Tracking for the braindead

Tracks changes and new posts on various sources: TumblrAaahh records blogMydriasis - PhotoblogYoutube channel

• Tumblr I made a little music video with footage from old documentaries...

  Saturday 25 November 2017 at 14:49

  
  
  

  I made a little music video with footage from old documentaries found in the Internet Archive. I hope you enjoy.

• Tumblr It’s a CD!

  Wednesday 22 November 2017 at 12:37

  

  To be honest, I am quite excited about this! The first release that is not burned on a CD-R but actually professionally manufactured… 
  I know, CDs are a half-dead medium, but after all it’s very nice to hold something in your hands. It contains the eight songs of SUN, which by the way are now also available for streaming and download on Bandcamp, Spotify, Deezer, iTunes, etc. etc. and you can order it via Bandcamp (a free download is included in the order, too), plus I’ll also always carry a few with me at concerts from now on.. To add a little bit of a more personal note, I’ve also added some little custom booklets…

  That’s it for now…

  And hey, next time it’s vinyl, I promise!

  
  

  

• Tumblr What happened to CC? And other thoughts regarding the future of Entertainment for the Braindead.

  Saturday 18 November 2017 at 21:29

  
  So… Yesterday my EP “Sun” has been released, not only on Bandcamp, but also Spotify, Deezer, iTunes, all those platforms, and.. well, the CDs are still lost in mail delivery limbo, but they do exist. That’s new, right? I had help from Motor Entertainment, the publisher I am actually contracted to now, and everything feels and sounds a bit less personal than it used to. You will also notice that for now, the songs aren’t CC-licensed anymore.
  
  What happened to hand-crafted artwork and painted postcards? To the idea of free music, the netlabel vision, this whole crafty DIY authenticity? Did EFTB join the dark side of power? Everything seems more detatched now… and what? I finally gave in to the GEMA as well? 
  
  Well, yes. Sort of. And it’s weird to me, too.
  Those who have followed me for some time know I’ve always been very seriously idealistic about the concept of free music, of DIY stuff, of keeping stuff small and  real and non-commercial.
  It might look a bit like I’m losing my indie-integrity now. It feels like that to me.. But maybe - I hope! - not completely. However, since I started recording songs and crafting CDs, things have changed on so many levels - in my personal life, but also in the music industry, net culture, everything.. So a change seemed necessary and appropriate.
  
  1) Life circumstances and a change of perspective
  
  Let’s start with personal life. Ten years ago, when I made Hypersomnia + Hydrophobia and got in touch with the netlabel aaahh records, I was a student, living in my parents’ house in Cologne. No rent to pay, no job eating away on my time schedule, working with the cheapest equipment available – it was easy to make and give away music then. Now adult life has its weird grips on me, full time work and health care bills and a fridge that doesn’t just refill by default: And when I look at my surroundings I see that many friends who have been doing music “on the side” struggle to create enough space for that in the long term. It fades out. When your career lead you elsewhere, when family comes into play,… you have to weigh if you can afford to keep it up, in terms of money, time, focus…
  I’m afraid that if I don’t make music my “real job” to at least a certain degree, it will become increasingly hard to prioritize it and keep it alive, not allowing it to get buried under piles of other tasks and things to do. The music has been the defining force in my grown-up life so far, everything good that came to me over the last years was somehow rooted there. Thus I don’t want this to become a hobby that always has to stand back behind other tasks and missions. But for that I need it to be at least self-sustaining. 
  
  2) Motor as an opportunity // Why not CC this time?
  
  Thus the decision to work with Motor. I was being offered a contract that means that yes, it’s about monetizing my music to some degree now (but I managed to protect EFTB from actually being used for commercials), but also getting a bit of a structural backbone and support, and then it also meant that I had to join the GEMA, which I did teeth-gnashingly. Anyhow, they already help me a lot with actually getting the music out there, reaching an audience, dealing with bureaucratic stuff, giving me a loan for CD production, etc. So you see, I don’t love every aspect of this, but if I want to have the pleasant and helpful sides, there’s a certain trade-off, and I’ve decided that since I’ve been given this opportunity out of nowhere, I owe the gods of serendipity to give it a try.
  
