The Trans Europe Postal Express (or T.E.P.E. for short) is an international project based on remote collaboration. A case with a Tascam Porta02 multitrack tape recorder was sent to various locations across Europe together with an instruction sheet, blank tapes and a sketchbook.
Selected SHAPE artists were challenged to step outside their usual creative practice and worked with the given medium – in this case a cassette tape recorder. Each artist had three days to create a tape recording according to instructions. After completing the task the artist forwards the case to the next artist who continued in the same manner.
After all the recordings were done, the case containing recordings from several artists returned to the starting point – into the hands of the project’s initiator, Prague based musician and sound artist Oliver Torr. He then processed the material to create a collaborative music album which explores the boundaries of authorship through the project’s use of indeterminacy. Torr’s creative process was inspired by the recorded material (audio, writings, drawings) as well as by the stopover locations and the communication with involved artists.
In this project the sampling method is a way of receiving energy and pushing it into the creative process. All the received material is ‘sampled’ or appropriated in different ways: left in its original form, processed, or serves as a point of departure and doesn’t emerge in the final product in its original form at all.
T.E.P.E. is inspired by various pioneers of indeterminacy in music, where the music which is being created is formed by unpredictable inner or outer influences. The project proposes an idea of post-indeterminacy in which the collective energy and sound itself pushes the author's mind into unknown territories.
credits
released March 31, 2021
Credits:
All music written, recorded, performed by Oliver Torr.
Additional samples and sonic and/or written energy: Clara de Asís, Elvin Brandhi, Fausto Mercier, Moesha 13, Peter Kutin, Poly Chain, Rojin Sharafi, kӣr, Širom
Graphic design: Matěj Moravec
Cassette Manufacture: Headless Duplicated Tapes
Mastering: Johanz Westerman (Studio Ballyhoo)
Transport coordinator: Pavel Kraus
Website Design and Development: Matěj Moravec
Additional Website Coding: Matouš Barnat
Photography: Jonáš Verešpej
Production: Filip Peroutka
Text Corrections: Freddie Hudson, Jonáš Verešpej
SHAPE Team:
Michal Brenner
Rihards Endriksons
Viestarts Gailitis
Barbora Hřebíková
Pavel Kraus (alumnus)
Lucia Udvardyová
Trans Europe Postal Express has been created by Oliver Torr with the support of MeetFactory and SHAPE platform and co-financed from the Creative Europe programme
supported by 8 fans who also own “Trans Europe Postal Express”
I have never heard something like this. This is seriously hot club music begging to be bought. And they are selling their whole discog for 7.5 euros
Are you kidding me? Harsh Agarwal
Meryll Ampe mutates a host of sound sources to make groaning machine music, coated in hiss and crackling with static. Bandcamp New & Notable Nov 13, 2022