Man, 3 months! It took me 3 month to do this thing. 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.
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.
Tonight we released our second Dåbermix. It is pretty different from the first one, more calm. We don’t speak about what music we should do. It just comes out naturally, so this is where we were during the last 3 months of 2009. Happy listening!
Back in the days I always thought, that it’s a drawback to not have a certain direction in my music. I was mixing up styles and thought that was not right somehow. I made excuses: “I am still searching for something, that is ‘my style’, that i can call mine.”
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.
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.
I just removed Mixed Sessions from the internet. It is really old and has nothing to do with what i’m up to musically. I don’t want to get connected to this Garageband-approach of making electronic music. There are better things to come…
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 commenter 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 discovered 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. At 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. Through his dedication to the topic his sounds get more precise.
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. [Gänge] 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.
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!
There is a strange unbalance between the effort you put into your music to merely get noticed, and the reward you get (speaking of attention, not money). Through a Spotify-Premium membership i have access to more music than I, my children, grand-children and all their relatives will ever have time to listen to. When I read about an interesting artist, I do a quick Spotify search and put him in my Inbox-Playlist. This is getting overwhelming. I’m at a point now, where I feel I want to listen to music, but don’t feel a connection. Like when you’re bored. “I could do this and that… naah, to boring” etc. Of course I could listen to the mixtapes some of my friends have made, listen to what people in my Soundcloud network recently uploaded, could listen to the people that added me on MySpace, and I just went by, heard the intro of the first track to say “Hey, nice stuff”. But I don’t feel like. I feel satiety. Ate enough.
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?
Imagine the words “What have I become?” out of Johnny Cash’s mouth. This is what’s left of my thoughts after one wonderful concert: Peter Broderick and Nils Frahm. Again, just as with Hauschka’s concert, it took me down to earth. Being there, sucking in the atmosphere it makes everything else so obsolete.
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?
