Norbert Möslang has for some time sought out the benefits of transmuting light into sound--the title of his latest investigation refers to the practice of changing the values in the header code of a data file. Here, he has taken video stills from Swiss video artist Silvie Defraoui and made sound files from them, pressing them onto vinyl and mixing them live at an arts event in St. Gallen, his home town. What these undertakings have discovered of value is debatable. Opener ¨_8.27¨ consits of little more than a fast-flickering, gently undulating drone, which no more confounds established notions of light-as-sound than does a malfunctioning strobe. However, ¨_8.20¨ is more eventful, casting sudden, imaginary beams of illumination, while the spidery fury of ¨_5.44¨ feels like a cluster of mini-epiphanies.
> David Stubbs, The Wire, 12.2007

The man who once atomized the ether courtesy of his "cracked everyday electronics" in the duo Voice Crack has been far from idle. header_change is Möslang's second offering for Cut, adding to a back catalog that possesses as great a depth in quality as in quantity. A chameleonic presence on the electroacoustic improv stage, Möslang's something of an agent provocateur, equally at home abusing the parameters of his harddrive or igniting the toxic elements of the atmosphere with those mysterious, cracked electronics. Either way, his devil-may-care approach makes for a time enjoyably spent in front of the monitors, graphic equalizer remote control at the ready. header_change, therefore, is a departure of sorts. Here, the voices don't crack so much as dirty up the skyline, wiping away clean the niceties of the stereofield thanks to Möslang's spirited laptop. What arises off the disc surface alternately sounds like swarms of wasps gathering for attack; B52s strafing the scorched earth below; Martian windstorms eroding the cleavage off gorges of millennia-old rock. Then Möslang throws a curve ball and traps your psyche in a sensory deprivation tank with only the sound of residual tuning fork vibrations to keep you company—it's completely unnerving, thankfully for just a three minute, eighteen second duration, or you'd be quickly off your noodle. The three-plus minutes of track six offer emotional rescue from the piece's infinite decay by virtue of its nuclear-parched landscape where resides the moans of dying quasars, no less suffocating an experience, though Möslang sculpts the ensuing 'scape with obvious relish. By the time the radioactive dust settles during the sputtering gasps and implosive microsonic tics of the final five-minute piece, it's evident that Möslang doesn't seek to model the latest line of designer noiseware. Amidst jetstreams of pulsing discharge, this is the sound of a man who begs to be taken seriously, whose variations of computer concréte better the staid academic self-indulgencies sullying the halls of INA-GRM. The overwrought experience of header_change yields difficult rewards, but they're rewards well earned.
> Darren Bergstein, The Squid´s Ear, 11.2007

Don’t expect any mercy from Norbert Möslang. His recordings look to the future but they do it without any hope for grace, appearing cold and detached to those who are afraid of the truth. Luckily he doesn’t seem to care, maintaining an active search for different nuances through the most unexpected means; and if they’re not his customary “cracked everyday electronics”, there are many more helpful sources to exploit. A previous CD on this very label (“Capture”) had already given us a serious report about Möslang’s ability in creating light-derived music, yet this time the inquisitive scientist went a step further, tampering with the headers of video stills by Swiss visual artist Silvie Defraoui and converting them to audio files, which he then proceeded to press to vinyl in order to mix them live during a performance in St.Gallen. The same were used as the basis for the seven tracks in “Header_change”, yet another record that will reveal its radical force via speakers; as a matter of fact, the distorted undulations and the ever-morphing cross-currents of dissonant resonances that move the sonic mass give birth to several imposing moments where our brain acts as a generator of virtual patterns and imaginary textures. At times we intuit a non-existent approaching helicopter, then we get a Wall-of-Jericho-crumbling-down outburst, then again it shifts to what’s perceived as a vibrator resonating in a casserole, while the surroundings get saturated with digital griminess that could become the pretext to close unwanted relationships. The frequency content mutates constantly, privileging subsonic activities one moment, giving room to hypothetical rhythms a minute later. Light has never sounded so threateningly obscure and, in a way, material.
> Massimo Ricci, Touching Extremes, 11.2007

