Press Info:
A song telling endless stories. Looking for the beauty of life on an adventurous journey. Inspired by and dedicated to one of the greatest bands of all time.
Stefan says:
Since the pandemic I did a lot more organic stuff and played more ‘real’ instruments. This is one of the results, my first psychedelic rock song “and when the sky was pink”. Took me quite a while to mix the sound. Maybe still a bit too fat at all but the ambitious 70s are somewhere hearable in it I think.
Do not play it on your fnckuig phone speakers!
Take your time and get into the story.
Full Track Streaming:
“And When the Sky Was Pink”
Special:
“United We Stream at Drittel Bar – 06-06-2020”
Press Info:
Sunroof [Daniel Miller and Gareth Jones] have announced, after four decades of friendship and collaboration, the release of their debut album. Electronic Music Improvisations Volume 1, a collection of eight improvised modular pieces recorded as live in various studio spaces across London in the spring and summer of 2019, will be released on the newly revived Parallel Series of Mute on 21 May 2021.
Daniel Miller (founder of Mute, the “accidental label” that began with the release of his own 7” single The Normal’s T.V.O.D / Warm Leatherette) met Gareth Jones, (the innovative and influential producer, engineer and artist) back when Miller asked Jones to work with him in late 1982 on what became Depeche Mode’s Construction Time Again. After the band had gone home for the day, they would stay on to work on their own sessions, a practise that continued and, by the mid-nineties Sunroof had emerged as remix project, reworking the likes of Can, MGMT, To Rococo Rot, Kreidler and Goldfrapp, and appeared on a compilation paying tribute to Neu!.
Back in 2019, Miller and Jones were heading to a György Ligeti concert at the Barbican and beforehand – as they often do when together in the same city – the pair spent a couple of hours improvising with modular systems. Unusually, this time they decided to record the session and over a pre-concert meal, Gareth asked a question that seems logical after all these years: “Are we actually going to make a record together before we die?”
The following day, they set themselves some rules: “We decided to get together to do a bunch of improvisations,” explains Gareth. “We said we’d work in a number of different physical spaces but always together, in the same room. We were keen to do shorter pieces because we were both very inspired by Chris Carter and Martin Gore’s electronic music projects, where the pieces were very concise and compact.”
Key to their manifesto was a distinction between an improvisation and a jam session. “With modular systems, you can just go on and on forever and never actually complete anything. Sometimes that’s okay – part of the joy of a modular is that you can just keep going indefinitely. But with this we were keen to actually finish something, so setting that timeframe became a really important rule for us.” adds Daniel.
Nothing was pre-planned, they didn’t rehearse, and the pieces were recorded as live performances using a limited number of channels. What they accumulated during the course of those 2019 sessions was a suite of evolving, restless pieces, each one containing layers of pulsing, atmospheric sounds.
The pieces on Electronic Music Improvisations Volume 1 have a timelessness evoking the classic sound of some of the earliest electronic experiments. They also sound resolutely modern. Even for the two players, their individual contributions are no longer obvious to them, nor is it actually necessary to separate who did what – the whole journey is what’s important, not the individual twists, turns and tweaks that happened along the way.
The album possesses a spirit, energy and discipline of improvisation and in these pieces, you can hear the almost symbiotic connection that they share, and the new sonic pathways and different, unexplored ways of working opening up in front of them.
Press Info:
The love and dedication that Anna Jordan aka The Allegorist places in each project she pursues reflects an artist that thrives on creativity and creation itself, turning thoughts and narratives into a near-palpable reality. As an electronic music producer, singer, visual artist, sound designer or painter, she gathers in herself an ideal skill set that enables her to visualize a sonic reality, translatable into several artforms that comply with her futuristic, forward- thinking vision under her musical alias, The Allegorist.
With Hybrid Dimension I via Los Angeles’ Detroit Underground, Jordan created an extensive audiovisual experience, treading the realms of downtempo electronica, ambient and spatial exploration, having her track and video for ‘Humandroid Lovers’ featured at the Hong Kong Arthouse Film Festival in late 2018.