  The disadvantage: GEMA is working on some non-commercial licensing programs too, but for now it doesn’t go very well with CC, or at least I don’t yet understand how. So my hands are a little tied there at the moment. I genuinely hope stuff will change over time though.

  But the advantages: There are two things out of this collaboration that are really precious to me. One is not having to deal with all the logistics of making music, being able to delegate a few draining tasks and therefore having more space for the actual creative part. What a relief! The other thing is wildly underestimated, but it’s as simple as that: Creating a network that pushes you a little, also through creative crisis and self-doubt. You see, I haven’t been releasing anything in a long time. It’s not like I didn’t write or record anything, but as pathetic as it sounds: it needed someone to come along and pat me on the shoulder and go: “No, do this, this is nice!” to get me out of a dark cloud of “who the hell gives a shit anyways” when it came to releasing stuff. I was stuck, two album-length collections of songs rotting on my hard-drive for years. And now here we are!
  
  
  3) But why not another netlabel release instead?
  
  Look around, what happened to the net audio scene? What is your favourite netlabel doing now?
  9-10 years back when I started out as a musician, there was a certain hype about the topic. The idea of free access to music – legal! aside from piracy! – was new and netlabels sprouted manyfold, curating hidden music, uncovering gems, becoming a scene of their own. Even mainstream media caught up to it.
  Where did they go though? Since streaming services came into play, the whole perception of accessing and “owning” music changed once more, most people, especially the young millenial generation, wouldn’t even bother putting up with music piracy anymore because they can access anything anywhere all the time anyways. The convenience-oriented USP of CC-music (as opposed to “commercial” music) towards the consumers dissipated now that everything is equally accessible  - and thus netlabels just more or less disappeared from the digital horizon, or at least drastically decreased in relevance. Correct me if I got this wrong, but at least that’s my impression.
  
  Also, as a musician, “Are you on Spotify?” became the new “Are you on Facebook?” – you remember the moment when it became hard to stay in touch with your friends if you didn’t follow the pack into the social web? Yeah, it’s similar now. You’re not on those platforms, people won’t bother looking for you elsewhere. I don’t know, maybe it’s bullshit to follow those trends, but… maybe it’s ok to try to stay visible.
  And after all, even Creative Commons was never supposed to be a religion, but a concept designated to create a change in perception of music distribution. This change is now happening anyways, whether better or worse, we’ll see (for now: worse, but I don’t want to get into this now) - but thus I guess it’s fair to stray from that path (and maybe come back later if the circumstances allow).
  

  
  

  4) And the CDs are professionally produced, does that mean the DIY days are over?
  
  Well I sure hope not entirely. But this connects to the first paragraph – spending days on my bedroom floor crafting CD sleeves and putting up with getting my printer not to fuck up the label prints is simply a luxury I can’t afford these days, as life is already too stuffed and the day still only has 24 hours.. That doesn’t mean I won’t keep trying to add some ideas and details here and there that will make stuff a little bit more personal, doesn’t mean I’ve only been waiting to delegate all the crafty tasks. I did love them, after all. Maybe the priorities have shifted these days, I spend more effort on working out live performance quirks rather than drawing pictures to mail out, but that might just be a phase, too.

  –
  

  Bottomline, I think what it comes down to for me: I was presented with this chance to give my musical path a slightly new direction that looks like it could end up being be more productive and sustainable. And while having no idea whether it’s good or bad in the end, I felt like I had to take it, like it would be ungrateful not to take it for the sake of stubborn principles. 
  
  At the core, things haven’t even changed all that much. I still record alone in my bedroom with a computer and two mics bought second-hand somewhere, still make the artwork pictures myself. Moving things to a slightly more professional level doesn’t imply that I suddenly strive for the big fame or money or anything fancy – only to find a balance that will allow me to keep doing this.
  As I said, I don’t even know yet where this is going either. If I haven’t bored you to death at this point with self-indulgent banter.. I’d be happy and grateful if you’d like to stick around with me and find out.
  
