The second edition of Wilde 13 Festival is about to come, on 31. of Mai and 1. of June 2019! Andreas and I, who organized the festival this year, too, are pretty mad about it. But this time it’s not only us, but a great deal of helpers from our neighborhood joined us this year.
Preparations for our very big little open-air-festival at Flora-Kiez, Pankow, Berlin, are going for more than half a year. Now everything has been thought about thoroughly and the party may go off. On both evenings six artists each will perform, and as an addition in this year we added a brunch on sunday: The street still will be blocked and everyone will meet once again to finish the festival – having another bit of live music, of course.
Summer isn’t really past and the sounds of our open air festival from june still are ringing, yet it’s time for the Unpluggedival again. Autumn is coming, even if summer is still strong. The second edition will present even more locations and artists, so people can move freely from one space to another getting lots of impressions and inspiration.
Of course also the 2. Unpluggedival 2018 has been prepared for a long time. As it’s mainly about unamplified music, according to it’s name, there isn’t too much of an effort for me in this regard. The artists mostly use amplification, but they care about it themselves, also by connecting with each other in this turn. It’s my part to organize everything in advance, and then to check and help where ever it’s needed at the festival days. This isn’t always easy though, with over 40 concerts at more than 10 locations.
As the Unpluggedival in autumn of last year has been a great success, we dared to finally realize our original goal, a real Open Air Festival in our hood: Wilde 13 Festival. Two days of live music on a blocked road, directly in front of my house’s door. And where else could it be?
While Unpluggedival spreads many concerts about many small and in parts unusual locations due to the cold period of the year, our Wilde 13 summer festival concentrates all concerts in one spot: an open air stage in the centre of our neighborhood. In two days the festival presents twelve artists with a wide range of musical soundscapes. No fees for entry, everybody welcome, but so are donations. Hot temperatures and a vibrant atmosphere are guaranteed.
For the first time I am organizing a festival instead of playing with my band at that festival. Together with my good friend Andreas Gerts who is already experienced in organizing events we invented the 1. Unpluggedival 2017 at our neighbourhood in Berlin.
Andreas and I had already worked together at the Florakiezfest, where he was the main organizer and I was the responsible technician at the big stage of the festival. Since then we had the idea of organizing our own festival for music only. The result of it is this indoor festival, spread over ten locations and featuring nearly 40 acts on two evenings: October 20. and 21., 2017.
Look at the festival’s own website for details. By the way that website was realized by myself, as well as me developing of the festival’s logo. The idea for the logo came from Matthias Lopp of Graphscape, who also made the print design in correspondence to the website’s design.
Here is a video I made from our last concert with Acrepearls at “Stadt für eine Nacht”, Potsdam. It was a beautiful warm summer night with an outstanding atmosphere.
The friendly people at Fabrik, Potsdam, provided us with excellent technical support. I was especially happy about the beautiful light show reflecting on the white tent roof above our open air stage. But we also got a multitrack audio recording of our concert, which I mixed and combined with the video at my studio.
We mixed a short medley of beautiful moments from our public live recording session at Spartacus, Potsdam. The video gives an impression of the band’s concept of playing improvised contemporary music.
I am happy to announce the recording of Acrepearls‘ second album. The first one is only close to finished and has yet to be published, but we’re on our way for a second album already! This time it will be a live recording session, so you are welcome to drop in and participate in the process by simply listening, watching and enjoying the atmosphere.
Acrepearls is an experimental jazz trio improvising freely and heading towards electronic club beats. It consists of my good old friend Kai Mader on saxophone, the piano player Nicolas Schulze and myself on drums. We all added some electronics to our setup to extend the sonic possibilities. In Nico’s case he also plays a synth bass, whenever there is a need for it. This is especially interesting since Joh Weisgerber, our bass player on the first album, is no longer with us. The trio got an interesting new quality and sound by Nico’s talent on grand piano, and still we enjoy the analog bass sound we liked so much from Joh’s playing.
