Editorial · the Aachen experimental cluster · the post-1993 Khan continuation · the Damenbart hoax
The centre of the Aachen surrealist-experimental scene, founded by HNAS in 1983 and split by HNAS's own 1993 dissolution into two continuation labels, with Dom Elchklang the Khan inheritance and Streamline the Heemann inheritance.
Dom Elchklang is the Aachen-based experimental label that began life in 1983 as a sublabel of the parent Dom imprint, itself founded by Hirsche Nicht Aufs Sofa (HNAS), the avant-garde duo of Christoph Heemann (b. 1964, West Germany) and Achim P. Li Khan (Achim Flaam). The parent Dom operated 1983 to 1993 as the centre of the Aachen experimental cluster, with three sublabels running alongside it: Dom Elchklang (the vinyl sublabel, "DOM EK" catalogue prefix), Dom Bartwuchs (the secondary vinyl sublabel), Dom America (the US distribution arm run by Jon Carlson, a friend of the band), and 7 Elche Tape (the cassette sublabel). The Bureau notes that the label name's grammatical structure is itself characteristic dadaist humour: Dom (the German for "cathedral", with Aachen's Carolingian-era Aachener Dom the obvious referent), Elch (elk), klang (sound). The cluster's surrounding nomenclature ("Dom Bartwuchs" = "cathedral beard-growth", "7 Elche Tape" = "7 elks tape") sits in the same vein.
The 1993 dissolution of HNAS was acrimonious and split the label cluster in two: Dom Elchklang continued under Khan, and Streamline emerged as Heemann's continuation of the Dom Bartwuchs sublabel. Both labels have run intermittently since under their respective operators. The HNAS catalogue itself is widely compared to Nurse With Wound for its surrealist energy and its experimentalist methodology, with the HNAS LP Im Schatten der Möhre 1987 the cluster's masterwork. The full HNAS catalogue ran across both parent Dom and sublabel releases and includes the 1988 split-LP Ach, Dieser Bart!, whose acrimonious Heemann-vs-Khan track-allocation foreshadowed the 1993 dissolution itself. Characteristic track titles across the cluster ("Petrus Kam Aus Berchtesgarden", "Tonnenschwer Im Abendkleid", "Mutter, von Kunst versteh ich einen Dreck", "Grundgütiger! Der Drang Verstärkt Sich") establish the surrealist-dadaist editorial position the Bureau treats as the cluster's method.
The Bureau holds two Dom Elchklang releases as Bureau-gestures. The first is Damenbart's Impressionen '71 (DOM EK series, 1988), an elaborate fake-Krautrock hoax executed by Khan together with his then-partner Tina Schlebusch. The record was issued with a fabricated band biography, fabricated mastertape-discovery narrative (the "lost recordings" supposedly located by a former associate of the band in a Spanish studio), fabricated band photographs featuring obviously false beards and fabricated press notes; some collectors took the bait and the LP retains a place in the Krautrock collector tradition despite its actual provenance being the late-1980s Aachen experimental scene. The second is Brigitte and The Hansen Experience's Frau Hansen Am Bass (DOM EK 003, 1989), the only studio release by a parody-mutant-space-rock band fronted by the fictional bassist Brigitte Hansen, with Khan credited on "Schweine Effekte" (pig effects). The Bureau treats both releases as the catalogue's editorial high points: deliberate hoaxes that nonetheless produced real records of artistic merit, sitting structurally in the Dada-and-surrealist tradition the Aachen cluster otherwise carried as direct lineage.
Filed by Bureau editor · VAGO · revised c. the Middle Ages