  

• Tumblr Entertainment For The Braindead

  Friday 17 November 2017 at 10:34

  Entertainment For The Braindead:

  Oh! Last week Sunday I was a guest at Radio Fritz in the outskirts of Berlin, chatted with charming host Christoph Schrag and played a song live… Here is a stream of the interview + loop song (in German) and Christoph added a few words about it in his blog post… I feel incredibly flattered. 
  

• Tumblr Two songs from my upcoming EP (plus a brief glimpse into...

  Wednesday 04 October 2017 at 13:26

  
  
  

  Two songs from my upcoming EP (plus a brief glimpse into something very new at the end) and a recipe for pumpkin soup…
  André and Louisa from Mönchengladbach invited me into their kitchen last Saturday. They have a format that I particularly like: Live session plus interview and cooking session. So they filmed as I played, we chopped and chatted and had a nice autumnal meal afterwards, and here is the result for everyone to watch. I hope you enjoy!

• Tumblr New music is finally happening. We’ll celebrate the release on...

  Monday 25 September 2017 at 12:50

  
  
  

  New music is finally happening. We’ll celebrate the release on November 17th in Berlin, but you can already pre-listen to two of the songs here:
  https://eftb.bandcamp.com/
  

• Tumblr New songs recorded at home and added to a brand new vimeo...

  Tuesday 25 July 2017 at 22:58

  
  
  

  New songs recorded at home and added to a brand new vimeo channel. What more can I say… This is a live performance with my Loop pedal, guitar and synth. I hope you enjoy

• Tumblr México Y2K17 Livelooping Festival - Part 1

  Tuesday 27 June 2017 at 12:11

  Alright, this is gonna be a lenghty post. But I feel like I have to go into detail about the festival I just came back from… it’s worth it. So go get yourself another coffee and sit down. Welcome to sharing one of the best experience of my life as a musician so far!

  

  In fall 2015 I met Lizeth Ruvalcaba and Eliud Ernandes at the annual Livelooping Festival in Santa Cruz. These two form the musical duo CIAN, based in the Mexican city of Guadalajara, and told me about their plan to put up a similar festival in Mexico the coming year, casually inviting me to come and perform. For various reasons, 2016 didn’t end up being a good year for traveling, but I was even more excited when it crystallized that I would be able to attend the second edition in May 2017

  To be frank, I had no idea what I was getting into. What scope the festival would have. How it would be to arrive in Mexico, a country about which I hardly knew anything about, other than that it’s the home of Aztecs, Mayas, Inkas and Tequila, and that the last VW Beetle left its Mexican factory in 2003. 

  However, what Liz and Eliud have created out of their initial vision, went beyond all my keenest hopes and wishes. A well curated and highly professional music festival featuring 26 artists from 6 countries, traveling through 3 cities and playing at rather impressive stages. And besides that, also a unique hub for personal and artistic exchange, but I will get to that later…

  ARRIVAL
  

  Our journey started in Guadalajara, whose smog dome could be spotted miles away from the airplane. A traditional savoury breakfast with Chilaquiles and strong, more or less locally grown coffee fueled my weary body after 21 hours of travel and helped me stay awake until the evening, when whole bunch of people was assembled in a bar called Silvestre. There we were, ready to kick off the festival - not yet musically, but socializing and exchanging names and stories. A bunch of live loopers with the most diverse backgrounds and approaches to music, lots of us strangers, but not for long….
  
