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„Industrie & Melodie“ (contents) |
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1. Cosmic Baby 1999-2006 (more)
2. About „Industrie & Melodie“ (more)
3. Audio samples (more)
4. Textual material (more)
5. Family tree - electronic music (more)
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1. Cosmic Baby 1999-2006 |
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There's the man speaking loudly of „a desire to make music
that could transport multilayered structures; music which did not
attempt per se to catch the attention of its listeners as effortlessly
as possible“ - only then to take his one-dimensional Cosmic
Baby out of mothballs immediately afterwards.
A contradiction ?!?
And in fact there were moments between 1999 and 2002 when I turned on
the drum machine and synthesizer and created things that belonged to
the Cosmic world. They were mostly short, spontaneous pieces which I
recorded as stereo tracks and kept for later use. Often they arose
when I took a detail from a Bluechel work and reworked it in loose
improvisations until it became something independent.
These were sporadic flights and intimations. And yet, with hindsight,
there are some pieces among them which I would be doing an injustice
to if I never let them out of the studio.
Old-new (or perhaps „totally new“) from Cosmic Baby - a
contradiction in terms? Agh, no way! Nowadays I'm relaxed enough to
see CB for what it means for me today: an artistic identity, a defined
musical form of expression instead of a phantasmagorical
„über-ich“. I can live with this, in future too.
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2. About „Industrie & Melodie“ |
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I
„Red Square on a Black
Background“
Background: in 1988 I was striving hard to make a
„brilliant“ Cosmic Baby album. It was meant to be the sum
of all internal and external demands and expectations: it was aimed at
the charts but should still remain independent. I wanted it to
entrance the public like „Stellar Supreme“ once had but
still sound different - no longer techno - yet remain the kind of
music I owe so much to - not denying that I wanted to
„prove“ something to the very same people that I had
already moved away from in my mind. „Wanted to“,
„had to“... clearly over-motivated... a clear case of a
creative block.
I was looking at the new album „Heaven“ as a task that I
had to solve, one that I had to do justice to, and was looking for a
number of possible inspirational approaches. Only one facet of this
search for how CB music could sound in 1998 gave me real joy:
the return to - and reworking of - the cultural inheritance of
electronic music from the seventies, most of it German, provided me
with an inspiring Leitmotiv. I set up a special station equipped
solely with electronic instruments from the period: Minimoog, Moog
Prodigy, Moog Source, Jupiter 8, TB 303, TR 33, TR 808, TR 909, SH 101
and got down to business.
I named the project „red square on black background“ in
acknowledgement of Russian suprematism and constructivism. While
working my fingers to the bone on giving the „Heaven“
tracks their final polish, my eyes would light up just thinking of
„the red square“, like an assembly line worker impatient
for the siren to sound the end of the shift. While the work on my
other projects felt more laborious than anything else, I felt as
though I was in an artistic oasis when working on this
„retro“ music.
With hindsight, I see that this was a clear case of sublimation,
self-slavery and putting the cart before the horse. In spite of the
hot and cold showers I felt the whole time - or maybe because of this
(?) - I kept forcing myself to focus on tortured dead ends instead of
following my feelings and concentrating on the things I really
enjoyed.
II
Personal notes on „Red Square on a
Black Background“, written in 1998:
RED SQUARE ON A BLACK BACKGROUND
In recent weeks I have had a lot of fun creating music that sounds
more like something you might expect if a pop-art comic artist met a
science fiction author and they tried to convert their ideas into
sound using electronic instruments from the seventies.
It does sound a bit strange - electronic Krautrock - or new wave - or
technopop - in principle yes, but ? ..no, no way!
At any rate, I came up with a hell of a lot of electronic short
stories that were complete in themselves:
they talk of an adventurous „trip through the south“
(„Die Reise durch den Süden“) whose
„sunshine“ could easily inspire a Central European to wild
praise or like the atomic physicist, Wolfgang Pauli, whose destiny
seemed to be that his experiments always broke down when he entered
the laboratory. There are speaking computers which make fun of their
zeitgeisty human inventors and users; there are robots which sing in
assembly language or who dance electro-boogie across the ages with
their stainless steel body parts. The stories tell of childhood trips
by train to „Wonderland“ or with more pathos, in the
„Soviet Union“... They constitute a new dance suite for
the „Triadic Ballet“ for the Dessau Bauhaus or describe
the ghostly atmosphere of the Berlin underground junction,
„Ostkreuz“ on a dark and dismal November night...
permeated by episodes from everyday life like „experienced
coincidences of a synchronistic nature“, getting up after
„a bad night“ („schlecht geschlafen“), the
better TV program when looking in the „Aquarium“ right up
to the „fine little dream loop“ („kleine feine
Traumschleife“) as a possibility for switching off somewhere and
everywhere...
