REVIEWS & MORE

Andreas Fellinger: Portrait Josef Novotny
mica / austrian music export, July 2013

Ernst Mitter: Zufall und Planung (German only)
Portrait, freiStil #100, März/April 2022

Kathrin Kirsch: Musik als Anfang und Ereignis in Die Novotnyorgel 1.0.1
im Katalog ARS BOREALIS 48, Nana Schulz – Die Novotnyorgel V.1.0.1, Kiel, 2022

Siegfried Oechsle: Spiel der Komposition(en): Orgel – Film – Musik
im Katalog ARS BOREALIS 48, Nana Schulz – Die Novotnyorgel V.1.0.1, Kiel, 2022


»... Pre-programmed computer tracks lay solid ground for improvisational free space, because: freer than free can’t be, not even in freestyle. Knowing this, one is fascinated by keyboardist Novotny and sax freak Nagl, who possess among the finest sound awareness that Austria has brought forth in the recent past ...«
(MOZ): about the CD AMen, EX 96


»... ‘Lunatic Fringe’ [...] begins with Novotny’s willfull performance of a movement from Olivier Messiaen’s ‘L’Ascension’ and ends with Madonna’s ‘I Promise to Try’. Between these aesthetic poles, which indicate a rather bizarre Post Modernism, Nagl, Novotny and Stangl span their musical lines. The lines hold specifically because of their refusal to constantly borrow. Here spontaneous musicality of all creeds, of moody dialogues, thoroughly brief scenarios full of freed sound fantasy are born ...«
wg / Salzburger Nachrichten, July 8, 1992 about the CD Lunatic Fringe, EX 153


»... With the help of electronic reworking of his playing of diverse instruments and sampling, Novotny creates wide unpeopled soundscapes of icy beauty, as well as heavy atmospheric pieces suggesting materially laden grand orchestral attacks or dramatic organ eruptions ...«
Klaus Nüchtern / FALTER 50 /96 about the solo CD Manöverboard, EX 268


»... Richard Barrett is very physical when he plays the Powerbook: fantastic stuff. Josef Novotny in Austria almost doesn’t have to play, he looks so impenetrably still — he wears black clothes, looks like a martian ...«
Roger Turner / THE WIRE, December 2000 about Josef Novotny


»... While all this is going on, Lehn creates thundering crescendos, Löschel’s keyboard tone ranges between the single-note repetition to that of an ersatz prepared piano, then Novotny’s Morse code emulation morph into what sounds like an explosion in the electronics factory ...«
Ken Waxman / JAZZWEEKLY, March 2002 about ‘antasten’