  

  
  FESTIVAL START IN GUADALAJARA 
  

  After a long night of getting to know each other over beers and multi-instrumental courtyard jams, the performances started on a Monday at the Universidad Panamericana, on a chilled indoor stage where most of us would give a first taste of their works. I was fairly impressed with the stage setup, even including lights and live visuals, unaware yet that it was modest compared to what my second and final performance in Guadalajara would hold:
  A newly built Culture Center in Zapopan offered us an amazing classical concert hall with a stage big enough so that six of us playing that day could all set up at the same time and then play one after the other without long transition times. The sound unfolded massively in the large theatre space. But these main concerts weren’t even the highlight of our week-long stay in the home-town of tequila…
  
  

  

  
  During the week days, the local School of Rock hosted musical workshops where my old Californian friend Rick Walker would talk and teach us about rhythm and percussion and ambient jazz guitarist James Sidlo from Texas broke down his setup for us and explained the use of effects and tools to create drones and intricate layers of sound. The geeks among us also explored the shop section, browsing for new interesting pedals to add to their boards, and the nights always ended at our headquarter, soon to be called „Loopicasa“, where we drank and chatted and played music together until exhaustion made us stop.
  

  CONNECTIONS

  Also, a very special event was set up on Thursday night: four duo performances – each consisting of two randomly paired loopers – were to take place in the Laboratorio Sensoral, an experimental space for arts and sound in the city center. James Sidlo and I would play as the second team, between the groups of Faisal Khan from Pakistan with Oscar Galoz from Mexico, Liz Ruvalbaca from Guadalajara together with Spookstina from North Carolina and Rick Walker from Santa Cruz with the local musician Marks aka. Los Hijos de Doña Loope. 

  

  
  Exciting – to get a chance to trigger one’s experimental side and jam along with another person you’ve barely met, especially as someone who is usually very tied to traditional pre-arranged song structures. I could dwell for hours on this particular event, but will keep it short: Each of our random multinational groups managed to create such an intense and unique sonic journey that by the end of the night we were all so blissfully charged with the magic we had just witnessed, that we exchanged baffled looks and kept nodding to each other:

  This is it. This is music, this is why we do this.

  

  As a side note, James and I were so struck by our improvisation that we are planning to collaborate in the future… but let’s not jinx that yet….
  

  SAN MIGUEL ALLENDE

  After one week in the brisk heat of Guadalajara, a long, but air-conditioned bus ride took half of the artists to the small traditional town of San Miguel Allende. Our stage there was the area around an inactive fountain in the lush and beautiful courtyard of Centro des Artes Ignazio Ramírez.

  

  
  Despite missing our first bus and arriving horribly late at night, despite hearing from the hostel staff in the evening that there was no running water and we would have to fill and use buckets to even operate the toilets, despite being woken up at 6 in the morning by mysterious cannons saluting for an hour, and despite playing in the open sun at 30°C and struggling with overheating laptops, boiling hot gear surfaces and invisible LEDs on our pedals, it seemed like nothing could even scrape the enthusiasm and good spirit we had already built up over the last couple of days.
  We were hungry, hungover, exhausted – and happy!

  CDMX METRO

  I had no idea what to expect when I realized that a whole bunch of our performances were set up to be inside the metro stations of Mexico City. Would it be a busking setup? What is the acoustic space like? Would people even care?

  

  But watching the first gig at the city’s actual Metro Museum, where Xandra Wong and Violoncheloops kicked off this little series of events, I was finally convinced and relieved. And finding my own stage (to be shared with ecnegrU) at Chabacano station the next day, located in a large hall between escalators, as well as watching my other friends play in a charming spot at Zapata station that was dark and enclosed like a small club space, and completely transformed by lights and projected visuals, I remained genuinely amazed.

  

  With all in all 8 perfomances per day acros the city, always sets of two in two spaces simultaneously, we hijacked the public transport net and interrupted the hasty routines of many locals who actually came and stayed and allowed themselves to be carried away for a moment before continuing on there way. The events had been titled as Interventions, and that was indeed what they were, technically at highest level, officially presented by the Metro and resonating well with our mostly spontaneous audience.
  Later in fact, a good handful of people that attended the main concerts, admitted they had come because they had spotted us on the metro.
  

