Jana Irmert

With her praised albums „The Soft Bit“ (2021) and „What Happens At Night“ (2022), sound artist and composer Jana Irmert explored the materiality of sounds. Using manipulated field recordings, voice samples and synthesizer sounds, she carves out electronic soundscapes as if she were using sonar in deep darkness. Jana Irmert’s artistic output takes on various forms – from live performance and multichannel composition to collaborations with filmmakers, dancers and visual artists.

„Irmert’s work swiftly slides from documentary lucidity into the glare of an obsession. Evocations of realities drift beyond the reach of our senses or the span of an individual life. A sobering reminder, that the limits of our perception may not coincide with those of the world.“ (The Wire Magazine)

In 2019 she received the German Documentary Film Music Award, in 2021 she has been nominated for an Edda Award for her sound design on Jóhann Jóhannsson’s film „Last and First Men“.

When I Dissolve (album, 2024) – music from the film „To Be an Extra“

The power of a soundtrack is to not only support the film’s narrative, but to open up spaces beyond the visible – to add layers of meaning and complexity that can easily unfold in sound.

„I like to think of the music as a sort of bog or swamp landscape that lies underneath the film’s structure, all connected – sometimes you just see the surface and it can look very unassuming, until you dip your foot in. Then you dive down all the way, and there’s a whole universe where you never reach the bottom. It’s a mysterious, expanding, strange world and it’s my job to decide how much of it we get to hear.“

The new album „When I Dissolve“ collects the compositions Jana Irmert created for Henrike Meyer’s auto-fictional hybrid documentary To Be an Extra. The film follows the filmmaker herself as she navigates the struggles of making her first feature length film while working as an extra on tv shows and film sets. From her perspective as an out-of-focus extra, she gains a new existential insight into the precarious life on the fringes of both the film industry and society.

Informed by the two artists‘ conversations about phenomena at the periphery of our existence like black holes, breathing rooms and body parts that suddenly feel disconnected, ominous noises grow out of the silence into blooming synth-heavy montages. Here, the score stands on its own, a journey to the edges of our multiple realities.

Highlighting the immersive and multi-layered character of the music, the release is additionally available in Dolby Atmos, mixed by Philipp Rumsch.

Jana Irmert

Jana Irmert is a Berlin-based sound artist and composer who works across spatial composition, film soundtracks and live performance, often exploring the borderline between musical sound and noise through extensive experimentation with field recordings. Examining temporality and impermanence in times of ecological crisis, she creates „atmospheric audiovisual and sonic spaces that work with dis/harmony in such a way as to mirror our imperfect world at the moment“ (Toneshift).

She has released music on Fabrique Records, Important Records and Longform Editions. Jana’s music and sound design for feature films, documentaries, VR experiences and video installations has received multiple nominations and awards. She has presented her music in North America and across Europe including Atonal Berlin Festival, Extreme Chill Festival in Reykjavik, INA grm Focus series, Fylkingen Stockholm, Fluc Vienna and blurred edges festival Hamburg.