If you are around, come over, I’ll do my musical interpretation of the book again. Maybe same atmosphere, but different music.

Ok. It’s actually just for fun, but picture the potential. So please send me your compositions for cursor & select boxes!

First, start this first piece of Makoto Okuda, then play the Youtube-Video at the same time. (Fullscreen works best)

Then, play the next two side-by-side. The piece by Shinichiroa presents the sound of some untroubled times in japan, while Rintaro Iwashita’s Fog Alert is also very close to today’s mood. The two played together, with today’s perspective, deliver this diffuse disturbance I’m feeling right now.

3 pieces by 3 Japanese affected by this catastrophies remind us, that behind every number in the news, there is a personality. With own feelings, their expression, ups and downs. Lets think of them sending strength in these days.

Some time ago, Tommi asked if he could remix Morgenschillgit, which I gladly agreed to. Well, what can I say, the result is now online, and i really like it. Especially how they kept the chord progression in an really abstract form. I like how it slowly evolves and the vocals remind me in parts of Tobias Lilja (which is said to be a compliment) . Thanks a lot guys, you are awesome!

Exciting! Actually it excited me that much, that there will be some thing more sometime. One will see…

Thanks for listening, stay tuned!

As announced earlier, last friday I had my first real solo-performance with material that matters to me.

It took place at an exhibition opening of my friend Lilli. The thought behind the performance was to try to convey the atmosphere of her book “Todkehlchen”. In my way of interpreting it, it is a silently drawn book about death, loneliness and friendship. About wood, flesh and beauty.

Performance-wise I am quite satisfied with the result. I really did not have much time to prepare and rehearse, so what you hear is the first time I ever played this set in this form. So to say, some kind of prepared improvisation (excluding this one part, that is obviously triggered clips). Feel free to download and share, feedback is always appreciated!

Thanks to Lilli for having me and to all friends who came. You made it a memorable evening!

Now, everything would be fine at this point – but without me knowing, at the same day a college of mine died at the age of 27. He just finished his studies, married this year and had a little son. Although I knew him just for about a month, I really liked him a lot.

When I read the message the next day, it seemed ironic, having played a performance around the topic of death the day before. (“Todkehlchen” translates to little death-throat; a pun on the german name for the readbreast bird)  While I can’t change what happened, I still want to dedicate this recording to you, Julian, rest in peace my friend!

Thanks, @ktfall for the nice picture!

It has been a little silent here for a while. I moved to a new city and took some time to clear out my musical head. Slowly, the engines are starting again…

The first manifestation of this process will be a performance, that will accompany the exhibtion of Lilli Gärtner’s illustration diploma. I took a deep look at her works and digested its atmosphere. In the performance, I will try to mirror this atmosphere musically.

So if you are in Leipzig or near, come by and listen!

12.11.2010 – 19.00

Projekt- und Hörgalerie “A und V”
_Lützner Str. 30
_Leipzig-Lindenau

(Event-pages on Last.fm and Facebook)

For the ones who won’t make it: i will record the performance and put it online – most likely…

I did an Interrail-Trip in March/April 2010. Travelling from Aachen through Belgium, France, Switzerland and Italy to Greece. By train. In Greece i travelled a bit around (Peloponnes, Athens and Tessaloniki) and then went to Istanbul. The way home was through Bukarest, Budapest, Vienna and Innsbruck. Really a great trip for me, it finally gave me the last kick to liberate my head from this internet-thing here. I saw lots of great places and met many great people. And i collected sounds. And since three months i always wanted to put a cut together, that represents my journey in sound. Like watching a photo-album with the ears. Or listening to a documentary without the picture.

I don’t know if this is of any value to anyone out there. I can remember these moments where some relative took out a video-camera and showed videos from last holiday in southern france or such. For them it was very exciting, i mean the shaky camera, the non-action going on there. But obviously holiday-movies are only pleasure to those who actually participated. So please let me know if it is boring

But one part of travelling for me was always to be at some place, sit and listen. It is the sound.

Though you could listen through the widget above, i recommend going to the Soundcloud-page, where you can see all timed comments, guiding you through my journey. Have fun (or not)!

Ps. if you nevertheless want to see some pictures, try this link..

What you see above is the trailer of a russian documentary, that I will contribute sound and music to. We are still in the beginning of our workflow, but it is a very nice team around russian director Sergey Kachkin and the romanian film-producer Andra Matresu.  I am really looking forward to compose music, that is inspired by the pictures and the mood of the film. Long russian streets. Cold russian winters.