  FILM CLUB CAFE

  The next venue was a completely different story and much more similar to what I am normally used to – a  small room in the Satellite City, a bit further outside of CDMX.
  In stark contrast to the vast, open spaces of the metro halls, here we had a very cozy, intimate atmosphere and could watch and listen very closely to each other’s sets, drawing a small, probably local crowd of mostly young people. My personal highlight was watching the only performance of CIAN at this festivals, who otherwise were only with us as our omnipresent caring and guiding hosts, now finally showcasing what they normally do and what initially brought us together.

  

• Tumblr México Y2K17 International Livelooping Festival - Part 2

  Tuesday 27 June 2017 at 12:10

  CENART

  CENART - the place where we would give some small presentations about our stuff and gear and approach to music and play the festival’s final shows over the course of three days. Someone mentioned it is Mexico’s most significant center for arts education and a huge cultural hub. As if I hadn’t been amazed enough yet by the venues so far, but the place and the sight of our gorgeous outdoor stage blew my mind one last time.

  

  
  

  The „Sonorous Tastings“ in the Aula remained intimate and only a handful of „outsiders“ dropped by to watch and listen, but it gave a nice chance to catch a glimpse of what the other musicians are actually doing in detail and why, and how they got here.

  Meanwhile in the outdoor area, the weather became an adventurous factor. On the first day, heavy rain caused some performances to be cancelled. During day two, everything remained hot and dry, and only a temporary power out during the set of JC Taylor brought a brief interruption which we spontaneously filled with an acoustic jam session in the audience area. Day two ended with a glorious jam session when MIDI Pipe invited some of us fellow musicians on stage. 

  

  And finally the third and last day of the festival on which I had my own performance, went smoothly until Rick Walker summoned the rain again with his last song, and the sky offered us an impressive spectacle as a final blast. We helped disassembling the stage in the rain and finally stood by our gear soaked, happy, and in disbelief that this meant it was over.

  
  

  BACKUP - AND THE CREW
  

  More than at any other festival I’ve attended before, I was continuously amazed by the blend of highly professional work and sweet personal commitment of anyone involved in the festival. We met the duo of Cabeza de Caset who were responsible for the design and the beautiful festival T-Shirts. 

  We had the wonderful Paola Gonzále traveling along with her camera, taking the most beautiful shots but also becoming a good friend and crucial part of the gang. We had a whole group of culinary students in Mexico City that greeted with delicious lunch packages and firm hugs during the festival days. 
  

  

  And then, as the intumblable foundation on which the whole event stood, there was the crew of Backup Produciones & Apoyo, the team behind producer Gerson Miranda – always busy, always patiently catering to all our technical requests, carrying our things, keeping everything going, but also a genuine part of the loop family.
  

  THE LOOP FAMILY

  And yes, I’m calling it a family, because after two days already we were looking back and couldn’t grasp that most of us had basically just met – it felt like we’d been acquainted for ages. 

  

  We were musicians of all ages from 6 different countries from the US to Pakistan and with a broad variety of different musical genres, reaching from song-oriented folk-pop to experimental improvised soundscapes, united only by the fact that we play with loop samplers of some sort. We could hardly have been any more diverse, but nonetheless we connected, exchanged music, language and ideas, learned from one another and parted with tears.

  On no other festival have I experienced such a mutual curiosity for each other’s creative and technical approaches across all gender boundaries, and a willingness to join and improvise together in spontaneous sessions, on stage as well as back home in the loop headquarter til late into the nights.

  
  LEARNING
  

  Personally, I learned a handful of things about Mexico and its culture. I was taught how to drink Mezcal (it is meant to be kissed, not chugged) and how to dance the Cumbia (thanks to MIDI Pipe!), learned the hard way about the kind of hangover that Tequila can give you, caught a few interesting facts about the city and its history, a few basic fragments and swear words in Spanish, was surprised that the aztec relievos used to be colored, and how hard it can be to find vegetarian food. Thanks to Juan Pablo Villa I learned about the old folk art of Cardenche singing, and in the workshops of Rick Walker and James Sidlo I found lots of new insights about rhythm and guitar effects.

