CD release


OUT OF SILENCE / reflections on Samuel Beckett´s work

CD one (48:59)

CD two (50:15)


podalida.com & modisti.com

production & graphics by Wolfgang Peter Menzel




with sound work of

John Duncan (Italy), Sarah Boothroyd (Canada), Leo Bettinelli (Argentina), Merran Laginestra (Spain), Pedro Lopez (Spain), Antanas Kučinskas(Lithuania), Philip Julian(UK), Jefferson Boss(UK),

Robin Parmar(Ireland), Richard Carr(Ireland), Marc Egea Spain), Ola Ståhl (Sweden), Seth Guy (UK),

Charlie Williams (UK) and Wolfgang Peter Menzel (Sweden)



The unique Samuel Becketts work, plays, novels and poetry, rendering him

the nobel prize in literature, is characterized by a deep expression of human

silence, in spite of his figures´ sometimes endless babbling.With the starting

point in that crackling silence I saw the challenge for sound artists to respond to.


There are not so many sound works corresponding to Becketts work, but a

lot of experimental sound together with texts of the author. When asking the

artists for contributions to these two CD:s I want them to conduct themselves

more to what they felt being the essence of Becketts work than to illustrate

a text based on intellectual understanding.


The pieces include a wide range of different interpretations, possibilities of

understanding Becketts work in sound, from using the authors text changing

into a sound atmosphere, from language destruction down to a noise level,

from rhythmic repetition to epic width. Finally the SOUNDING NOTHING project

turned out as a double CD as it was ment to be.


The question of words, literature, and music is enigmatic. perhaps the

question of words and sound is even more enigmatic. fifteen sound artists

try to handle with this on "out of silence", which can be regarded both a

presentation and documentation.


When asking the artists for a sound reflection the only relation demanded

was the Beckett affiliation, nothing more, nothing less, the rest was up to each

of them.


Whether sonorous images or compositional pieces, there were no restrictions.

Generally the sound pieces are nor translations neither literally rendered. They

just bear parallel witness, as soundtracks, of what Beckett was writing about.

Whether these works of sound art will be experienced as music or not is a

secondary question. a careful deep listening will transpose them somewhere

to the farthest edge, in the centre of the listener - out of silence.


Fail again, try again, fail better (Samuel Beckett).


Wolfgang Peter Menzel / editor


This edition is available through

podalida.com / thesoundlogg.com