A melancholic love poem in modern times of Russia – this documentary unfolds around a married couple at the age of fifty. He is a truck driver. She is his woman tending for love. Nobody knows when the situation will change until one of the family member dies…

There is a small town in Belgium, called Neerpelt, where they have this wonderful place: Klankenbos, which translates to “Soundforest”. Initiated by musica.be, they invite sound-artists to contribute installations to the forest. So visitors can go around and experience sound in new ways.

Just to give an example: there is a glass-cube in the forest, which you can only access through an underground tunnel. Being there, it isolates you from the environmental forest-sounds to bring awareness to what you normally don’t take attention to. The concept is inspired by John Cage’s famous piece 4:33, which is basically 4 minutes and 33 seconds of  musical silence.

Another one: A giant flute. In fact so big, that you can go into it. You close the big steel-door behind you and a huge fan starts “blowing” air on the opening of the flute. The created sound is of such a low frequency (maybe around 20-30Hz) that you literally stand inside of the wave and physically feel how the sound goes through your body. Impressive.

There are many more installations, so if you happen to be around that area, it is definetely worth a visit! Check their website: musica.be or flip through the Klankenbos Info-PDF.

There is a small wooden cottage called RadioForest, which was initially created to broadcast the moods of the wood. Now it is a place for workshops and several installations. For example, they have soundscapes being played within the wooden walls of the building. You have to approach with your ear to listen to soundscapes evolving around the topic of “forest”.

This is where Dåbermann comes into place: we were invited to contribute such a soundscape to the collection. Instead of just delivering it, we went to Klankenbos to have an improvised session right in that setting. Besides of some instruments, we used just sounds we collected earlier in the forest.

You can find some pictures of our performance at their webpage.

It was a very nice experience, these are the kinds of places we Dåbermen like. So if you happen to be in Klankenbos next time, you will probably listen to our Radioforest Soundscape there. Enjoy!

(If you don’t want to take on the travel cost, download the file and listen at home

Actually this is a repost taken from our Dåberlog. Feel free to subscribe/follow over there.

Nowadays that feels kind of wrong. I am a person with a variety of interests. And this is also reflected on my musical output.

So instead of marking a place somewhere in the musical landscape, i will go on being the explorer. But this time knowing, that this is the right way.

I love the sound of electronic music and the aura of acoustic music. I like rhythms as much as harmonies.
And the binding element will always be a general appreciation of sound.

You will find different styles here. Different projects, or maybe just experiments.

But this is right.
I now know.

Darage Bang presents Cloudy and Pleasant

With my piano piece Ursulurn, I happen to be one of them. Thanks a lot, Frank!
The music over there is somewhere between ambient, downtempo, drone and experimental. If you’re interested give it a listen through my Cloud-Playlist for an uninterrupted playback. (you’ll need a Google-Account, though)

I like and support the idea not just because the underlying thoughts are quite similar to mine, when I started ‘Found in the Cloud’. It is good to see Soundcloud evolving, being a platform driven by people. And with applications like The Cloud Player build ontop of the infrastructure, it has the potential to be Spotify for independent artists.

If anybody still has the desire to listen to the tracks, shoot me a message, I’ll pass you the files.

In my last post I wrote about how today‘s over-availability of music leads to a switch in music-listening. One of the commenters suggested to try listening to ambient music. Actually i don‘t like the term ,Ambient‘. I don‘t know where these associations come from, but I then have people in my head, who normally don‘t listen to this kind of music and label everything as ,ambient‘, that is slow, has no beat, is melancholic and/or laid back. Often these people equal Ambient with background music. I more like to call it ,silent music‘, since – yes – it can serve as a background atmoshphere to tasks you do, like working, writing. But good silent music also invites you to come closer and listen carefully. The elements don‘t scream at you, they want to be discovered. Maybe more like paintings. You can look at them from greater distance, just to grasp the atmosphere, but also come closer and discover details, that weren‘t imminent at first.

One of the musicians who do really great in painting these pictures is Pascal Savy, aka Static. Don‘t know anymore how our paths crossed, but I found his pieces to be really ,well-painted‘. They create a really dense atmosphere – dark, drony and sometimes even a bit creepy. He has a blog over at blogspot, where he describes his concepts and thoughts driving the creative process. Reading through them, you can say, that he already dug deep into the matter. Learning about sonic concepts, he tries to incorporate them into his music. In his blog, I first read about the phenomenons Microsound and Granular Synthesis. Touching these now would go beyond the scope of this post, but still interesting concepts, worth exploring. You can hear, that elements in his pieces are deliberately placed, and not just got there per accident.