  We talked a lot about mutual influence and inspiration, because it seemed like this was one of the core qualities setting this experience aside from the regular festival events, where everyone comes, showcases their own stuff and packs up to leave again. I’ve mentioned it above. No, this, it seemed, was in fact more about experimenting and exchange. Not stealing innovative ideas from one another, but sharing them consciously with a strong sense of appreciation.

  
  ENCOUNTERS
  

  Besides a bunch of strangers from the audience that I talked to during the festival, there were a small handful of people that had already known my music, thanks to the far reaching powers of publishing online. What a whimsical experience!
   A girl called Paloma from Guadalajara invited me to visit her café and musical space. A sweet couple had driven an hour to San Miguel Allende, brought me kind words and a delicious cookie („here, we remember that you’re into baking.. this is one we made“). 

  
  And after the final performance at CENART I was gifted an issue of an independet music zine that had featured EFTB in a small print article back in 2008. I remember back then someone had messaged me a screenshot of it to my ancient myspace account, but would never have expected to get my hands on the real thing – and now I stood here, half awkward, hugging strangers and feeling an honor and a gratitude I couldn’t quite find the right words for. How strange it is, for a small unknown musician to come to the other side of the world and find people already acquainted with your music. I still don’t quite know what to say, other than Thank you… I don’t even know all of your names, but I thank you so much!
  

  
  APPRECIATION & SIGNIFICANCE
  

  Okay, now a slightly more serious wrap-up of this journey and what it means to me. Because besides the musical and social aspects of the trip, there’s also a third layer that reaches a bit deeper.
  
  More than ever before on previous musical trips, this festival triggered an inner discourse of the social and even political significance of events like this. Rick Walker kept us reminded of that by speaking on behalf of the Californian people and their view on the relationships between the US and Mexico and the course it is currently taking. Personally, I was struck when Faisal in a jam session started entonating a sufi chant that I had once learned in a garden in Istanbul, playing with people from Europe and the middle East. And talks here and there  reminded me of how little your place of birth matters if you grew up listening to the same bands and lauging about the same internet memes, able to converse in the same language and overcome different nuances in mentality.

  But let’s not get lost in hippie talk – I am serious.. this year, for the first time, being able to travel and build artistic friendships across the globe occurred to me not only as a privilege – which it doubtlessly is – but also as an obligation as an artist. In times when people tend to vote in favour of national separatism, fear dominates the political discourse and border walls come back into fashion, when politics cater to concerns about safety at the cost of an open and embracing culture, it might be our task as traveling musicians to keep building bridges rather than shutting ourselves off, disassembling stereotypes instead of strengthening them and keeping at least the borders in our heads as permeable as possible.

  

  For us who came to gather in Mexico this year, I guess we all did it simply because it’s what we do, what we love – playing music, meeting people, traveling around. But maybe, seen under these circumstances, it is time for us to also pursue our passion more consciously as an active, peaceful act of resistance to emerging mindsets.
  
  Photo credits for this post: Julia Kotowski, Paola Gonzále, JC Taylor, James Sidlo, Klang Rêverie, and frankly I forgot who took the picture in the metro and at loopi casa… Anyhow, thanks for capturing all those great moments!

  Gefördert durch die Initiative Musik gemeinnützige Projektgesellschaft mbH mit Projektmitteln derBeauftragten der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien

  

• Tumblr Songwriting retreat, day 3/3The last day by the sea rewards me...

  Monday 01 May 2017 at 18:43

  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  Songwriting retreat, day 3/3
  
  The last day by the sea rewards me with the bluest sky for my afternoon walks. 

  The plan was successful in the end… Some extensive alone time and a chance to focus made it possible to actually come up with some new stuff. Funny how sometimes a little bit of isolation does the trick.
  So, I hope I can share some new tunes soon, once they’re a bit settled and refined….