Bernhard Lang – Paranoia II
Paranoia II is a new large-scale work by Bernhard Lang, commissioned by Stichting Mousai and written for Klang Systematiek. Scored for bass clarinet (Gareth Davis), electric bass (John Eckhardt), drums (Tomas Järmyr), percussion (Martin Švec), electronics, and voices by British rapper Mixmastertodd and Greek singer Anna Linardou, the work continues Lang’s long-standing investigation into repetition, fragmentation, and the psychology of looping.
Lang’s collaboration with members of Klang Systematiek builds on years of shared exploration — Davis premiered his Loops for Davis concerto, and Eckhardt and Mixmastertodd have been key collaborators in previous projects. In Paranoia II, this ongoing dialogue becomes a study in disorientation and perception: a sonic environment where fear, media saturation, and repetition intertwine.
The work’s textual foundation is a collage of three interwoven sources. The first, “Justifications”, draws on fragments of writings about paranoia collected from online forums and social media, revealing the anxious inner voices of the digital age. The second, “CIA Protocols of Political Assassination”, extracts material relating to the 1954 coup in Guatemala — an emblematic instance of Cold War manipulation and disinformation. The third layer samples texts from the American magazine Paranoia, which documented conspiracy theories and countercultural speculation in the 1980s and ’90s.
Lang combines these materials into a stream of distorted voices — sampled, processed, and recombined — where meaning fractures and reassembles through repetition. The musical structure mirrors this psychological terrain: loops evolve, twist, and disintegrate, creating an unstable network of rhythmic and harmonic cycles. The result is both visceral and analytical — a meditation on control, fear, and the fragmentation of truth in an age of information overload.
Klang Systematiek’s realization of Paranoia II extends the piece into an immersive, spatialized environment. The eight-channel live electronics envelop the audience, creating a constantly shifting sense of direction and proximity. Percussion and bass create the rhythmic core — dense, mechanical, yet deeply human — while the bass clarinet weaves a thread between breath, noise, and electronics. The vocal lines move between language and texture: rap, song, and speech blur into sonic gestures that dissolve within the loops.
As in Lang’s broader Differenz / Wiederholung cycle, Paranoia II examines how repetition shapes experience — how memory, fear, and recognition are produced and distorted through recurring sound. The ensemble’s performative approach amplifies this process: musicians operate as both instrumentalists and agents within a larger, self-regulating system. Live lighting and spatial sound transform the performance into a kinetic, multi-sensory field in which no moment exactly repeats.
The premiere of Paranoia II marks an important step for Klang Systematiek: from reinterpreting canonical experimental works to generating new ones that extend their aesthetic lineage. In Lang’s collaboration with the ensemble, repetition becomes both a musical and psychological phenomenon — a mirror of our collective condition, where patterns of sound and thought loop endlessly, seeking meaning amid noise.
The work stands as both a continuation and an evolution: a piece that captures the mechanical beauty of Lang’s looping structures, the tension of paranoia as a social force, and Klang Systematiek’s ongoing commitment to performance as an immersive, living act of listening.