musical arrangements, forming like crystals in a liquid solution” (Electronic Sound Magazine)
"Planty, rubbery, soapstone-like music to rave about" (SRF 3)
"An ambiguous ambiance where the sounds of nature and synthetic voices meet and blend, becoming indistinguishable from one another." (RAI 3)
A truly singular and atypical landscape, Garden of Ediacara is an immersion in an Eden of gentle savagery, imagined by Ludwig Berger, enveloped in electronic voices, micro-elements, field recordings, bubblegum electronica and tantalizing deviances.
Ludwig Berger offers us a moment of inner contemplation, charged with shifting emotions and luminous colors. Original." (Silence and Sound, translated from French)
"Very quirky and unique. It is great fun to listen to this album." (Radio X)
"A melancholic electro-acoustic environmental music masterpiece" (Newtone)
“Wandering the grounds of Ludwig Berger’s Garden of Ediacara is truly an intoxicating experience. Much like its namesake, Berger’s album is a site of discovery where previously unimagined, beautifully organic assemblages emerge from a deceptively familiar backdrop. Wholly engrossing and original.” (Andrew Pekler)
A silky, lucid surface snail path that opens communication with otherness or as otherness, while tickling the brain! (Francesca Heart)
“wet in it resonance life of secret glass ponds and reservoirs and its well beings / murmuring narratives / soaking tones” (Perila)
“For too long sound artists have spurred us to listen through other sets of ears, trying to imagine how sonic forms are received and restituted by animals, plants and even minerals. And yet, after all these years, we still seem to be often imprisoned by our very human, too human ears. Ludwig’s work jumps the fence in a way for which not only the whole world is invited to listen, but to sing as well. It turns out that it was more about giving instruments and amplifiers to the tree, the bee, the electromagnetic field, the volcano and the silica and let them play too.” (Luigi Monteanni, BABAU)
Written and produced by Ludwig Berger
Cover image and animations by Paulin Rogues
Track list poem by Daisy Lafarge
Mastering by Manuel Oberholzer VFBM
Graphic design by Rebecca Morganti-Pfaffhauser
Special thanks to Isabel Prado Caro
Release at -OUS, May 2024