Tuesday, December 21, 2021
Library Music & the KPM 1000 series
Friday, December 17, 2021
SBB - Szukaj, Burz, Buduj
SBB in the 70s - now that's my kind of prog ;) |
Here's an odd thing, I never liked King Crimson and wasn't a super big Pink Floyd-fan either although I like them much more than Crimson, but one band that really struck a chord in me was this odd Polish 70s Prog group that is still active today: the Silesian Blues Band a.k.a. Szukaj, Burz, Buduj (Search, Break-up and Build) or just commonly referred as SBB. They have traits of other big British groups of the era, yet something very different which I always referred to as some sort or Slavic melancholy. Well, or maybe it's just that they sing in their mother tongue which is Polish and some of my own ancestors are from Poland too. My grand-grandma's parents spoke no word of German is what I've been told.
So I discovered SBB sometime in the late 90s in my father's record collection. Their abstract covers may have attracted me but I listened to every LP in his collection anyways. Back then we really lived in the middle of nowhere, somewhere in the East German woods of the Harz region. Our village comprised of a total thirteen houses and I was the odd kid with long hair and doing my odd things like handcrafting a bong from a beer can and sat there in my little room in the light of one lonely green bulb and listened to this old music from the 70s. And for some reason SBB had these weird sounds that always attracted me: I thought it was a guitar (!) but much later found out that it was a Moog synthesizer that they used excessively among other popular Prog Rock-keyboards of the era like a String Orchestra drenched in lush Phaser-sounds, a Fender Rhodes etc.
Their 1977 album "Ze Słowem Biegnę do Ciebie" would probably be among my top ten of all times, or at least top 20. I don't have lists like that but SBB are very close to my heart and for some odd reason I never really liked King Crimson at all who may be like SBB's own big influences along with John McLaughlin and the Mahavishnu Orchestra. While SBB is that type of band that has a kind of cult following of mostly old dudes from Poland or East Germany but never really made it much further than that despite even playing shows outside the Iron Curtain. I guess it's because of the (mostly) Polish lyrics but then these make a significant difference. Well for me most of their 70s albums are real highlights along with master Józef Skrzek's solo work and parts of the album "Geira" as a backing band of pop singer Halina Frąckowiak.
Monday, December 06, 2021
Early influences: Gas Giant
Gas Giant live 2005 by Scott Heller |
I'm recently (re-) discovering the GAS GIANT-discography. They kindly provide us with all their studio releases on Spotify, quite a boss move if you ask me, every band should do that somehow ... and I know not nearly no one earns much at all from that, but at least these recordings don't get lost like so many, but so many from the "early days" of Stoner/Psychedelic-rock. So many 12inches and stuff that no one has ever heard of, yet a lot of cool material. For me somehow much more interesting than what you could find on any kind of virtual 'stoner meadow' these days ;) but maybe that's just some old dude's rambling because not many of the new groups really strike a nerve in me.
Not much hits me like Gas Giant for sure, who were one of these groups that really impressed me a lot while we shared a gig with them so many moons ago in a little town in the middle of nowhere East Germany (read here). And it's actually funny how after so many concerts with so many bands with SBE, many of the bands that I kind of worshipped in my adolescent years, it's still these early memories that shine the brightest. Gas Giant, House Of Aquarius, The Hidden Hand - these shows were so special in so many ways, or am I after all experiencing what everybody does at some point in his life: moaning the lost youth? Well anyways... Gas Giant, man what an amazing band they were!
Back in 2003 while watching their soundcheck I already felt like they were completely another league. Even though from Denmark, they could have easily been among those California heroes of the 90s; Nebula, Fu Manchu, Kyuss - Gas Giant totally belongs into that realm. And it made me a bit sad to see how after their brief comeback in the mid 2010s, it seemed people had almost forgotten or still never heard of them and you found them under the little names of the few festivals they played. But ofc these days it seems more important how many social media followers you have - at times it seems all about numbers - but then how can you not acknowledge these are the kind of forefathers of a whole scene?!