III
I certainly have experienced coincidences
of a synchronistic nature
Today I see the pieces of the „red square“ originating
between November 1997 and January 1999 as an extension and development
of „14 Pieces - Selected Works“ since they came to me in
the same playful atmosphere of inspired ease. Where „14
pieces“ is characterized by a very open stylistic thread holding
it together, the point of „Square“ was to concentrate on a
single sound idea. These pieces are now being released in December
2006 under the title of „industry & melody“ with a
(negligible) delay of seven years. In exactly the same mix as back
then.
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3. Audio samples |
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Audiofile 1: experienced coincidences
[MP3]
[RA]
Audiofile 2: industrie & melodie (industry & melody)
[MP3]
[RA]
Audiofile 3: wolfgang pauli im experimentallabor (wolfgang pauli in the research laboratory)
[MP3]
[RA]
Audiofile 4: sowjetunion (soviet union)
[MP3]
[RA]
To hear the sound samples you will need either an MP3 player
or RealPlayer (www.real.com). To listen, click on the
"[MP3]" or the "[RA]"-link after the title (providing this
has been set up with your browser correctly).
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4. Textual material |
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i certainly have experienced coincidences
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i certainly have experienced coincidences
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of a synchronistic nature
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of a synchronistic nature
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neunzehnhundertachtundsechzig
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nineteen hundred and sixty-eight
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neunzehnhundertundelf
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nineteen hundred and eleven
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neunzehnhundertfünfzig
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nineteen hundred and fifty
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zweitausendzehn
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two thousand and ten
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zeitroboter
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time robot
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gestern - heute - morgen
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yesterday - today - tomorrow
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zeitroboter
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time robot
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zukunft
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future
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zukunft
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future
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zukunft
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future
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die reise durch den süden
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trip through the south
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die reise durch den sonnenschein
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trip through the sunshine
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ein luxusgut
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a luxury
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für jedermann.
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for every woman and man.
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ein auto und
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a car and a
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tv - programm.
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tv programme.
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pauschalurlaub,
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package holiday,
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erlebnisraum.
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adventure.
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per joystick in den
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via joystick into
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cyber-traum.
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cyber nature.
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ein film beschreibt
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a film describes
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die wirklichkeit
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reality.
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in digitaler
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in digital
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natürlichkeit.
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fidelity.
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vollkommen ist
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the illusion is
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die illusion,
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complete,
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durch marketing
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marketed
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in perfektion.
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to perfection.
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unsichtbare
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invisible
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energien,
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energies,
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austauschbare
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interchangeable
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strategien.
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strategies.
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schönheit, lust:
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beauty, desire
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berechenbar.
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are calculable.
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alle träume
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all your dreams
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werden wahr.
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easily realizable.
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er war ein extremer theoretiker,
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he was a radical theoretician,
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der von experimenten
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who didn't know much
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wenig ahnung hatte.
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about experimenting.
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aber den merkwürdigen effekt,
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but had the weird characteristic
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immer, wenn er in ein
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of always causing
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experimentallabor reinkam,
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experiments to fail,
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dann schienen die versuche
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whenever he came into the
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fehl zu gehen...
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laboratory...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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schönheit, lust:
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beauty, desire
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berechenbar.
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are calculable.
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alle träume
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all your dreams
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werden wahr.
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easily realizable.
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5. „Family tree“ - electronic music |
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I have often referred to the four main groups of prime movers who
inspired me to make electronic music myself. Here's a more detailed
„family-tree“. „industry & melody“ clearly
shows how strongly generations 1 and 2 influenced me:
Generation 1 (unfairly in the shadow of Kraftwerk- TD
- Sakamoto - Vangelis):
Can, Moebius, Roedelius, Cluster, Eno, Harmonia/Michael Rother, Neu/La
Düsseldorf, The Residents, Yello, David Sylvian, Pinguin Cafe
Orchestra, Pink Floyd
Generation 2 (unfortunately I was still too young to
play in this generation...):
Laurie Anderson, Goebbels-Harth, Der Plan/Pyrolator, FSK, Heaven 17,
DAF, Malaria, Die Tödliche Doris, Tom Dokupil/Siluetes 61, Holger
Hiller, Reifenstahl, FM Einheit/Neubauten, Tuxedo Moon, Material/Bill
Laswell, Talking Heads, Afrika Bambataa, Richard Kirk, A certain
Ratio, The Human League, Art of Noise/Trevor Horn, Joy Division/New
Order
Generation 3 (my generation):
Future Sound of London, Peter Kuhlmann, The Modernist, Alva Noto,
Thomas Fanger, Orbital, Jam & Spoon, Mario von Hacht, Aphex Twin,
Autecre, Move D, Derek May, Massive Attack, Der Dritte Raum, Stevie
B-Zet
Generation 4 (the next generation...):
Kreidler, Ulrich Schnauss, Air, Daft Punk, Röyksopp, Peter Licht,
Dorfmeister/Huber, Jeans Team
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