Majmoon - Stone Upon Stone Festival, Nis

Sebastian Meyhöfer

The presence of Munich based Majmoon at the Stone Upon Stone festival in Nis, Serbia owed as much to Art as it did to Music. When speaking of Art it is not talk of painted portraits or lush landscapes but the contemporary kind that is fueled by concept rather than beauty. The sounds come hand in hand with the visuals of Anton Kaun who is known for his haunting images for projection, performance and video.

Asmir Sabic

Think in terms of systems and ritual when considering Majmoon, for both these concepts contribute to the ideas of Asmir Sabic (guitar), Axel Wagner (drums,electronics), Josip Pavlov (guitar,bass,trumpet), Thomas Westner (guitar) and Sebastian Meyhöfer (violin,bass,xylophone). Their appearance at the Klub Feedback (16/04/2015) started with an attrition of grinding repetition that never abated but grew with each brick, upon brick, upon brick that they laid.

Axel Wagner - drums

 Imagine that you traced a loop with your finger on a page of paper, the shape is a upside down tear that crosses at the end. Imagine doing that again and again, traced and retraced, going round and around. Your body starts to lose it's fleshiness and the kinetics of being start to take over. What was once your heart beat is now the throb of an engine, your inner propeller ready to burst free. It never does, the machine's throb stays behind the walls with a sinister edge, like a revolver in the pocket. After the Robert Calvert style growl all we feel is the asymmetric click as our engines cool.

Thomas Westner

All is not high-octane as the violin of Sebastian Meyhöfer plays a slower pull. We escape the machine like Julia and Winston in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, looking out of the ruins of our paneless windows. Majmoon's sound is both cerebral and primitive. It elevates your perspective as though viewing our globe from a mile high, we watch the planet rotate slowly, the dawn light creeping in a line that bisects night from day. These musical themes splash across us like a birthmark of light, the visual projections of Anton Kaun are never far behind.

Josip Pavlov

Before long the loop is back again, more often than not Majmoon work as a team, tracing and retracing together. They work the docks like a group of men pulling a steamer's rope but there is always a thread that winds free. Toward the end of their set this loose canon was the ox like figure of Josip Pavlov. So penetrating was this combination of repetition and thrust that it cut the Feedback audience in half. The knife which cut the bread kept on going, slicing through the board and ultimately the table, who knows whether it will cut the earth between our feet too.

AL.