Dinos Chapman: Luftbobler
Sounds designed to penetrate the deepest corners of your mind in a visual artist’s first music album
by Sabine Zetteler
Created after a decade of audio experimentation, visual artist Dinos Chapman has emerged from his basement of beats with a new album that delights and disturbs in almost equal measure. His first foray into music production is unconventional and peculiar, providing an infinitely enigmatic landscape of surreal sounds, ticking electronica and the odd slash of speech. Luftbobler insists on complete mental immersion, is best played (in our opinion) very loudly and has the capacity to throw you totally off center, no doubt to the extreme pleasure of Dinos himself.
The sounds tinker and throb, managing to penetrate deep corners of the mind, thus creating a mild sense of anxiety. They also demand concentration which is pretty refreshing amid our landscape of digestible, tedious, love-laced lyrics, manage-to-hum-along-even-if-you’ve-never-heard-it-before musical melodies. The tunes may seem sinister and unnerving at times, but they’re mesmerising and disorientating too, in the most effective, emotional way. As with all art, whatever medium, what you feel is largely reflected by past experiences, dreams and fears, so the level at which this may warp your fragile mind, depends largely on you.
Chapman and his brother Jake are famous for controversial, challenging and often comedic artworks. This output plays in much safer territory, but then, it was never intended to be an artistic audio installation—in fact, it was never intended as an album release at all. Instead it’s the upshot of a conceptual artist’s steadfast interest in making, and there’s seemingly endless discovery in these 13 truly original tracks. Have a listen by downloading the album from iTunesor picking up a limited edition vinyl version of Luftbobler, produced in collaboration with The Vinyl Factory and pressed onto two 180-gram hand-etched records.
Images courtesy Dinos Chapman