The public recording will take place at freiKlang studios, Potsdam, on February the 3rd and 4th, 2016. Visitors are welcome in the evening of both days. See the flyer images above for details. The recording space is a large hall suitable for up to 800 people, but we will have just a small stage for the three of us in the middle of the big room, with maybe a handful of guests sitting or walking around with wireless headphones, enjoying studio quality sound. Should be a nice atmosphere! On the website of Lalonova there are some additional informations and a map, in case you wonder how to get there.
Potsdam’s Newspaper “Märkische Allgemeine Zeitung” has published an Acrepearls Feature as an announcement to the public recording. I hope this link will stay active, so you can still read the article later on. For just in case I also pasted the article to the comment below.
For the first time I worked as a live sound technician in charge with my own equipment for a little street festival at the place where I live in Berlin, the Flora-Kiezfest 2015. Over the day we had 15 acts on stage, including four grown-up bands of different styles in the evening.
In the afternoon on stage we had everything from puppet theatre over singers and songwriters to a live radioplay. In the evening there were four bands playing worldmusic, pop, rock with strings and a ska band with complete horn seciton. I had picked two friends to help me on stage and we had hands full to do in order to manage the tight timeline of only 15 minutes to change between the bands, including line-check.
I had brought a good deal of my technical equipment at Delicious Drums Studio, including my new and excellent sounding HK Audio PA system and the good old live mixing desk we had used with Strange Fluid. I was especially happy with the gates and the parallel compression on the busses that I had implemented to the setup.
I recently joined the band of fabulous Jazz singer Anna Margolina for a studio session and some live gigs in Berlin. Here are some very short impressions.
Belarussian guitar player Sviatlana Paklina, better known under her artist name “Lasma“, asked me to join her current live project, an atmospherically dense and intense rock show. The big sound of her music asked for electronic drums with lots of effects on my side.
We had a short rehearsal the week before the first concert and decided for an electronic drums setup. This was an excellent opportunity for me to experiment with the very powerful software drum synth “Ultrabeat“, which runs on Apple’s live performance software “Mainstage“. I had this plan for quite a while and know Ultrabeat well, but it still astonished me how responsive and creatively inspiring it’s sound and performance in conjunction with the flexibility and ease of use of Mainstage is. As always with electronic setups it was quite work-intensive to prepare everything for the first gig, but also very rewarding, as this short video shows:
Here is a little recording I did together with my good old friends of Strange Fluid these days in my freshly refurbished little recording studio at Delicious Drums.
After two months of reconstruction at Delicious Drums everything looks shiny and like new. I wanted to show the new “Sound Kitchen” to my friends, talk about the good old times and just by the way we whistled one or two notes, the result of which you can listen to right here.
Besides Kai Mader on Saxophone, tracks three and four feature T. C. Mabemba of Strange Fluid on vocals. As my favorite bass player Joh Weisgerber was so busy recording Ratatöska‘s new album at his own studio, Jürgen Munder jumped right in for him on the last track, playing the bass on a keyboard for the very first time! As far as I know that was his first time for him playing an instrument on a recording, and it definitely was a big fun and pleasure for the other three of us, as we only knew him as our effects specialist at Strange Fluid before.
This second day we met was probably the most creative and productive of my meetings with Abelha Supersonica. The result is a solid piece of improvised drum and bass, which I split into five tracks afterwards.
The good news is: There will be a new Stoppok studio release coming soon! We just met for a weekend at his house near Bremen, where we played and experimented a little together.
The less good news – at least for me personally– is: I won’t be his drummer once again. Well. Stoppok had invited me some years ago when he was in preproduction for his last studio album “Sensationsstrom”. We spent some days in his studio then to experiment, rehearse and record. At that time he decided on Benny Greb, who recorded the album and was the drummer of Stoppok’s live band during the past five years.
Now we had a great time playing and talking. As a drummer I was most concerned about finding a new concept and feeling to play without bassdrum and adding some odd percussive sounds and a little electronics. I think it worked out pretty well. But Stoppok had already told me beforehand that he had jammed with Wally Ingram and liked his feeling and energy very much. It seems like he finally convinced Wally to leave Los Angeles for some time and come over to Germany for recording and touring. Stoppok has booked Bremen’s “Studio Nord” for the beginning of february.
