For more on Eric Schmid:
There’s no shortage of blowhards within underground music discourse complaining about a lack of challenging material in the culture; reliance on particular methodologies and sonic tropes, they say, has resulted in an experimental music lacking in actual experiments, in the scientific sense at least. This situation, they complain, perpetuates a musical form stripped of its core ideological mission and a shortage of artists who make their audiences work to get anything out of their art. A reasonable enough assessment at times, for sure, but where the majority of these complaints appear to come from only-half-interested-in-the-first-place professional writers who are paid to cite half arsed techno acts in fancy dress as the solution, I myself would point you toward the work of Eric Schmid. If it’s a challenge you want then forget professionally ambitious MacBook Pro owners pouting amidst shrouds of dry ice - get yourself a single sided record consisting entirely of a guy doing an impression of a German philosopher. It’s not even the first album like this he’s made - see also 2017’s ‘Alain Badiou’ on Recital where our hero explores similar themes. I myself admit to having an enjoyably difficult relationship with Schmid’s work with as much of it going way over my head as it does straight to my heart. The guy is absurdly prolific with a practice encapsulating audio works, visual art, gallery curation, pod casting and heavy going written tomes of philosophy (to speak of only a few) it’s impossible to pin him to one thing at one time. Despite this heavy presence in a number of fields, I’ve yet to see a whole lot of plainly descriptive or biographical information about Schmid online. He just seems to show up in the form of his many creative pursuits. The outputs of these activities veer wildly in their aesthetic and thematic complexity, in most cases walking a thin tightrope of brilliance below which lies a chasm of maddening pointlessness. However it is the sincerity with which Schmid executes and stands by his ideas which transforms them into genuinely ambitious, worthwhile artworks. In spite or because of its naked absurdity and ridiculous premise, Hans Ulrich Obrist offers an audacious, contemporary take on the type of thinking which resulted in by now classical works of sound poetry, radio play and fluxus performance in the 20th century. The experience of the work is in your own squaring of its absurdity with the clear process inherent in the material, announcing its intent from the first instance and giving you fuck all else to work with until the thing is over. Make no mistake - this is seriously considered and highly conceptual art, but it is delivered with a tongue in the cheek pointed firmly in the direction of Sound Poetry’s more ridiculous possibilities. Like a stoner Heidsieck? Who knows. Ursonata it is NOT. To make things even easier/harder, Hans Ulrich Obrist is but one of three distinct items included in this release from Index Clean. ‘Total Work of Art’ being an art book consisting of several visual pieces by Schmid and ‘Chaotic Neutral’ a CD companion to the LP which, without revealing too much, will give you a real thrill if, like me, you sometimes think a few of the most celebrated and darling hot shots in the world of new art and music could use a bit of a dressing down from time to time.

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