Wider Oceans : and intimate interview with (sir) Andrew M. McKenzie
[interview August 2005] [edited January 2006]
text: TJ Norris
Since 1982, Reykjavík-based The Hafler Trio(one Andrew M. McKenzie) has delivered a broad scape of sensory aural work that is as immediate as it is distant. In the last three decades, by creating the equivalent of either a building implosion or Millenium-turning fireworks, he’s shape-shifted sound compositions like a virtuoso of tantric atmospherics. His “wallet” packaged series, which includes The Sea Org (1987), Ignotum Per Ignotius (1986) and A Thirsty Fish (all re-issued from the archives by Korm Plastics), stand noteworthy among his long history of production. The elements of this series each include a CD and co-conspiratorial booklet of texts and images that package and confuse, thus allowing certain dialogue with its 
audience and intrinsic constituents. The Hafler Trio is virtually and primarily a solo project but has incorporated a variety of other collaborators from time to time to present live shows that are as exhilarating and obtuse as anything from the history of Dada, Fluxus, etc. McKenzie has formulated a sabotage-styled class of verse that is simultaneously circular and self-defined and run-on and nebulous. While the Hafler Trio might seem to produce work contrary to popular culture, the foundations for and components of it stand ready before our eyes and ears. But what, you are correct to ask, is it exactly that this mysterious “trio” does?
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