HNAS · Hirsche Nicht Aufs Sofa.

HNAS · Hirsche Nicht Aufs Sofa is the founding project of the Aachen experimental-and-surrealist cluster filed by the Bureau at Tier III and F·12 Fluxus, and the parent project of the Dom Elchklang catalogue covered in detail across multiple other entries in the present archive (its most-cited child-project being Anemonengurt). Active 1983–1993, HNAS runs to about fifteen LPs and adjacent releases, and is among the most thoroughly archived German experimental-and-surrealist projects of the 1980s. The Bureau's reading is that HNAS is one of the continental documents of the post-Nurse-With-Wound surrealist-collage tradition, distinct from the Stapleton catalogue in its specifically Aachen-and-Rhineland sound and continuous with the upstream Fluxus editorial position the F·12 designation modes.

The project was founded in Aachen in 1983 by Achim Flamm (working under the operator-name Achim P. Li Khan, occasionally also Dr. P. Li Khan) and Christoph Heemann (born 1964, Aachen), both teenagers at the founding. Neither had conventional musical training; HNAS's later palette declares this directly through the deliberate non-virtuoso approach to the material. The first releases appeared from 1985 onwards, recorded at the (B)Artlos Studio in Aachen (the deliberately-named home-studio facility the two principals operated across the period). The 1985 LP Abwassermusik (DOM 77-16, recorded with the enigmatic Mieses Gegonge collective) is one of its clearest single records: the recording was made in an Aachen sewer main, with the principals using guitar, synthesizer, sparsely-thumped pipes, voice and the reverb of the sewer space itself as compositional materials. The Bureau notes the recording as one of the cleanest single instances in the present archive of site-specific industrial-and-experimental working: the architectural-acoustic space of the underground urban-water-infrastructure as compositional material, in a position structurally adjacent to the Test Department site-specific industrial-performance tradition and distinct from the conventional studio-recording mode of most adjacent catalogues.

The project's three early-period documents are filed by the Bureau as a distinct working trilogy. Küttel im Frost (DOM 77-18, recorded 1985–1986 at (B)Artlos Studio, originally issued on LP 1986 and cassette 1987) is the project's first full-length working statement, with the line-up extended to include Andreas Martin (Heemann's brother, later Mimir collaborator), Achim Flamm, Nicole Schmidt, and Martin Klaeren. Melchior (DOM 77-17, 1987) is the band's most-cited document, issued through Stapleton's United Dairies imprint with Steven Stapleton and his then-wife Diana Rogerson contributing; the record is the HNAS-NWW records and its primary bridge to the Nurse With Wound surrealist-collage network. Im Schatten der Möhre (DOM 77-19) is the third early-trilogy document and the only one Heemann later felt necessary to reissue on his Streamline label after the 1993 dissolution: the record is more dense and cohesive than its predecessors and foregrounds Heemann's drone-and-tape-loop direction that the later Mimir and Mirror projects would develop.

The sound it established across these three early documents combines two distinctive principals-and-directions in deliberate tension. Heemann's direction was drone, tape-loop, sustained-tone, and ambient-collage: the working materials that Heemann would later develop across the Mimir, Mirror, and In Camera continuation projects and across his sustained engagement with the Nurse With Wound and Current 93 networks. Khan's direction was sampler-driven, edit-and-paste, found-sound-and-found-language: a position closer to the John Oswald plunderphonic tradition and to the 1980s sampler-collage practice. The work's sound is the working tension between these two directions; one of the HNAS critical readings has consistently identified the two directions as a structural feature of the work rather than a contradiction, and the Bureau follows this reading. The Bureau notes that the tension was, by the early 1990s, no longer sustainable as a single project, and the 1993 dissolution should be read as the formal resolution of an inherent structural tension rather than as a contingent personal-relationship breakdown.

The 1988 The Book of Dingenskirchen (DOM V 77-11; later reissue DOM 77-20) collects studio leftovers from the 1986–1988 period and is, in the Bureau's reading, one of the project's most-entertaining cross-period documents. The 1986–1988 period also produced the Ach, Dieser Bart! / Als der Morgen kam twin 7" release (recorded at Artlos Studio 1987–1988, the first 66 copies numbered in handwritten gold pen with bonus 7"), and the records runs to about fifteen documented releases across the period. The discography's 1989–1993 period continued to produce releases on Dom and the developing sub-labels Dom Elchklang, Dom Bartwuchs and Dom America, with its idiom progressively shifting from the early-trilogy density into a more diffuse position that culminated in the 1993 dissolution.