Vortex (above), one of his last pieces utilizing Granular Synthesis, brought up a memory of my childhood. We often did summer-vacation in countries you had to cross water to get there. As a child, spending a night in a ferry, there is not too much to do, so you just walk around the ship and discover things. We sometimes did a dare: what would be the deepest floor we dare to be for more than just a second? In these ferries, the deeper you go, the creepier it gets. Corridors get uglier, the sound of the engines gets louder and louder and – since you are below the water suface – the doors start to be heavier. They then have these big opening wheels on them. For a kid, this was really creepy. And I remember I couldn‘t stand this for long.

And this static piece reminds me of exactly these moments: Like in the bottom floor of a big ferry. Water leaking in somewhere near. Astonishing if you keep in mind, that most of the sounds are synthetically created.

Disclaimer:
the idea of this series is to have a conversation. On single pieces of music and through them on musical aspects in general. Imagine the time you were putting up vinyl, drinking red wine, discussing with your friend about things you hear at this very moment. When was the last time you listened to music and did nothing else? Really concentrated?
So if the tracks above trigger anything, just share it. A picture, a small thought, a general impression you have, please share it in the comments. If not, maybe next time. It’s an experiment, I know. Thanks again!

Like with your parents who get really nice, after you moved out; like with your ex-girlfriend you start to miss when you realize she’s not there, like maybe you first start loving your hometown, when you moved away – I decided to do an experiment: cut out the music. What will everyday-life feel like, if you cut out the music? Don’t listen to it at home, don’t go anywhere, where you expect music to play (cafés, bars, clubs, concerts). How long can you stand that? And what feels important to me: Will there be more music in my head? Who will be the artist I first turn to, when I finished the experiment? Which track? I want to miss music again, not devaluate it by flooding my brain with input.

I can’t do the experiment right away, but It will happen and I’ll tell you about results…

How do you deal with more and more music being available? Do you notice a difference to – let’s say – the music-listening 3 years ago?

Music is about people. Music is between people. Real people. Music is about moments. Creating moments, sharing moments. Recordings are the attempt to capture the moment. Fail.

All the “the-internet-is-so-great-for-musicians”-evangelists have all one big, big misconception. The same way as good music comes from the countryside and is performed in the cities, good music comes from no-internet-land. (yes, well… and distributed over the web)

The internet, with all its “hello”s, “have you seen”s and “*ping!* you’ve got a new ***”s, eats up your mind. Or lets say your creativity. Or maybe just your intrinsic motivation expressing yourself through music. It’s not good to see, that there are tons of guys all making the same stuff. It’s not good to see your idea being around everywhere else. It is just not good being referenced all the time.

After a Broderick/Frahm concert I accuse myself. You are being a person, that spins his activity around the net. You were a person spinning your activity around music. What have you become?

“Now wait!”, you might ask. “What is Dåbermann? Who is ‘we’? And why proud?”

Okay, I’ll do some clarification:

We, that are Chris, Hamer and me.  We met earlier this year to mess with 3 laptops using Ableton. The only thing we knew was, that we have a great overlap in musical interest. Didn’t know what will happen when we start out a jam, also didn’t expect anything. Dåbermann was born.

After the first session we were really surprised. In a positive way. Right from the first minute – it seemed – we had found our sound and roles for each one. Also interesting to see how 3 approaches to Ableton melt down in one atmosphere. Chris, with his trackpad-rocking chaos-style, does all the groove and beat. Hamer is most likely the guy who does strings and ambiences. I focussed so far on live-sampling: playing guitar, sometimes trumpet, a bit voice and making general noises.

Improvising with Ableton is really another paradigm than improvising in a band. While in a band, there is just the moment, you always act “now”. With Ableton, it’s like you create a big and heavy ball and give it a push, so it starts rolling on its own. Once in a move you can start change its colour or shape, give it a little more movement or make it pause. But it is still that big monster being hard to handle, since it’s the child of three computers.

After the first sessions we had plenty of material. Several hours. And we didn’t really know what to do now. Make tracks from it? No we couldn’t. No way to reproduce the sounds. They got lost on the way. So we decided to chop up the sessions and glue them together in a digestable way. So out of 3 hours of improvised Dåbermann-sessions emerged 32 minutes of Dåbermix.