This is the latest album of Swiss visual and sound artist Norbert Möslang who plays cracked everyday-electronics and was part of the now defunct duo Voice Crack. Möslang produce some audio files by changing the headers of video stills from Swiss video artist Silvie Defraoui. He mix these audio files live which were pressed to vinyl at a Defraoui arts prize ceremony that won this artist. Then these files become into seven compositions that comprise ‘header_change’. Granular and static sounds, sine waves, drones and flickering tones come back and forth to produce hypnotic feelings and micro-textures. Möslang’s music is a soundtrack for abstract images and I guess is the perfect music for Silvie Defraoui’s videos. The performance of these artists must be a real fascinating experience!
> Guillermo Escudero, Loop, 10.2007

The practice of sampling other artists surely isn’t anything new in modern music. Norbert Möslang, however, has a novel approach, bending quite notably both the ideas of sampling and the type or artist whose work is typically mined. Möslang, formerly of the duo Voice Crack, specializes in the transformation of light into sound, and on header_change, he manipulates video stills from the work of Swiss compatriot and visual artist Silvie Defraoui, creating clouds of electric haze from light and darkness in an original brand of musical photosynthesis.
The subtle shudder of a stilled video image is a prime sound source for Möslang, with rapid buzzing undulations a near-constant underpinning of the disc’s tracks. Listening to header_change tends to be an enveloping experience, with blankets of electric vibrations cascading forth in gentle ebbs and flows. While there exist changes in the pitch and character of the sounds, Möslang’s approach on each of the disc’s tracks is largely the same. The electronic fog of each track is manipulated to shift the tone of the piece, both in subtle and more apparent ways. At times, Möslang’s transitions are like those of a sunrise, with change happening so slowly that only the wholesale transformation is noticed, but at others, the tempo of the sound’s wavering is altered quite sharply, or the differing patterns of undulation are pulled into phase, a multitude of voices becoming one. Möslang stretches the stills’ data to its limit, and what one might expect to be a claustrophobic experience feels surprisingly expansive.
The term “glitch” has quite a loaded connotation in contemporary discussion of electronic music, but it remains relevant to Möslang’s technique here, which can sound like an army of skipping cd players set loose on the listener’s ears. The concept of a soundtrack without a film is one often conjured in music reviews, and on header_change, Norbert Möslang puts a microscopic twist on the idea, making a soundtrack frame by frame.
>Adam Strohm, fakejazz.com, 10.2007

Are images and sounds mutually convertible? Can we listen to videos and look at a composition? Norbert Möslang is convinced it is possible. For years, he has been working on collecting evidence for his convictions, mainly against general opinion. With the publication of “header_change”, he has now come up with a short, but stupifyingly intense album to back up this theory. And yet, it may not make things easier for him.
This is mainly because the album’s method at first seems too trivial on paper and has in turn resulted in a confrontational work in practise. Möslang has changed parts of the parameters of video stills by long-standing Swiss media artist Silvie Defraoui, transforming them into music by manipulations of the source code. The danger of this kind of approach lies not so much in its simplicity, but rather in the dangerous suggestion that if the basic elements of two different art forms are identical, their digital sequences will retain the same meaning after the translation process. Or, to put it differently: Ones and Zeros only start making sense within a specific context.
After thirty years as a member of the widely praised formation “voice crack:” and an already burgeoning solo career, however, one can safely assume that Möslang is not naive enough to believe things are this easy. He has decided to carry through the procedure rigurously and with only minimal post-productional efforts on his side. He has accepted that what he has ended up with is harsh, brute and sometimes aggrssive brick wall of drilling frequencies, an attack of edgey drones drenched in distortion only occasionaly pierced by flanger-effects or scraping noises, a world with a monochromatic palette except maybe for the sharp, yet open structures of “2”. And he has done all of this without including direct references to the images used, depriving his audience of the chance to make comparisons and analysing the relationship between the two media. As it turns out, though, there is a good reason for his actions.
This reason mainly has to do with a different perception of sound and images. To Möslang, the act of hearing is not necessarily fluent and linear, while a still image does not need to be static. Music can capture a single mood or a state just as much as it can try to develop themes and motives in a classical sense. It approaches visual qualities the more it increases its inner complexity and reduces its outward movement. Images, in turn, often reveal their deeper meaning through the path of the searching eye on the canvas and through the influence of time on the spectator. While they may be stills in principle, they can not be detached from the act of observation, which makes them come alive. The more the image relies on the active and subjective input of the viewer, the more dynamic it gets and the more it withdraws into the inner eye of the listener – the same spot music tends to when aspiring to the optical spectrum. And with absolute certainty, there is a place where the two can intersect.
Norbert Möslang has done everything in his power to get there. He has carefully gone for Defraoui as an artist deeply interested in memory as the domain of the arts. And he has opted for drastic sounds to emphasise the physicality of his tracks, to put them in touch with the entire body of the listener, with his eyes and with his ears. Indeed, some passages sound as though beams of light were gulfing through them, rippling the surface of the air arouind us, creating chains of associations which are hard to place but almost tangible nevertheless. It may all be an illusion. But if it is, then it is an intruiging one, giving hope to the thought that sounds and images may well be mutually convertible one day.
>Tobias Fischer, Tokafi, 10.2007

