Lärm & Gestalt

02/09/2024

Genuine Leather by Jan Utecht is now available at laerm-gestalt.com

Some copies will also be available this weekend at Indiecon, Hamburg and Wolf City Fest, Berlin!
More information about availability in bookstores etc. will follow soon.

“For the past fifteen years, Jan Utecht has toured North America, Europe, the UK and Scandinavia with his black metal band Occvlta. During this time he started taking photos with a small format camera, inspired by analogue and point-and-shoot photography. This gave him the opportunity to portray more than a hundred metalheads, friends and musicians.
Some of the people you see in this book are pictured on posters that have hung on the walls of rehearsal rooms for decades, including his own. These band photos had a strong influence on Utecht’s initial experiences with heavy metal music, particularly black metal.
Genuine Leather is a reflection of all this – how he perceived this music as a teenager and how he perceives it now as an adult.
With a foreword by the artist and an essay by renowned journalist and author Jörg Scheller.”

Thanks again to everyone who made this possible. ✨All book orders will be shipped within the next few weeks. For those of you who supported us on Kickstarter: the "Complete Leather" bundles will be shipped by the end of September.

02/08/2024

Genuine Leather by Jan Utecht can now also be pre-ordered on our website: https://laerm-gestalt.com/produkt/jan-utecht-genuine-leather/

(PayPal option is available; as some people have asked).

Book production starts this month!⚔️⚔️⚔️

06/07/2024

The 11th installment of the Lärm Mix series is a special edition to accompany the photo book "Genuine Leather" by Jan Utecht. In this 80-minute mix, Utecht welds together songs from some of the very people portrayed in his book. From proper f*cking 2nd-wave-classics to sweaty speed metal to damaged rock and psych music, this mix reflects the underlying theme running through Utecht's photo series: the fierce, resolute spirit of black metal.

Best to be played at neighbour-harassing levels via:
https://soundcloud.com/laerm-gestalt/larm-mix-11-jan-utecht-presents-genuine-leather

Tracklist:
1. Negative Plane - The Fall
2. Infernö - Thrash Metal Dogs Of Hell
3. Deathhammer - Satan Is Back
4. Kringa - Pearly Gates
5. Darkthrone - As Flittermice As Satan’s Spys
6. Reveal - Cadmium
7. Maggot Heart - LBD
8. In Solitude - Sister
9. No Future - Splendour Of My Hometown
10. Brånd - Wo draht da Weg?
11. Antichrist - Put To Death
12. Spite - Trapped In The Pentagram
13. Black Magic - Possessed
14. Satan's Satyrs - Black Souls
15. Natur - Zorched
16. Witchgrave - Motorcycle Killer
17. Occult Burial - Burning Eerie Lore
18. Impure - The Carrion Feast
19. Stress Angel - Ridicules Of Death
20. Obliteration - Ingesting Death
21. Nekromantheon - The Visions Of Trismegistos
22. Slutet - We Reap Our Crops

27/06/2024

For the GENUINE LEATHER Kickstarter we've created three add-ons. One of them is MORE IS MORE, a 66-page zine featuring "outtakes" from the Genuine Leather sessions from 2017 to 2020. This zine stands on its own, with minimal overlap with the people featured in the main book. From peak male performances to Genesis shirts to a mysterious stone, MORE IS MORE has it all! Available exclusively via Kickstarter.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/genuine-leather/genuine-leather-by-jan-utecht

24/06/2024

🤝

Jan "Hord" Utecht, der Sänger der Berliner Black Doomer OCCVLTA hat ein Fotobuch gemacht, für das er Metalfans und -musiker in ihrer Lederjacke auf ihrem Bett mit einer analogen Kamera porträtiert hat. Für die Produktion von "Genuine Leather" wurde nun eine Crowdfunding-Kampagne gestartet, hier bekommt ihr alle Infos dazu:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/genuine-leather/genuine-leather-by-jan-utecht/description

20/06/2024

We're live!
You can now pre-order and help crowdfund Genuine Leather by Jan Utecht, a 160-page photo book that portrays metalheads and musicians in their private bedrooms. We also have some cute rewards you might like. ⚔️

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/genuine-leather/genuine-leather-by-jan-utecht

13/06/2024

⚔ Soon on Kickstarter: GENUINE LEATHER by Jan Utecht. This 160-page photobook is a journey deep into heavy metal culture, portraying metalheads and musicians in their private bedrooms. Sign up to the link below to stay tuned! ⚔

Forthcoming: expected September 2024. Get the latest updates on the upcoming Kickstarter campaign by subscribing below!   Genuine Leather by Jan Utecht 24 x 26 cm / 10.2" x 9.5" 164 Pages Hardcover / Flush cut Design by Benedikt Eiden For the past fifteen years, Jan Utecht has toured North America,...