The Bureau notes that HNAS is one of the direct comparisons that the Nurse With Wound critical reception has consistently produced. The comparison rests on several specific overlaps: the surrealist-collage editorial manner, the bizarre-humour titling, the deliberate refusal of conventional song-structure, the krautrock-adjacent extended-form construction, and the network-collaboration. The catalogue is distinct from the Stapleton catalogue in being specifically German-Rhineland in editorial-and-linguistic palette (the German-language titling, the Aachen-specific site references), and in being a two-collaboration rather than a single-operator catalogue with rotating collaborators. The Bureau files HNAS at F·12 Fluxus on the position that HNAS's Dada-and-surrealist editorial position continues the upstream Fluxus sound, and that the F·12 designation more-accurately modes the project's position than any of the alternative form-designations available (the project is not industrial proper, not noise proper, not musique concrète proper, but a deliberate working combination of all three with the Fluxus editorial frame as the organising position).

The output closes in 1993 with the formal dissolution of the Khan-Heemann partnership. The label split into two continuation imprints corresponding to the two principals' working directions. Khan retained the Dom Elchklang sub-label and developed it across the later decades into the Aachen-experimental-and-surrealist cluster publishing: the DOM EK XXX catalogue-number sequence (distinct from the original DOM 77-XX HNAS-specific sequence) the publishing for projects including Damenbart, Brigitte and the Hansen Experience, Rowenta/Khan, Frank Rowenta, Dr. P. Li Khan (Khan's own-name-variant), Korea Soundblaster, Dieter Bauknecht, Otto Vokal, Piano Conrads, Coastal Guard, Grillhaus, Finsternis, Algebra Suicide, the independently-authored MAAT (Dörte Marth, a label-mate rather than a Khan project), and Anemonengurt (the latter the cluster's most-direct industrial-and-noise entry, produced and engineered by Khan throughout). The Dom Bartwuchs imprint passed to Heemann and was later rebranded as Streamline, which became the publishing for Heemann's solo work and adjacent post-HNAS projects.

Heemann's post-HNAS continuation paths are documented in the experimental-and-ambient archive. The Mimir collaboration with Jim O'Rourke, Andreas Martin (Heemann's brother) and Edward Ka-Spel of the Legendary Pink Dots produced a sustained 1990s-and-2000s catalogue working in the post-HNAS ambient-and-collage direction. The Mirror collaboration with Andrew Chalk produced one of the British-German drone-ambient catalogues of the late 1990s and early 2000s. The In Camera collaboration with Timo van Luijk produced a more recent continuation of the drone-and-collage position. Heemann's parallel production-and-engineering work for Charlemagne Palestine, Tony Conrad, Keiji Haino, and Limpe Fuchs (with substantive sustained engagement with the Nurse With Wound and Current 93 networks) places Heemann as one of the post-HNAS engineering-and-collaboration operators in the experimental-and-drone archive. The Bureau notes that Heemann's post-HNAS catalogue is one of the most-considerably-documented single-operator post-1993 working careers in the present archive's surrounding avant-experimental network.

Khan's post-HNAS continuation has, by contrast, remained within the Aachen Dom Elchklang cluster: an own-imprint position sustained across the Aachen network rather than a multi-network collaboration. The Bureau's reading is that this difference in continuation paths modes the underlying difference between the two HNAS principals: Heemann the drone-and-tape-loop moved into the international ambient-and-drone network, while Khan the sampler-and-collage sustained the specifically Aachen-cluster surrealist-and-experimental position. Both continuation paths are filed in the present archive as substantive working catalogues in their own right; HNAS is the parent project from which both continuations descend.

The Bureau's reading, in sum: HNAS is one of the continental records of the post-Nurse-With-Wound surrealist-and-collage tradition, a rare case of a teenage operator-pair producing a substantive ten-year catalogue from non-musician origins, a tension that worked as a structural feature rather than a contradiction, and the parent project of the Aachen Dom Elchklang cluster this archive documents. The F·12 Fluxus filing is the most accurate designation available: the project is not industrial proper, not noise proper, not musique concrète proper, but a deliberate combination of all three under a Fluxus editorial frame. Ten years (1983–1993) and about fifteen releases place HNAS among the most thoroughly archived German surrealist-experimental projects of the 1980s.

Filed by Bureau editor · VAGO · c. Classical Antiquity · last revised c. the interwar period