As a drummer and percussionist Wally certainly integrates with Stoppok’s new concept perfectly. Stoppok will play the part of bassdrum and snare himself while singing and playing guitar, just as he does when he performs solo. A complete drumset is not needed with that concept. But nevertheless I think it still perfectly fits the older rock-style songs, especially when performing live with a band. I’m curious how things will turn out during progress in the studio and on stage. I definitely wish everybody involved a wonderful time and result. There are tons of great songs, but you will have to be a little patient now until they are officially available.
In wintertime it’s good to remember the last summer sometimes. I specifically remember my sessions with Abelha Supersonica, a vocalectro live act from Berlin. With just her voice and a few little boxes she creates a superbly flowing performance.
During summer I played with the Polkaholix. I was asked by the band’s drummer to replace him for some shows this summer. The last concert for me at the end of a little touring throughout Germany was at the Radio Eins Parkfest in Berlin.
Last year I was asked to join Berlin based band Xell, as their drummer was unsure if he could maintain the job. Xell play a mixture of Heavy Metal and Folk resulting in a very dense atmosphere also reminding me of film music in many parts.
Unfortunately this didn’t work out as expected for me, as the band’s drummer decided to stay with the band, and my work of three months this summer was of no use for me except learning and enjoying this fine music.
From 2008 to 2010 I played keyboards with Ewa Firsowicz, a singer born in Poland and living in Berlin. I joined the band that was formed to present the studio productions live on stage.
When I met the producers for the first time to think about our live presentation the first album “Songs für einen Nachmittag” had just been released, but a second album called “Das Meer” was to follow the next year. A band was put together, and my job on keyboards was to reproduce the sound design of the studio production as closely as possible. I decided to use a laptop and Midi equipment for that purpose. I worked with Logic and Mainstage in my live setup for the first CD and with Live and Kore for the second CD.
You can listen to some songs of the two albums at Ewa Firsowicz on Myspace.
To invite people to our shows we sent a newsletter by mail, including a video I had cut together using live material from the last show and promotion fotos, along with a track from CD. I was happy I still found two of those teaser video clips on the web. I had forgotten about them for quite a while.
TouchOSC is an app for mobile touchscreen devices that offers onscreen controller elements to interact with your computer via OSC and MIDI. You may build your own controller layouts or choose from a list of existing layouts.
TouchOSC is one of my favourite Apps. It’s cheap and efficient, it’s very well programmed and designed, and it offers a functionality many of us have dreamed of for a long time: To have a touch controller for our music software, and even to be able to very easily build personallized controllers ourselves. And to add one on top: It all works remotely and stably.
The software package comes in two parts. First of all the app for your mobile device that shows the controller elements on screen and establishes a wireless connection between your mobile device and your computer without the need to install any other sofware on your machine. This works flawlessly out of the box with some included layouts of control surfaces. Secondly an editor application running on your machine that allows you to edit layouts or to create your own from scratch.
The app for your mobile divice is available for iOS as well as for Android, and the editor application runs on MacOS as well as on Windows or Linux. Both pieces of software run very stably and I couldn’t discover any bugs so far. They are programmed to contain a stable basic functionality without many extras, yet offering a wide range of possibilities including all you usually need without getting confusing.
As the name suggests, TouchOSC uses the modern OSC protocol to communicate with your audio or video software. It can communicate directly with software having the OSC protocol implemented. But as the older MIDI protocol is more widely used it also may send MIDI messages over OSC, which makes your TouchOSC control surfaces appear as a normal MIDI device on your computer.
In case you are interested have a look at the TouchOSC website for more details, pictures, explanations and a clear and very straight forward documentation. As I like this little piece of software so much, I have made a bunch of design modifications to the standard layouts, as well as some basics layouts for my projects, which you might try to get started.
With Strange Fluid we had a good time performing at Berlin’s Magnet Club last week, as you can see, or better hear, from this little quick and dirty bootleg video compilation.