The Allegorist’s new album, Hybrid Dimensions II, gives continuity to the galactic journey initiated by the protagonist, a girl that overcame her fears to become the Dragon Rider. She now finds herself standing on the boat known as The Viking Thunder, facing a foreign land – the unknown. (see Storybook below)
Hybrid Dimension II comprises twelve-tracks of otherworldly soundscapes, electronic textures of grand embodiment, proportion, sounds of lament and dissociation. Hypnotic and fragile on the verge of desolation, Jordan’s ability to occupy the surrounding space with her technical performance is immersive, with it requiring detailed attention to connect the layers of dense, symbiotic melodies.
‘But there is a sort of light, so small that it can only be seen in the deepest darkness. It wasn’t there at the boat or ruins, where everybody was looking for it. It was inside of all of them. ‘
Aiming for solace, Hybrid Dimensions II’s journey conquers higher planes, achieving its goals of unification and closure, soundtracked with great depth, detail and made with an invaluable amount of passion and consistency by The Allegorist. For the protagonist, her story concludes after batting great distances, facing dark encounters, but in the end, she came, conquered and left, whole again.
The Allegorist sings in the fictional and majestic Mondoneoh language, to connect all nations.
Storybook: The Allegorist – HYBRID DIMENSION II
Standing on the boat, the sun was rising and she could feel the cold wind on her face. The ocean was peacefully moving, slowly in perfect harmony. Soon they would reach the island. With joyful anticipation they could already see it.
Weeks passed but the size of the island wouldn’t grow, it seemed that it didn’t matter what they did, they weren’t moving forward. Unnoticeably days were becoming shorter, the nights longer until everything was in complete darkness. Fights for the glowing stones and power started, and self-declared leaders established the wrong rules.
Suddenly everything was trembling and shaking with a loud noise. The boat had run aground. Under the rocks they discovered the ruins of a past empire. After a while, the stones weren’t glowing anymore. Everybody started to lose the sense of time and memories of faces faded until they became nothing but voices in the dark. They sounded more and more distressed and less human, some disappeared into the ocean forever.
She used to go back up to the boat, where in the cold darkness she would listen to the stories of the galaxy above. It was certainly a mistake that she was being trapped in a place, where she did not belong. But there is a sort of light, so small that it can only be seen in the deepest darkness. It wasn’t there at the boat or ruins, where everybody was looking for it. It was inside of all of them.
When she realized the light was in herself, standing on the rocks, she tore her chest apart. The ray of light from her chest lifted her body up, then crashed down into the waters and disappeared. Once again darkness engulfed everything. Soon little spots started to light up. All over the black ocean the hearts of the floating dead, people of the past millennium started to shine.
The ocean dried up and on its soil trees sprouted out of the wizened bodies. The ruins of the past empire broke open and seeds from the future were falling from the blue sky. The rivers were filled with fish and on their shores children were playing. And where once time seemed to have stopped, the present became one with the first dimension, which started with the hopeful excitement of new exotic expeditions.
Press Info (English):
Schlammpeitziger is the alias of musician, illustrator and performance artist Jo Zimmermann. He has been an integral figure in the evolving sound of Cologne since 1992, releasing his surrealist lo-fi krautronica on imprints such as A-Musik, Pingipung and Sonig.
“Ein Weltleck in der Echokammer” is the tenth Schlammpeitziger opus and his second album to appear on the Hamburg-based label Bureau B. The first notes of the opening title track Weltleck instantly confirm that this is no run-of-the-mill record. Jo Zimmermann confounds expectations as he wraps the art-electro sound of Schlammpeitziger in otherworldly dub echo loops –a surprising, yet perfectly coherent development.
Jo Zimmermann elaborates on the new Schlammpeitziger sound: “Reggae expert Bettina Lattak is a good friend of mine and she has been telling me for years that there are dub and reggae influences in my music. I had never really given it much thought, but when I began to introduce these elements more consciously into my music, everything clicked into place quite naturally. I found it fascinating, completely free of any religious context, simply following the sound.”
Not that these eight sun-drenched tracks are exclusively in the realm of dub rhythm; they are also sprinkled with disco beats, beguilingly low-flying bass and dreamy, sweeping melodic arcs – everything for which we have come to love Schlammpeitziger. He launches us into outer space before bringing us back down to the prosaic dancefloors of earth.