Cool shot of guitarist Stefan Krey who's now playing in Magnified Eye - Scott Heller, 2005 |
Interesting links
http://aural-innovations.com/issues/gg.html - has even old tour diaries - it's a trip!
https://www.facebook.com/gasgiantrock - they occasionally reunite
https://thegasgiant.bandcamp.com - you can buy some of their releases
https://www.discogs.com/es/artist/733174-Gas-Giant - has also a brief bio
Saturday, November 20, 2021
Talking synthesizers
A strange attraction ... |
My modular synth journey began in around 2014 when I first saw one and had been wondering how you play that thing without a keyboard. I'm not sure why these attracted me so much but I had a thing for synthesizers for a long time already. I remember the first time a synth fascinated me has already been in 2000 when I first saw a 19" sampler and such rack things but never really got deeper into it until 2005 when I got Reasons from a friend and made a few shy excursions with a sequencer and their emulators.
A good example for early days synth exploration would be SBE's "Midnight Boogie" from 2012, in the second part the Moog Little Phatty is just all over the place, while I still had no clue about anything tbh ...
In 2008 while recording the first Samsara-demo I've been introduced to the wondrous world of VST, bought Native Instruments Absynth in the same year, and shortly after a Moog Little Phatty that had been used quite much on SBE-records like "Revelation & Mystery", "Midnight Boogie" and "Waiting For The Flood". I had also stumbled upon the synthesizers.com website but that was completely out of reach until I saw the first Doepfer-stuff in stores in Berlin in around 2014.
Modular craze came to its first peak with 2020 Modular Synth Jams EP. I also played a short live set in Berlin @Tief Ostkreuz, was an interesting experience yet very much improvised ...
After that it took a long time to really find out what I want/need as one can see throughout recent years. It's easy to develop an addiction and I owned a lot of modules throughout 2015-21. Long story short, there's still synthesizer stuff on the coming music. I'm really excited about the long track which is really kind of a modern Pink Floyd or sth I guess, but I still gotta finish with the lyrics and mixing. Guess the album comes out around February 2021. Until then, I'm anxiously waiting for VCV RACK 2.0. And btw if I learned one thing it's also that sometimes less is more ;).
Modular craze reached it's peak in 2019 ;) |
Wednesday, November 17, 2021
This is awesome!
Wednesday, October 27, 2021
I control, I fly
A little peek inside my cockpit while I'm almost done recording the musical parts of my debut album, and am only left to do the vocals - I don't want to promise too much honestly but in a way this will be the successor to SBE in many ways and I am happy that finally I found a way of painting the picture without the dependencies in a band or working in somebody else's studio - where I'd never been half as relaxed as working from home can be. Much grateful to the universe, I am.
Friday, October 15, 2021
Early recordings
Thursday, October 14, 2021
My love, my inspiration
Baby Bee - I just wanna thank you for everything that you've brought to my life. I don't know if you can imagine how much you make me feel alive. We've had an ocean to separate us, had to wait for such a long time, but now the dream, that once we've shared, has become real ...
Wednesday, October 13, 2021
EHX rarities + lovely nerd jams
Sometimes I regret selling my one Russian Muff, also throwing the wooden box in the trash -- how could I? Yet when I look at collectors like this I feel like the most humble musician person on earth LOL
Tuesday, October 05, 2021
Surya "Lost Transmissions"
I just released a couple of tunes from a selection of what was supposed to be a 2021 full length album which I scrapped because that old guitar & rock music got in my way and I may have overthought these tracks anyway, but they are too good IMHO to only sit in a lost folder on my hard drive. To be honest I have no clue what kind of genre this is LOL -- it's synthesizer music with guitar, modular bleeps but not that cheesy stuff, I hope.
Friday, October 01, 2021
Surya's Solarstriker & The Long Return
I reinstalled Surya's "Solarstriker" and "The Long Return" to bandcamp because they belong there and I don't know what's gotten into me when I thought they weren't good enough, also next week I will release a few new tracks that I recorded this last Winter here in Brasil, before I decided that in the future I will get back to more sort of traditional kind of Rock music. It may all be a bit confusing I know, I guess that's what happens when you give too much time to a weirdo musician like me, and even though I don't see myself on any stage anymore (never say never tho), I promise I will try to be a bit more mentally stable ;) ... what a strange time it is, I hope these songs provide a bit of distraction.
