After the Buddhist On Fire Release Halo From Inside The Mountains Stefan Paulus delved deeper into a world of pre-modern rituals which take place around the area of Mt. Säntis in Switzerland. He came back with modulated field recordings of chimes, bells, sound mills, unique music techniques like Talerschwingen (Coin swinging in a bowl) or Zäuerli (an overtone voice improvisation, harmonic yodel).

The similarity of these instruments, songs and techniques is that they are based on the harmonic series. The alpine herdsman explain their music practices and rituals by using the harmonic series to keep the good spirits in the surrounding and property. They try to reinforce with sound the harmonic vibrations of dead and living objects. Maybe because the separation from the sphere of the pre-modern sacred cosmology is completed in the modern days, the alpine herdsman have to renew in periodical rituals the harmonic state in the environment. They can only overcome the gap by means of mythological auxiliary constructions like the Silvesterchläuse and through their archaic techniques of ecstasy:

The Silvesterchläuse come from remote hamlets and walk from house to house in the early morning during the turn of the year according to the Julian calendar. Their faces are hidden behind masks and they are wearing bells and chimes. They sing the Zäuerli and they shake their bodies with the heavy bells for hours and hours to harmonize the land and people and their houses and animals.

“How Do You Make Yourself a Body without Organs? This is how it should be done. Lodge yourself on a stratum, experiment with the opportunities it offers find an advantageous place on it, find potential movements of deterritorialization, possible lines of flight, experience them, produce flow conjunctions here and there, try out continua of intensities segment by segment, have a small plot of new land at all times. It is through a meticulous relation with the strata that one succeeds in freeing lines of flight, causing conjugated flows to pass and escape and bringing forth continuous intensities for a BwO.” (Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari: A Thousand Plateaus)

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