25/04/2024

BACK IN STOCK
LÄRM, Issue 2
available at laerm-gestalt.com

These turned out great! The second edition has a slightly updated layout + a more volcanic rock colour. 

"Once more, it’s a journey to the fringes. Recalling ­resistant and peculiar aesthetics, wondrous and forgotten outgrowths of music and cultural history of the last ­seventy years – a search for works with inherent value, often contrary to a semblance of seriosity. Inlcuding Vox Populi!, Takahisa Zeze, Antediluvian, Unica Zürn, Wolfgang Hilbig, Sergio Martino and others."

148 pages, 12×20 cm
Thread-sewn softcover 
Second Edition
Languages: English, German

hilbig

22/03/2024

Spilled Guilt by Valeria Calderoni is back in stock! The second edition has a slightly more compact format and layout, yet still contains the same profound, in-depth interviews on the subject of personal guilt. A comforting companion for your dreary hangovers or Sunday scaries. Now available again in our shop. laerm-gestalt.com

Edited by Valeria Calderoni
Layout by Benedikt Eiden
Illustrations by serena e.kippenbergen

Link in bio!

 

             

20/11/2023

The 10th edition of our music series is hosted by Liv Billerbeck, founder of Berlin underground institution Billo Records and numerous bands and projects including AUS, Die Letzten Ecken or Die Schiefe Bahn. For Lärm & Gestalt, she has merged radio play and film excerpts - flickering in and out like biographical scraps of memory - with the spirit of 80s DIY craft and wave music to create a raw, sometimes exuberant yet poetically atmospheric whole. From Asmus Tietchens to Max Goldt to Anne Clark and Skeletal Family there's heaps of great material to be found here, at times revealing the influences on the quasi-mythical post-punk realism of her own work.

Listen on soundcloud or through our website!

on.soundcloud.com/J2CSF
laerm-gestalt.com/laerm-mix/
-----------

Tracklist:

1. Delia Derbyshire - Falling From The Dreams (Ausschnitt)
2. みかんむくっ (Mikan Mukku) - 缶 (Kan) (Ausschnitt)
3. Clara Rockamore spielt Tchaikovsky - False Sentimentale
(„Das Gerücht“- Filmausschnitt Unsere Kinder, DEFA Dokumentarfilm, 1989)
4. Anne Clark - Our Darkness (Ausschnitt)
5. Auto Blubberbumm - Mensch, Fließband! (Ausschnitt)
6. Dark Arts - Egeria II
( Filmausschnitt Ingeborg Bachmann)
7. Omen - Cyborg Barbie
8. Throbbing Gristle - Distant Dreams Part Two
9. Kurt Schwitters - Ursonate (Ausschnitt)
10. Siekiera - Misiowie Puszyści Szewc Zabija Szewca
11. Max Goldt - Ein Bißchen Kreativität - Vom Kriege
12. Dark Day - Raven's Wing
13. Olaf und Olga - Hauch
14. Asmus Tietchens - Frautod Graffito
15. Boykot Fur - Uuuaaargh
16. Skeletal Family - She Cries Alone
17. Samuel Kleist - Großmutter > Flecken
18. Doris Norton - Iran No Ra
19. Özdemir Erdoğan - Gurbet
20. Arthur Russell - Losing My Taste For The Nightlife
21. Constanze Demby - (Ausschnitt) aus „At Alaron“
22. Vashti Bunyan - Iris’s song
23. Pierre Schaeffer & Pierre Henry - Orphée 53
( Ausschnitt BBC „Do you think there is life on other planets?“)
( Filmausschnitt - La Jettee von Chris Marker, 1962)
24. Seen Links, Schlösser Rechts - Die Nacht
25. Die Letzten Ecken- I.C.H.

29/06/2023

OUT NOW: LÄRM Issue 3

The third issue presents a collection of essays on nostalgia at the junction of pop culture and individual memory.

What is it about the emotional warmth lurking in our recourse to the past? What about the familiar? These and other questions are explored as we delve into the topic of nostalgia by means of song, through a landscape, a picture or a film – subjectively but also critically, in the hope of grasping the shape of this strange familiarity in all its ambivalent nature.