Another new aspect is that Jo Zimmermann sings on three of the tracks, translating the whimsical, curious nature of the music into an equally unique vernacular. His verbal expansion of the enraptured cosmos illuminates the brightly lit world outside the echo chamber on “Handicapfalter”, referencing Kraftwerk’s “Spiegelsaal” like a steel drum Absurdistan. Elsewhere, “Every Dayhey” floats like a weightless rainy Sunday dub, a dull sensation of gentle melancholy seeping into the morning after a long, long night.
Stefan Mohr, the producer from Cologne, mixed the album as he did its predecessor. Zimmermann and his congenial colleague Ulrike Göken have once again crafted the cover art and created a video in visual interpretations woven from the same fabric as Schlammpeitziger’s music.
“Ein Weltleck in der Echokammer” is an album which offers answers to questions that nobody is able to ask. Dancing feet caught in a trap, lost in crowded emptiness or sucked into space through a leak in the world – only Schlammpeitziger can do the lot.
– Andreas Dorau
Press Info (German):
Schlammpeitziger ist die Kunstfigur des Musikers, Zeichners und Performancekünstlers Jo Zimmermann. Bereits seit 1992 prägt er mit seinem surrealistischen Lo-Fi Krautronica und zahlreichen Veröffentlichungen bei A-Musik, Pingipung und Sonig den Sound of Cologne entscheidend mit.
“Ein Weltleck in der Echokammer” ist bereits das zehnte Schlammpeitziger Werk und zugleich das zweite Album, das beim Hamburger Label Bureau B erscheint, doch schon nach wenigen Sekunden im Eröffnungs- und Titeltrack “Weltleck” wird klar, dass Jo Zimmermann mit allem anderen als einer routinierten oder erwartbaren Platte aufwartet. Der eigenwillige Art-Electro-Sound von Schlammpeitziger trifft auf außerweltliche Dub-Echoschleifen. Eine Entwicklung, die ebenso überraschend als auch naheliegend scheint.
Jo Zimmermann über den neuen Schlammpeitziger-Sound: “Eine gute Freundin von mir, Reggae-Expertin Bettina Lattak sagte schon seit Jahren: Deine Musik hat Dub- und Reggae-Einflüsse. Ich selbst hab’s selber nie so wahrgenommen, es hat aber beim einfügen in meine Musik sofort funktioniert. Für mich sehr interessant, ganz frei von allen religiösen Kontexten, allein dem Klang nach”.
Doch auf den acht sonnendurchfluteten Stücken finden sich nicht nur Dub-Rhythmen; auch Disco-Beats, betörend tiefliegende Bässe und die verträumten, schwurbelnden Melodiebögen, für die man Schlammpeitziger so liebt, die einen weit ins All hinaus tragen und wieder auf den Tanzboden der Tatsachen zurückholen.
Auf drei Tracks erklingt Jo Zimmermann erstmals auch als Sänger und übersetzt die Verspieltheit und Kuriosität der Musik in eine ebensolche eigentümliche Sprache, die den entrückten Kosmos verbal erweitert. So erwartet einen in „Handicapfalter“ die lichtdurchflutete Welt außerhalb der Echokammer wie ein Steeldrum-Absurdistan von Kraftwerks „Spiegelsaal“ während „Every Dayhey“ wie ein schwereloser, von sanfter Melancholie verhangener Sonntagsregenwetterdub an den Morgen nach einer viel zu langen Nacht erinnert.
Gemischt wurde das Album wie auch der Vorgänger von dem Kölner Produzenten Stefan Mohr. Untrennbar verwoben mit der Musik von Schlammpeitziger ist zudem die optische Umsetzung von Cover und Videos, die einmal mehr von Zimmermann und seiner kongenialen Kollegin Ulrike Göken verwirklicht wurde.
“Ein Weltleck in der Echokammer” ist ein Album, das Antworten auf Fragen liefert, die niemand zu stellen vermag. Ob verfangen in der Tanzfußfalle, in rappelvoller Leere untergangen oder durch das Weltleck hinaus den Weltraum gesogen – das kann wirklich nur der Schlammpeitziger.