Friday, September 24, 2021
Electric Magic Archives
I will upload some demos, rare stuff, and hopefully interesting things from more than 20 years in music with Terraplane, Samsara Blues Experiment, Surya Kris Peters, and recently Fuzz Sagrado. If that's any interesting for you, feel free to follow: https://soundcloud.com/electricmagicarchives
Wednesday, September 15, 2021
SBE - beginning of a long story
I'm going to re-upload some of the historic SAMSARA BLUES EXPERIMENT - material, starting with the earliest documentation from a rehearsal which was the 3rd or 4th get-together with Florian Furtner on bass and Robin Niehoff on drums, and me for the 3rd (or 4th) time in my life on vocals - yet much worse than even the worst LDT-vox LOL - sorry I had to cut that out, but the rest is kinda nice and has a lot of that early 2000s vibe, when everything in "the scene" was still very underground, naive and pure. You may even spot the Tascam tape recorder in the middle of the room, which is kind of hilarious when you think that only ten years later this early necessity became a kind of fetish for some people (I have never sold sth quicker than my old tape recorder in 2017 LOL). Btw the song "Singata (Mystic Queen)" had already been written in our days with GREEN MONKEY (which was just a temporarily confusion in our days as TERRAPLANE - not sure why we decided to wear another name for some months), and to this day I guess this is the most popular song ... funny, right. Video btw was taken by Flo in Summer 2007, at our rehearsal room in a Christian community center in Wernigerode/Germany. I think we had one more rehearsal in that line up - which is kind of a shame but the move had already been decided for months - before I went to Berlin, where it took about one year to find the line up with Thomas and Richard, and later Hans. I will continue to write about the band history later ...
Tuesday, September 14, 2021
This crazy life
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Creepy Chris at old Mac Oelke's "Kinderzimmer" ca. 2001 |
So I've recently turned 41, forty one, years of age, pretty ripe on life experience, and all I come up with is this silly old pic - for one just because maybe it's a good thing to reminisce on the long way I walked since there. Around the time this picture was taken, which is roughly twenty years ago, I just had decided to quit the first psychotherapy I went to, which I voluntarily began after a period of feeling kind of lost, indistinctly sad, maybe even depressed: I had also just quit my first studies because I couldn't handle the stress of studying informatics while for the first time moving quite far away from my home area (not as far as Brasil though), the band and friends I had just found after the more or less turbulent years of being a introvert teenager (I had my fair share of silly things ... like being a Graffiti sprayer and a 'stunt-skater'). Plus, the still very actual trauma of losing my mum at a young age. Yet all of this was a kind of a landmark in my biography, for the first time I had taken kind of brave decisions to better my life. Not nearly anything of it had worked out, yet these had been the first shy steps. On a side note; the day I quit therapy was September 11 2001 and we all know what was happening that day too, all TV-channels repeated pictures of the crashing twin towers even through my parents TV-set in the middle of nowhere Germany, and in a way this was also the end of naivety for many others around me.
Thursday, September 09, 2021
Recommended to watch
I stopped watching TV about 11 years ago and even while occasionally checking on some of the news headlines out of little curiosity I really don't think that most of the sensationalism is something that anybody needs in his life. At least I for myself had realized early on that watching corporate news-channels or getting deeper into politics does not contribute anything positive to my life. For those who are curious about what's really going on in this world and it's many microcosms, I'd wholeheartedly recommend to watch Peter Santenello's channel and for more also check out his older blog entries (here). Oh and of course the dude took Ayahuasca LOL
Tuesday, September 07, 2021
Five Horse Johnson
These days I am kind of rediscovering almost everything that made up my rocking world in the early 2000s. Five Horse Johnson are very much one of these bands that would deserve a lot more attention. I mean look at that guitar player alone. I drew quite some influence from this when writing stuff for Terraplane's "Into The Unknown", if you want to compare this with songs like "Once I Was You" or "Lower" from that period. Anyways, Five Horse Johnson, awesome band ... for some reason never made it bigger than being an insider tip mostly within the "old dude Blues Rock-scene" ;) not really big for the stoner crowd. Kind of strange if you ask me, but maybe they've been a little too early with that sound.
Monday, September 06, 2021
Interview for The Obelisk
Blogmaster JJ Koczan of THE OBELISK asked me for an interview, and even though I hesitated a bit - believe or not I am still insecure about speaking (english) in public - this was a request I couldn't turn down.
After all I enjoyed this talk, as it was also the very first time speaking in person, after knowing JJ from E-Mail and chat for more than ten years now. We talked about the new project, which probably will remain rather low key and of course had also to talk a good bit about SBE, why it had to end (or to be paused?) and the unavoidable nostalgia about the "legendary" US-tour etc.