Authors:
Valeria Calderoni, Benedikt Eiden, Rumen Lasev, Ezio Sabottigh, Marion Schiwietz, Wyndham Wallace

Cover Illustration:

112 pp. | thread-sewn softcover | 20 x 12,2 cm (h x w) | English | ISBN: 9783000756641
Euro 12
www.laerm-gestalt.com

21/04/2023

First music release on Lärm & Gestalt: the demo tape by MÜDE! It's wonderfully bleak Deutschpunk, dwelling somewhere between the brittle and stoic hardcore of Chaos Z and the melodic tendencies of EA80, Criminal Code or the Wipers, with lyrics that could serve as a comforting companion for the universally dreaded winter months of (their hometown) Berlin. "Alles bleibt wie es ist / Ich fühle nichts", as it says in the programmatic track "Eisnebel". Salvation's at hand!'

Out now at laerm-gestalt.com and muedepunk.bandcamp.com

Edition of 50.
punk

14/04/2023

The 9th edition is hosted by Berlin noise rock formation . And not unlike their own musical output, this mixtape created by founder Tim Nagel displays a remarkable collision of energies. A dreamlike amalgam of dramatic narration, French avant-rock, 20th century minimalist composition and feverish punk music that eventually eats itself up and leaves a blank slate for everyone to write their own story on.  

Up on the Lärm & Gestalt souncloud or website! xx

25/12/2022

Christmas special ✨🌲: The 8th edition is being hosted by mystical German sound collagists LÄUTEN DER SEELE. Exclusively for the Lärm series, prolific main man Christian Schoppik (also Brannten Schnüre, Freundliche Kreisel, etc.) assembled an autumnal mix ranging from minimal wave, to obscure ambient, to somnambulist dark folk, to baroque Schlager to his own projects as well. And much like the latter, this collection of songs seems like a shadowy walk through glowing images of the past – personal or collective, real or imagined –, images of wonder and bewilderment that one might have forgotten throughout a lifetime, that sank and glimmered on half-reflected. An introspective, subtly nostalgic musical language that's right up our alley!

Listen on soundcloud or on our website!

The 8th edition is being hosted by mystical German sound collagists LÄUTEN DER SEELE. Exclusively for the Lärm series, prolific main man Christian Schoppik (also Brannten Schnüre, Freundliche Kreisel, etc.) assembled an autumnal mix ranging from minimal wave, to obscure ambient, to somnambulist dark folk, to baroque Schlager to his own projects as well. And much like the latter, this collection of songs seems like a shadowy walk through glowing images of the past – personal or collective, real or imagined –, images of wonder and bewilderment that one might have forgotten throughout a lifetime, that sank and glimmered on half-reflected. An introspective, subtly nostalgic musical language that's right up our alley!

Listen on soundcloud or on our website!

13/10/2022

The sixth edition is being hosted by American underground pioneer Robert Turman whose work has been called "the square root of so much foundational DIY music" (Boomkat). Exclusively for this series, he put together a mix of his newest releases 'Il Planetario' (recorded at Ravenna Planetarium in Italy), 'Euro 1 & 2' as well as previously unreleased material. Despite its total of 16 parts, every fragment here seems to be melting into one another, resulting in an hour-long, dreamlike amalgam of hazy, dissociative atmosphere consisting of (his patented) crunchy, heavily textured ambient loops. To keep it real and pure here: We're truly honoured to have the opportunity to feature Turman, and at the same time to shine a light on his more recent output.

Listen to it on our website!
laerm-gestalt.com/laerm-mixtape/

📷 by Mark Rietveld

27/09/2022

SPILLED GUILT is available at Buchhandlung Leseglück in Berlin-Kreuzberg 🤓

20/09/2022

SPILLED GUILT edited by Valeria Calderoni is out today!

Several years in the making, this book presents a series of anonymous interviews on the subject of guilt.

How aware are we of the factors that shape our experience with these feelings of inadequacy? Usually, guilt can be seen as a necessary component of the mechanisms for the functioning of society and the individual. However, those functional boundaries are ambiguous and can be easily crossed by both institutions and individuals, feeding into a sense of inadequacy that can become paralyzing.

Could guilt’s grip on our conscience eventually be loosened and remodelled through the process of expressing it, investigating its origins, and reconsidering its legitimacy by our standards? These and many other questions Spilled Guilt explores through intimate, in-depth conversations.

