P16.D4 are filed in this archive as the Frankfurt cooperative cut-up and musique-concrète collective whose method · the long-distance solicitation, exchange and reworking of source material from international correspondents · set the European tape-network operational model of the 1980s.
P16.D4 were founded in 1980 in Frankfurt am Main by Achim Szepanski, Gerd Poppe and Ralf Wehowsky, working out of the Wahrnehmungen / Selektion crew. The name continues the project's prior Permutative Distortion / P.D. designation. Wehowsky later described the group's distinguishing position relative to its Neue Deutsche Welle contemporaries as a matter of method rather than rhetoric: where bands such as Plan or those on the Zickzack label moved between aesthetics as trends shifted, the Wahrnehmungen / Selektion crew worked from a stable method from 1982 onward, visible on the classic P16.D4 LPs Kühe in 1/2 Trauer and Distruct.
Szepanski and Poppe left in the early years. Ewald Weber (ex-Messehalle, also of NTL / Non Toxique Lost) joined when Poppe departed. The triumvirate of Wehowsky, Schönauer and Weber became the working core, though Wehowsky later noted in his 2005 Dan Warburton interview that the commitment of Messrs Schönauer and Weber was variable, and sometimes near zero. From 1983 Wehowsky recruited additional personnel for the Distruct sessions: Gerd Neumann (also ex-Messehalle / NTL), saxophonist Peter Lambert, and pianist Stefan E. Schmidt · a Hamburg mathematician and church organist who studied with Pense in England, became the fourth continuous member, and contributed to the LP's compositional structure.
The method is tape cut-up, musique concrète, and the recycling and transformation of previously published material. The compositional gesture is exchange: P16.D4 solicits source tapes from international correspondents, then reworks the material through cut, edit, electronic processing and re-organisation. The result is not collaborative in the conventional sense (no shared performance, no shared session), nor properly remix (no preservation of the original's structural integrity), but a third position the catalogue defines: the source material is the correspondent's contribution, the reworking is P16.D4's compositional act, and the released piece is the document of the exchange between the two.
The 1984 LP Distruct (Selektion SLP 005, released December 1984, recorded December 1982 to November 1984) is the central articulation of the method. The project's origin is preserved in the LP's liner notes: Harry C. Poole of Smegma had offered, in 1982, to send basic tracks for completion by P16.D4 in response to Selektion's Masse Mensch compilation invitation, with the formulation a complete tape made thousands of miles apart. Poole's tape never arrived, but Wehowsky began organising the Distruct project at the end of 1982 on the model. Source material arrived from Nurse With Wound, Merzbow, The Haters, Nocturnal Emissions, Die Tödliche Doris, DDAA, Bladder Flask, De Fabriek, Vortex Campaign, Harold Schellinx, Onnyk, Hiroki Kocha, Fredrik Nilsen, Philip Johnson and Déficit Des Années Antérieures. The LP runs the source material through reworking · fragments of opera, Soviet speeches, out-of-tune guitar, saxophone, jackhammers, field recordings, choirs, electronic processing · without hiding sources: liner notes identify each contributor's input. The track Aufmarsch, Heimlich builds from an anonymously-submitted Eastern European choir tape phased in and out of static beneath a skronky alto sax. The 1984 LP was reissued by Sonoris on CD in 1994 and again on vinyl in 2022.
The full catalogue runs through Wer Nicht Arbeiten Will Soll Auch Nicht Essen! (1981) and V.R.N.L. (1981), the major LPs Kühe in 1/2 Trauer (Selektion, 1982–1983) and Distruct (Selektion SLP 005, 1984), Masse Mensch (Selektion SLP 001 compilation, 1982 · the project P16.D4 invited Harry C. Poole to contribute to, and that catalysed Distruct), Nichts Niemand Nirgends Nie! (Selektion, 1985), Tionchor (Selektion, 1982–1986), Acrid Acme (Of) P16.D4 (Selektion, 1986–1988), Bruitiste (RRRecords, 1988), Fifty (RRRecords, 1990), and the compilation Three Projects (Bruitiste / Captured Music / Fifty) (RRRecords, 1993). Per Wehowsky's 2005 interview, the catalogue's sales figures · Kühe at 3,500 copies, Distruct at 2,600, Masse Mensch at 2,500, the later LPs at about 2,000 each, Tulpas at 1,700 · sit on the high end of the period's European industrial / experimental distribution scale.
Selektion · the cooperative collective P16.D4's members operated alongside the band · is the catalogue's home imprint. Selektion published LPs, CDs, books, visual art and design across the 1980s through the late 1990s. Achim Wollscheid joined Selektion after the band's early years; the partnership between Wollscheid and P16.D4 is the catalogue's longest-running collaboration, with Wollscheid using P16.D4 source material as the basis for his SBOTHI LP catalogue. The SLP catalogue ran on a 1,000-copy regular vinyl / CD print with an additional 1,000 designated as promotional distribution · a model the correspondence network the group cultivated could absorb without commercial pressure on the music.
Ralf Wehowsky is the catalogue's only continuous member across the full P16.D4 span. After the band wound down at the end of the 1980s, Wehowsky continued under the RLW alias, releasing solo and collaborative material that extends the P16.D4 method into the post-1990 European experimental tradition. The catalogue therefore is both a self-contained 1980–1988 corpus and as the first stage of a method Wehowsky has continued to develop across the later thirty-five years.
Citation. The Bureau attribution is F·05 Cut-up at the level of method and F·19 Musique concrète at the level of compositional inheritance. The catalogue is adjacent to the cooperative-noise tradition The New Blockaders, The Haters and the UK / American 1980s tape-network cultivated, and to the German experimental tradition contemporaneous with Asmus Tietchens, Conrad Schnitzler and the post-NDW underground. The longest cross-tradition links route through Achim Wollscheid / SBOTHI (installation art), Nurse With Wound (the Stapleton catalogue's reworking tradition), Merzbow (the Japanese noise inheritance) and DDAA (French experimental). The Distruct method · long-distance solicitation, reworking, transparent source-attribution · is at one of the European tape-network's compositional centres of gravity.