Album Notes

The term "brennschluss" (literally, "burning-loss," or more evocatively, "burnout") was used by German rocket engineers to describe the point in a V2 rocket's trajectory when propulsion would end and the rocket would become a pure projectile, carried forward inevitably through momentum to its eventual target. The flight of the V2 rocket, with all its implications, was explored in Thomas Pynchon novel _Gravity's Rainbow_, in which the brennschluss point became a metaphor for the boundary between control and chaos, authority and autonomy.

The original Ukuphambana track Brennschluss, produced under the influence of Pynchon's mind-altering literature, was a short but intense sonic fantasy, an imaginary trip with the rocket through its arc in space. The remix album Brennschluss is a more literal exploration of the edge of control: over a three year period, thirteen artists covering a wide spectrum of experimental electronic styles were provided with the source materials for Brennschluss and asked to create something new from it. The result is a wildly diverse yet powerfully cohesive album, a collaboration between control and chaos.

The Ukuphambana album Gritware Composite, featuring the original version of Brennschluss, is also available at cdbaby.com