Recently I have watched a lot of the other interviews JJ did, it's quite new to me to discover the mindsets of fellow musicians. I guess for most of my 20s and 30s I've been a little too busy on building up my own legend ;). Yet it was interesting to hear about LOWRIDER recording in a way the way I do now, including the use of amp simulations and synthesizers occasionally replacing bass. But anyway, one day after our interview my mind kept wandering, asking myself if probably I'd lifted too many "secrets" ...
By the way I am a bit clearer now about what the next FUZZ SAGRADO-release will be, and it may very well be a full album. I will select ca. ten songs that include a few SBE-like tunes, but also kind of a crossover between my SURYA-stuff and back-to-my-roots Rock. It may take a while though as I still have to write some lyrics and need to finish all these basic tracks that I already have. I'm a bit lazy these days and mostly enjoy just "noodling" along to my Spotify-playlists LOL.
Sunday, August 29, 2021
Collaborations
I wanted to mention some of the collaborations from the recent past, as there are PATER NEMBROT as one of the most underrated bands I know. Been a fan since their earliest release (Mandria EP), when they still sang in Italian. They were one of the oldest friend bands of SBE with several shared gigs. They are on hiatus at the moment but their main songwriter, singer/guitarist Filippo has a solo project and also a new band.
I also have contributed a little synth atmosphere to my friend Alex'-solo project OCCULT STEREO. He's also been part of IMPURITAN (check em out) who had been a cool band out of San Francisco. God stuff, and definitely different from most "standart psych"-bands these days ;) ...
And then I added a bunch of instruments on the first MUDDY ORCHID-EP which is one of the latest outfits of my old buddy Robin, who was also the first drummer in SBE when he was not much older than 16. He's a very talented guy and I think on the following full-length album played every instrument himself.
Oh, and I just remembered that in January 2018 Alex & Pepe of IMPURITAN and I almost had played a spontaneous jam-gig in San Francisco, which would have been kind of *hilarious* for me since it seemed impossible for SBE to return to the USA due a bunch of reasons / limitations --
Tuesday, August 24, 2021
Making music in 2021
Okay this may be a nerdier kind of post but I figured it may be interesting for some people. In recent years I learned a lot from electronic music producers whose approach to making music in my opinion is a lot more efficient in than being in a band and having to discuss like every little step - which really was one of my bigger dilemmas in SBE btw.
But often it may also be a problem that you want to make music and there's just not the right people around or whatever, and I somehow believe that in the future probably more people will come up with solo projects and again the technology provides with a lot of amazing tools, many of them even for free. All you gotta do is research, ... I think in the end that is every creative artists dream to produce his music the way he wants, right?
The guy here explains very well, of what is possible nowadays, and you can adapt this to any kind of style. I'm not the biggest modern prog fan, this is more about the whole technical aspect of producing ...
Friday, August 20, 2021
Another world
Sunday, August 15, 2021
Sunday vibes
I just stumbled upon this beautiful video ... music is kinda nice too. Never heard about this guy before. Sometimes I feel like I've spend a lot of time under a rock LOL ...
Tuesday, August 10, 2021
Second Birth
I never spoke a lot about this but somehow felt like I should, especially in these weirdest of times we all still live through. This following story may explain some of the decisions I made throughout the last year, and then maybe it's a bit of an inspiration for you who reads this ... at least, I hope so.
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My little car after the bigger accident, Organ Pipe Arizona 2018 |
So I wanted to write about what really happened to me in that desert. Some may remember when in 2018 I was still in Samsara Blues Experiment, and everything was still "normal", nonetheless we had to cancel our tour and in a way this was the first of two events (or actually three, when you include the still actual restrictions) that subsequently lead me to leaving "the rock circus" (means not playing concerts anymore).
It was a long time dream coming true for me when in January 2018 I headed off to a solo USA-trip, after being heavily affected by US-life style as transmitted through movies and series from the 90s and two prior tours with the band. I wanted to further explore the country. And after a long period of hesitation (I'm still a sort of "shy guy".) I finally decided to do it, thanks to the help of my good friend Jabal in San Francisco who'd lend me one of his cars to take off on that big adventure.
So the first two weeks of my trip were amazing, just me alone in that car driving across California - the redwoods, the deserts, the ocean - visiting friends here or there, living this kind of dream that I had for such a long time. The turning point came only the second day after entering Arizona. For me who'd never been there before, I was completely overwhelmed again. The natural wonders are really sth that I can not praise enough. But I was too naive, too much overwhelmed and not paying attention at a point that needed the most precaution.