Als Header, zu deutsch: Dateikopf, so lasse ich mir sagen, werden in der Informationstechnik Metadaten am Anfang einer Datei oder eines Datenblocks bezeichnet. Möslang transformiert Headers von Videodateien und verwandelt dabei quasi Lichtfrequenzen in Klang. Er mischt in 7 Variationen dunkle Dröhnwellen mit schneidenden Hochtönen und flatternden Mitteltönen, wobei - so bei ‚2_8:20‘ - deren Amplitudenausschlag zeitweise über das ganze Klangbild wischt. Giftig grelle Kurzwellen und rau wabernde Dröhnschwingungen wechseln von aggressivem Druck zu sonorer Motorik, zu monotoner, pulsierender, surrender Betriebsamkeit, die prozesshaft verschiedene Arbeitsgänge durchläuft. ‚7_5:44‘ wartet noch einmal mit peitschenden Zuckungen auf, die einen technophilen Flagellanten in Ekstase versetzen mögen, in mir aber allenfalls luddistische Aversionen schüren.
>Rigobert Dittman, Aufabwegen, 11.2007

Möslang is just credited with computers so I presume some how he’s converted and manipulated the stills into audio format. Each of the seven tracks are built around droning cold metallic and slightly shifting main tones, with other Crackling muffled sub tones appearing around the edges and swimming through the main tone. Talking of swimming that’s exactly what track seven sound's like swimming in a sea of grey and white electronic pixels, as if you dived into the pc screen or into you televisions endless snowy static. Many of the other tracks give the feeling of waking up & finding yourself stuck inside a metallic, wire and circuit board licked Cube, much like the Canadian 90’s sci-fi thriller of the same name that details a group of people been stuck inside a series of metallic and technology advance cubes, that shifted are around them. The sound air here is very tight and compacted, bringing on the feeling of been enclosed in a sinister, emotionless environment of steel, circuit boards and cruelty. As usual with cut label releasers it comes in a nice screen printed card folder, With the only slight disappointment been that there no pictures of the video stills Möslang used to create the 7 tracks. A very satisfying exercise in oppressive tone manipulation and cold malevolent sci-fi dread. To find out more, hear sound samples and buy direct lock into this cold metallic portal.
>Roger Batty, Musique Machine, 10.2007

The practice of sampling other artists surely isn’t anything new in modern music. Norbert Möslang, however, has a novel approach, bending quite notably both the ideas of sampling and the type or artist whose work is typically mined. Möslang, formerly of the duo Voice Crack, specializes in the transformation of light into sound, and on header_change, he manipulates video stills from the work of Swiss compatriot and visual artist Silvie Defraoui, creating clouds of electric haze from light and darkness in an original brand of musical photosynthesis. The subtle shudder of a stilled video image is a prime sound source for Möslang, with rapid buzzing undulations a near-constant underpinning of the disc’s tracks. Listening to header_change tends to be an enveloping experience, with blankets of electric vibrations cascading forth in gentle ebbs and flows. While there exist changes in the pitch and character of the sounds, Möslang’s approach on each of the disc’s tracks is largely the same. The electronic fog of each track is manipulated to shift the tone of the piece, both in subtle and more apparent ways. At times, Möslang’s transitions are like those of a sunrise, with change happening so slowly that only the wholesale transformation is noticed, but at others, the tempo of the sound’s wavering is altered quite sharply, or the differing patterns of undulation are pulled into phase, a multitude of voices becoming one. Möslang stretches the stills’ data to its limit, and what one might expect to be a claustrophobic experience feels surprisingly expansive. The term “glitch” has quite a loaded connotation in contemporary discussion of electronic music, but it remains relevant to Möslang’s technique here, which can sound like an army of skipping cd players set loose on the listener’s ears. The concept of a soundtrack without a film is one often conjured in music reviews, and onheader_change, Norbert Möslang puts a microscopic twist on the idea, making a soundtrack frame by frame.
>Adam Strohm, fakejazz.com, 10.2007

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