My third solo release took us on a journey into space – with drumsticks!
It's 2011, and my drums & synthesizers solo performance had taken off – at least from a creative perspective I was on an altitude flight. I was touring in small Jazz clubs around Europe, playing the 'hidden treasure' stages on many electronica festivals and started to present my digital approach to drumming on technology conferences. After releasing the experimental 'mad scientist drummer' album and the more post-rock oriented 'Attempt to change a running system' on my own label in the previous years, I finally found my voice in the flexible electronic live setup. People were dancing to straight grooves and quirky beats alike, I was able to explore more complicated song structures with my sequencing approaches, and I finally had some songs lining up for the next album. This time, I wanted to create something unique and coherent, and I wanted to dedicate my full energy into making this plan reality.
One of the key ideas was a comment from a listener, that my performance feels like watching someone driving a spaceship – and I thought that was an exciting picture! Not only because I've always been attracted to science fiction, from Star Trek: TNG and Douglas Adams to 2001: A Space Oddyssey. But also because it felt rather surreal to spend late nights on a club stage behind a drum kit, cables and knobs, only to show up at university the next morning to study software architecture and neural networks.
Sometimes writing is hard, ... sometimes not at all.
I dedicated many writing sessions to capture this situation for myself, programming, recording and writing the key elements of new songs, and testing them out in front of small audiences. After many months, those ideas began to consolidate into an interstellar journey spanning eight songs: "Driving A Spaceship" and "Fruit Mountain" act as a showcase of the system, picking up the humourous quirky electronics and jazzy vibes from my previous work. "Low Altitude Flyover" and "Molecular Shower" capture musical peaks of spontaneous energy and intuitive songwriting. "Fly To Mars", "Software Crisis", "Cosmic Solar Radiation" and "A Safe Place Far From Home" cope with my situation between worlds with different techniques and perspectives.
On Monday / I fly to Mars / pass the Moon / towards the stars
I leave the Earth / without regret / some time on Friday / I should be back
I recorded live takes in my rehearsal room to serve as guide tracks, and started to produce the electronic instruments tracks in my home studio, aiming for the final product.
The recording sessions took place at Funkhaus Berlin.
At the end of the year, the pre-production was ready and I rented a full week at the studio of a friend at Funkhaus Berlin Nalepastraße during the Christmas off-days. I got some help for setting up the drums, microphones and preamps initially – but the rest of the week I worked on my own, with drums and headphones connected like a spaceman inside a 3-room space station, using a remote controller to start and stop the recordings. Whenever I was working on my music before I had to prepare for major drawbacks, such as songs not unfolding as intended, fighting with drum tuning or mic selection, or creative and mental blocks. But this time it became clear there was no friction in sight, and I was able to finish my drum and percussion tracks with great satisfaction. The week I started to set myself the ambitious timeline to finish the album by spring 2012.
For this record I was looking for a consolidated, breathing and band-like sound, to contrast the science-fiction setting and the expectations listeners might have towards electronic music. I handed over the mixdown to Guy Sternberg at Low Swing Studios, who was renowned for his mixes using the analog Neve console. The session was straightforward and well prepared from both sides, and only when Guy had to convince me in few places to allow some strong reverb on snare and synths, I took it over into my live set later. The mix turned out phenonemal and still makes me very happy today!
How do you design a science fiction post-rock album?
One of the major side quests was to come up with the artwork for CD and Vinyl packages. I spent many weeks capturing ideas and discussing options with friends over drinks. We finally settled on the theme of a planet in the shape of a diamond – maybe this got inspired by a recent exhibition of artist Olafur Eliasson I had seen in Berlin. Yet I picked up the task myself to render the planet in Blender and experimented with different materials. Instead of the translucent diamond we settled on a mesh grid, creating a more abstract and much less polished look, to resemble the way I build my music from the ground up. The final touch was typography, after we discovered TJ Evolette A, a newly emerged uppercase font with abstract variations of the letters. Luckily the creators from a small German foundry were giving away a license to me in exchange for some copies of the finished product.
Let's release this gem on Towel Day!
For promotion of the album and the following tour Michael Clemens did a series of photo shoots and directed the video for 'Fly To Mars' with a nice crew from Filmarche Berlin in an old factory building. We fully immersed into the space topic, used the spacious rooms for many scenes and created some great visuals I still use today. I came back to this place later to do an improvised live performance, playing with the room acoustics.
The moment in May when I held my first self-produced Vinyl album in hand was fantastic (only after storing the 90 kilograms delivery in my cellar)! You can still get the physical album on Bandcamp or order it directly from the label.
I chose international Towel Day for the release date, adding a late little cross reference to Douglas Adam's sci-fi novel into my storytelling. My friends Robin Sukroso and DB Sound System supported the event, alongside the familiar crew from Antje Øklesund running Marie Antoinette club, and we had a great evening and start into an exciting time...