And this is one of the reasons I’m really proud of this: the source material is improvised and still it sounds great (in my ears). This is the inversion of the usual process of producing tracks. Normally you have an idea, and shape it until you like it. The actual work you do is pushing boxes on a grid in a program. Not very musical. This time we just jammed out. And it worked.
I once again felt what’s so great about making music with other people: the outcome is always more than the sum of its elements.

It is most likely, that you will hear more of us in the future. We plan more sessions, but also performing live someday. So stay tuned…

PS. Actually, all three of us don’t like dogs. There are exceptions, but you know in this ever-going “dogs vs. cats”-fight, cats will always win. Find us on Soundcloud and MySpace.

Now I want everybody to take out their mobile phones and take a picture of me.
Now I want everybody to take the person next to you and send him a text message.
Now I want everybody to take the person next to you and kiss.
1… 2… 3… kiss!
Now make a bass sound!

Yesterday I attended Frankfurt’s Club “Robert Johnson” to be part of Matthew Herbert’s next record. Working title “One Club”. It will be made entirely of sounds collected yesterday evening. Everyone attended will be in the booklet  and receive a copy of the album. I’m really excited and looking forward to the result.

Oh, did I mention that Herbert has always been a big inspiration for me? This guy somehow opened my ears to the music and rhythms surrounding us everyday. He has always been innovating and keeps on doing so.
Another next album of his will be made entirely from sounds of a pig. It was born a month ago and he will record-follow it through its life. Crazy person! In a good way !

It happens that you randomly browse the web and find nothing but crap. And it happens that you make a discovery: In an interview, I read about Peter Broderick contributing a track to a Belgium label called Slaapwel (“Sleep well”). This label releases only music to fall asleep by. Interesting, I read further. I discovered that the label owner releases music under the moniker Wixel, which lies somewhere between calm Post-Rock and Electronica. Currently he has a project going, what he calls an “Awesome Stupid Project“: he is about to release 12 records in 12 months. One record per month in 2009. Hehe, funny concept. Awesome, because this is a really challenging thought: Can you release that much music in that short time? And stupid: can you keep up with quality? Won’t you lose your artistic integrity?

As far as I can see, Wixel didn’t. (Only heard two albums yet). Give his Slaapliedjes a try. When you need a rest, or while studying or working. He has a very, very nice warm guitar sound.

Now, what I also find interesting is the way he releases music. All of this can be downloaded via Bandcamp, which means people can either give their email-adresses away and get a free download, or they pay as much as they like. Pretty straight forward approach. Additionally, each album is available as a limited edition self-made CDr. This was the first time I saw this combination and I’m clearly excited. I like it so much, I guess I will use it for my next EP.

The internet-evangelists always refer to free-downloads as an economic force. Digital music is no scarce good, it can be copied and distributed without cost, thus price has to approach zero. I mostly agree with them. For me it makes no sense to put price barriers between me and my potential listeners. At least as long as I have no existing reputation. Then, selling hand-crafted self-designed CDrs works as a balance. By doing so, you create a scarce good, that people are willing to pay for. (At least when you manage to make a good package design). Look at Wixels 2009-CDs above. I think they are adorable. Will wait for the September-issue and place an order.

The same day I also stumbled upon Machinefabriek, an outstanding artist. I found this guy releasing one 3″-CDr after another, check out his website for proof and sounds. Some releases end up as official released albums, others stay in their small collectable format. I like that. Here a collabarotion of Aaron Martin and Machinefabriek: Cello Recycling.

Speaking of 3″-CDr: Hauschka recently did the same. He released a small 3″-EP called “Small Pieces” through Secret Furry Hole. Received it today and must say: as long as people keep putting love in hand-made designs, people will buy physical releases. Those 3″-CDs are absolut internet-anti-statement. Maximum 20 minutes of music and most laptops can’t read them, cause they are too small for slot-loading CD-drives. You are now forced to listen again through your stereo, just as with Vinyl. No iTunes this time. And this affects the way you perceive music. Good approach.

Regarding music on Hauschka’s Small Pieces: It feels like an approach to make more classical piano pieces again. More like Erik Satie than on previous albums. One exception: the 4th track “unknown”, my favourite so far. With a fragile female voice in the background it sounds like Hauschka does Radiohead. Stunning. Sadly, that song is not available online, so go get your copy or listen to the opening track “Sehnsucht”:

Ps: I named my piano piece “small piece” before I knew of this EP’s existence. No rip-off intended