Edited by Valeria Calderoni
Layout and Design by Benedikt Eiden
Illustrations by Serena Emiliani

27/08/2022

Hey y'all, people who write! The third issue of Lärm is in the works – the main focus this time: the interplay of NOSTALGIA & REASON. Let us know if you have stories, essays, thoughts, etc... This issue will be published in German and English, so contributions are welcome in either language. Minimum 1500 words // [email protected] // until 31.01.2023. ✌️🖤

24/06/2022

To launch and celebrate our new name, 'LÄRM & GESTALT', there's gonna be a limited shirt run to cop, and to rock, for you this summer. You can pre-order them through our website.
Shirts will be available approximately by the end of July.

Printed on 200 g/² Gildan Ultra Cotton.

Design by the great

13/06/2022

Upcoming...!

28/03/2022

Introducing the fifth installment (5/10) of the Lärm Mixtape Series: this time around it is being hosted by German rhythm & noise duo Symbol Worship. For Nemesis I, a Lärm-exclusive live set, they've boiled down the moody broadband sound of their debut album to a somewhat purer affair. The taste for overdrive and killer 80s snares seems to be even more prominent here when they hammer out their quasi-techno over a shadowy backdrop of enigmatic samples and effects. Hints of Death Grips gleam through this blissfully ripping mix, as does the bouncy, elastic electro-havoc of Curley Schoop or Container. A keeper!

Listen on Mixcloud or through our website.

https://www.mixcloud.com/Laerm_Publications/l%C3%A4rm-mixtape-05-symbol-worship/

05/01/2022

Introducing the fourth instalment of the Lärm Mixtape Series. This time around it is being hosted by French underground legends Vox Populi!. Bandleader Axel Kyrou dug deep in his record collection to create "Il Viaggio Immobile", a warm and breezy 30 minutes of 1970s Italian prog music. This set – ranging from esoteric pop to analogue electronics to progressive rock (without the noodling) to dreamy folk inflections – is pre-echoing the sound of his own band a few years later and might work best on a Saturday morning with a cup of hot coffee and an opulent breakfast fantasy in mind.

https://www.facebook.com/POPULIiVOX
https://www.mixcloud.com/Laerm_Publications/

09/11/2021

Introducing the second installment of the Lärm Mixtape Series.

This time around it is being hosted by Berlin-via-Athens duo Phallucipher and their "Creature Of Abstraction" – a 50-minute sub-bass journey of genuine mystery that finds the sweet spot between the cinematic concrète sounds of Étant Donnés and the ritualistic pulsing rhythms of early Zoviet France. Headphones are indeed recommended!

Listen here: https://www.mixcloud.com/Laerm_Publications/ (or through our website

29/10/2021

First batch is going out-tah!

Thank you! 🤩

20/10/2021

Aaand it's out! 🥳 This one was a lot of work; it turned out really nice though, one might think!

Once more, it’s a journey to the fringes. Recalling ­resistant and peculiar aesthetics, wondrous and forgotten outgrowths of music and cultural history of the last ­seventy years – a search for works with inherent value, often contrary to a semblance of seriosity. Among them Vox Populi!, Takahisa Zeze, Antediluvian, Unica Zürn, Wolfgang Hilbig, Sergio Martino and others. For more info visit the website!

Limited to 200 hand-numbered Copies.
Measures 122x200 mm
Printed on 100 g/m² Munken Pure Rough
and Peydur 270 g/m² Softcover finelinen.

23/09/2021

Coming in October!

06/06/2021

Introducing the Lärm Mixtape series, #1 out of 10. In the first edition Pirmin Schachtel & Benedikt Eiden make sure you get up and do your thang by providing raw house tunes, techno and nasty synth funk.

Listen on mixcloud or via our website.

05/04/2021

New release! A photobook it is.

Nektar & Lethe by Benedikt Eiden is a collection of discarded photographs, resulting from years of browsing thrift stores and flea markets. Among what could be seen as insignificant and inconspicuous, now and then little gems emerge that are worth preserving, pictures that sometimes appear not entirely at ease to the observer, as if an uncanny certainty were already inscribed in them at the moment of their capture.
The compendium is supposed to set in where oblivion has long since raged—it's a glimpse beyond the cultural archives and simultaneously a small remembrance to the petty-bourgeois, orderly lifeworld from the post-war period into the 1960s.

Includes two colour postcards and an epilogue in German by the author.

Limited to a 100 copies. Now available in the shop.

20/12/2020

Eff a morning run, this is Mondo Quieto: 10 of our favourite quiet records. Link's in description.

+ Website update. All texts and essays will from now on be published exclusively once a year in print form. The website is now more about short blog posts, lists, news and our shop/label.

10/10/2020

Geschichten aus dem Paulaner-Garten (Tales from the Crypt).