June 2012
9 posts
10 tags
expanding my grammar
Several times over the past few weeks I’ve heard or read the phrase “expanding my vocabulary as a musician” or some slight variation thereof. It is a common thing to say among musicians, one that I hadn’t really paid attention to since my teenage years when I was still thinking about trying to pursue an education and career as a guitar player. And now, suddenly, it caught...
6 tags
centrozoon “Fire” – pre-release webcast/chat Sun...
centrozoon “Fire” - online broadcast of the upcoming live album at www.welle303.com this Sunday, July 1st, 8 pm CET
“Fire” documents the complete evening of recordings at the foyer of Gütersloh’s town hall in June 2011.
Taking place five months ahead of the “We Will Tongue You Tour 2011/2012” with its 13 concerts in five countries (including a...
epic centrozoon album review
A new review of centrozoon’s album-in-two-versions, Boner, was published on Dann Chinn’s “Misfit City” blog. It’s truly epic, much more an essay than just a review. I’m flattered that someone would pay such attention to the music as well as the big picture, and take the time to bring them to paper screen, utterly untroubled by any commercial criteria of length...
7 tags
a week of intensive work with the Touch Guitar...
I just returned from a week long touch guitar retreat in the Tyrolean mountains. The course was organised by the Touch Guitar Circle, the group of students of the “tapping” technique on guitar founded in 2009 by Markus Reuter (who is also my bandmate in centrozoon), Erik Emil Eskildsen, Alex Dowerk, Mark Butler and myself. It was co-led by Markus and invited teacher Trey...
10 tags
TLE rehearsal snapshot
A snapshot from this week’s rehearsal of the Tönstör Laptop Ensemble, the new electronic music ensemble for teenagers that I’m building up for Tönstör in Bern.
Featured in the background is Till Hillbrecht, DJ and media artist and my co-teacher for the current performance project, the Ensemble’s second after last year’s music for contemporary dance (documentary video...
13 tags
the gardening metaphor: stockhausen vs. eno
Today, while searching through old notes, I found a text file in which I have at some point pasted quotes by Karlheinz Stockhausen and Brian Eno. Both (independently) use or react to the image of gardening and plant growth as a metaphor for the compositional process in their very particular styles of electronic music.
While their opposing constructivist (Stockhausen) and generative (Eno)...
6 tags
new interview: music, food and superheroes.
A new centrozoon interview with Bernhard and me has just been published at the Music Street Journal website. Conducted via email by G.W. Hill in May, it is a strange and hopefully entertaining mix of goofiness and serious questions about being a fringe musician in this day and age. We tried to answer the questionnaire with appropriate swagger. Here’s an excerpt:
MSJ: I know artists hate...
10 tags
please respect this masterpiece
Interesting sign on a graffito near my place:
“Writer-Codex: Please respect this Masterpiece,
created by graffiti artists of the area.”
On one hand I want to applaud the effort to raise awareness and “respect” for creative work in public places. A sign like this, however, finely printed and permanently screwed onto the image itself, will somehow empty any work of the...
8 tags
blank screen (for Jeff Noon)
By the time the blurbivores moved on
there was nothing left of the beautiful bodies
but skeletal metal.
