Berlin-based events organizers and label Creamcake are pleased to announce their latest release, Ludwig Wandinger’s Eat the Rich (Original Score) album
Having participated in 3hd: “Let Them Eat Cake” last year, the producer, performer, and visual artist provided music for the festival’s pièce de résistance—a collaborative dramaturgy of performance, conversation, and food called “Eat the Rich.” The two-day banquet held at HAU Hebbel am Ufer was catered by artist and cook Caique Tizzi and named after the political slogan opposing wealth inequality and popularized during the French Revolution. Featuring a number of interdisciplinary artists—with Arvida Byström, Élie Autin, and Cassie Augusta Jørgensen among them—Wandinger’s soundtrack to these evenings of delightful resistance is an exquisite suite of seven MIDI movements, inspired by the event’s luxurious Baroque themes.
Eat the Rich (Original Score) tumbles in on the 11-minute atmosphere of opener “Flower Still,” its metrical harpsichord-sounding prelude blooming into delicate pads and choral patches that draw the listener into its world of decadence and escape. That track is followed by the ambiguous narrative thrust of structured three-to-four minute numbers, whether in the cyclic breathlessness of “The Jester’s Ritual” or the orchestral ebb of closer “Engouement” (French for “fad”). There’s another extended listen in the menacing swell of “The Lurking Dance,” while a sense of longing and wanderlust is led by a cascade of string samples on “Fernweh Poitrine.” As melancholic as it is hopeful, Wandinger’s compositions reflect on the “Eat the Rich” narratives of death and decay, beauty and power.
The artist himself is no stranger to the intersensory and interdisciplinary nature of the feast he scored. Working in both the audio, as well as visual fields under the multimedia digital art moniker of “kirschbluetenimwind,” Wandinger has shown his work across Europe and around the world. He often marries these mediums to cross-format, synaesthetic effect, whether it’s in the cover art for his 2021 cassette release on Orange Milk Records, Rooms, or his animation and sound piece “Modern Church,” presented as part of Vienna’s Keyframe digital art exhibition in 2022. Wandinger has also worked extensively scoring a number of choreographer Kianí del Valle’s dance performances, and is one of 16 artists selected to participate in a two-year residency for experimental music festival Monheim Triennale. With releases on labels like Gin&Platonic, and compilations like the Mutants Mixtape series—as well as co-production credits on PAN and Genot Centre—Wandinger’s work is an equal parts spontaneous and intentional organism of rhythm and sound design by a master of his field.