Non Standard Institute is not a school. Non Standard Institute is not a "band." Non Standard Institute is certainly not an act—though performance is at the very core of its being. Non Standard Institute is anything but standard. Non Standard Institute is the partnership of Tobias
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Non Standard Institute is not a school. Non Standard Institute is not a "band." Non Standard Institute is certainly not an act—though performance is at the very core of its being. Non Standard Institute is anything but standard. Non Standard Institute is the partnership of Tobias Freund and Max Loderbauer, and if you know these names, you will know to expect only the unexpected from their collaboration. On recordings for Cadenza, Sähkö and their own Non Standard Productions label, they have ranged from convulsive experimentation to ultra-minimal techno, from test-tone fugues to electro-acoustic improvisation involving piano and live electronic processing. And the recordings are only half the story: while NSI's live performances are scarce, owing to the intimidating heft of the duo's expansive setup, they have been equally non-standard affairs, examples of the true potential of live electronic performance, rather than Ableton-aided experiences in playback. If any single word sums up NSI's approach, it's eccentricity: not in the sense of being weird for the sake of weirdness, but in its spatial, elliptical connotation, as deviating from a circular path. Repetition, the lifeblood of electronic music, is key to NSI's approach, but nothing in their music ever happens the same way twice. This is thanks primarily to the fact that NSI don't merely program, but rather play their instruments in real time. (You could, in fact, call it real-time programming, code-crunching with an analog underpinning and lots of twisting wrists.) A loose division of labor finds Loderbauer helming an ever-growing battery of hands-on devices—primarily modular synthesizers and step sequencers, with cables running amok and loops cannibalizing loops—while Freund digs deep into the 808, 909 and other sinewave standbys. (That Freund has had his 808 for some 20 years goes some way to explaining his facility with the machine: his relationship with it is akin to that of a jazzman's with his trusted horn.) Their recordings are born of off-the-cuff investigations in the studio, each musician feeling his way around the remotest corners of the circuitry available: parallel streams merging in a powerful and unpredictable surge of sound—an aesthetics of electric current. Both individuals have been active in electronic music for two decades, pushing at its center and tugging at its edges. Having begun his career in the '80s with the duo Vo Ese, Freund recorded for many years as Pink Elln (a frequent collaborator of Uwe Schmidt, aka Atom Heart) and is also a member of the duos Sieg Über Die Sonne (with Martin Schopf, aka Dandy Jack) and Odd Machine (an open-ended collaborative project whose first release featured Ricardo Villalobos, and which Freund intends to expand over time to include a variety of friends and colleagues). Most recently, he has received wide acclaim as a creator of house and techno that is at once back-to-basics and utterly unconventional, with a string of remixes on Logistic, Wagon Repair, Ostgut Ton and his own Non Standard Productions label, as well as remixes for Efdemin, Two Armadillos, Los Updates and D'Julz, among others. Loderbauer is best known as one half of the pioneering duo Sun Electric (with Tom Thiel). Between 1990 and 2000, the pair helped invent ambient techno—and also to undo its burgeoning clichés—with .records for R&S/Apollo, NovaMute and even Trevor Horn's ZTT. In addition, Loderbauer is a member Chica and the Folder (with Paula Schopf, aka La Chica Paula) and also the Moritz von Oswald Trio ( together with Vladislav Delay ).  NSI first appeared on wax with 2005's Max Binski EP for Luciano's Cadenza label. Taking minimal techno's rippling cadences as a baseline, the EP ducked conventional notions of structure and melody in favor of long, evolving sequences more indebted to generative art. After following up with "Clara Ghavami Extended," an extended edit of one of the Max Binski tracks, their next release ditched techno's strictures entirely: Non Standard Institute Plays Non Standards (Sähkö, 2007) showcased Loderbauer's considerable skills as an improvising pianist, refracted through the lens of Freund's electronic processing. The result fell midway between jazz improv and contemporary electro-acoustic (re-)composition. Countering expectations once again, NSI's next two releases—the Reference and Squelch EPs, both for Non Standard Productions—returned to a techno template of shuddering rhythms and bone-rattling bass. But again, the duo's elliptical approach short-circuited the usual oonce-oonce-oonce, with Freund's drum patterns wandering like a drunk on crutches, and Loderbauer's modular meanderings exploring every frequency in the spectrum. Where tracks like "Risset"—a drum-machine interpretation of Jean-Claude Risset's math-puzzle "eternal glissando"—proved their conceptual credentials, "Nikita"—an improbable and touching bit of electronic balladry, set to a dancehall rhythm—demonstrated the human pulse beating beneath all that circuitry. Whatever NSI do next, and after that—on record and in concert—you can expect the same level of commitment, and risk, and jawdropping beauty. philip sherburne 2009
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