All life originated out of primeval mud. And all life dissolves back into it again. This CD in the Edition Musikfabrik series leans its ear towards sludge as well as 'the ocean of yes and no'. It cringes at the end of the world before the sublimity of nature, seeking to surpass her with composed conglomerates, it allows itself to be buried alive, only to eat itself free from the earth three times. Four fascinating attempts to understand nature and to explore humanity’s position within it.

For the composer Brian Ferneyhough, Cornwall's inhospitable landscape of moraine became the starting point of a composition for six voices and an 18-member ensemble.

Klaus Lang's The ocean of yes and no is a story with no beginning or end, no climax and no apotheosis, while Carola Bauckholt has often used the 'fauna philharmonic', working with a whole bestiary in Schlammflocke. In Jorge E. Lopez’s Gonzales the Earth Eater the composer quotes William S. Burroughs’s psychedelic sceneries with creatures such as 'Gonzales', who defies his own funeral.

This recording contains four fascinating attempts to understand Nature and to explore man’s place within it. The demanding artwork of the CD series is created with pictures by the painter Gerhard Richter, commenting on the thematic concentration of the programmes in an artistic manner. Richter, one of the most important living German artists, has been a member of the board of trustees of the Ensemble Musikfabrik since 2009.