Being alone in the desert I randomly stopped the car and went nuts to take pictures of every cactus tree I'd see and actually had more than just one opportunity to cause an accident while even taking pictures behind the wheel ... at one point I climbed a pile of rocks to take a picture, ... and fell. I broke my wrist in two points. All I saw was blood but the pain wasn't that bad, so I decided (there was no other other option anyway) to get back into the car and drive back the 30 miles to my hotel in the little town of Ajo, AZ.
Five minutes after that though the worse accident occurred when I passed out behind the wheel and the car took off from the road, hitting a huge cactus, and whatnot else ... I wasn't aware and only woke up some minutes later, like from the weirdest of dreams. I only remember hearing a Emmylou Harris-song in my head ("the darkest hour is just before dawn...") and a lot of light coming through the broken windscreen. Was this dream or reality? I pushed back the broken door and went a few meters to sit down on the desert soil and finally saw the heavily damaged car: OMG what strange reality was this?!
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Just to give you an idea, also about the distances ... |
It just slowly occured to me that this wasn't just a dream while also the hour before was only a somewhat blurry memory. Luckily for me, I've been on the only road in that area (Interstate 85) that connects Arizona with Mexico, so there were other people who went down that way and found me sitting in the desert. After a while there'd been like 15 people around me, not sure which authority to call as this is very close to Mexico, but after ca. half an hour the ambulance from Ajo arrived and took me all the way up to Phoenix. There, or in Tucson, were the only hospitals who'd been able to do all the kinds of checks to ensure I'd be okay.
At that time my body was one big pain and honestly I had no clue if there was severe damage or not. I had been tied to a stretcher, just as you see it in the movies. Luckily after spending the rest of that day in hospital doctors told me that everything was okay, except for my broken wrist, which came as a big surprise as still I had not realized that it was so bad. Because of this, of course I wanted it to heal the best possible way, I booked the earliest flight back to Germany and subsequently cancelled that Samsara-tour.
Gladly I recovered from all this with not much more than the distant memory to which was one of the more significant, life changing moments. Prior to that, SBE had even played when we had a flu, and even when one of us fell ill and could not enter the stage. Yet I'd already been struggling for a while to find out what I really wanted to do with my life. Then in 2019 I went through another troubled period after severe problems with my intestines, and another hospital visit, this time in Brasil, I ended up in an emergency operation and for a second time had to cancel a tour.
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The last picture before I fell and broke my wrist. // Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument AZ, Feb 2018 |
Honestly I am glad for all that the band had brought me and we all worked hard for this success, but in the end I was happier to not being obliged to tour anymore. The craziest moment though still had to come ... after another Winter in Brasil in February 2020 I returned to my old apartment in Berlin. There'd been rumors of a new kind of flu coming from China that was much stronger than all anybody had known before. Already on the airports I'd see a few, primarily young people wrapped in face mask and gloves, while all I thought was ... WTF?!
I had come back earlier to Germany basically to record the, now final album with SBE which at that time still had the working title "Second Birth". Yet it seemed to become impossible to rehearse. And I, at that time living only ten minutes walking distance from the rehearsal room was not able to meet up with the two other guys, blame it on the overall confusion at that time, but also on the infamous "German Angst"- or, when your need for security makes it impossible to be flexible.
Still, I don't want to blame anyone in particular, we all need to find out what is best for us, and these were not the only problems that we had in that group. In my humble opinion, we all live through some of the weirdest of times, where at its peak fear ruled over reason.
I've been raised in a small socialist country and already experienced a lot through the last 40 years, lost my mum at a very young age and had been a kind of hypochondriac most of my life... but do we want to live our life dictated by fear? But then this is my personal blog and I make it one of my main purposes here to inspire people to live their own lives - responsibly - but free from indoctrination and media madness.
Namaste -- and seize the day, in a good way.
Friday, July 30, 2021
Flashback Friday
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Someone from Orange amps took this pic at Desertfest London 2017. They never supported me other than that tho ;) |
Actually this page is a kind of therapy for myself. It may be hard to believe but at times - especially in these weird period that we all live now - I have moments of feeling a bit "useless". Although I have achieved a lot in my so far live, from being a shy, introverted small town kid to becoming a man that has travelled the world with just his music. So, I began to write down a more detailed kind of biography under the part *influences* which will be continued by time, up until this very day ...
Wednesday, July 28, 2021
Gear nerdism
I updated the page with an extended essay on almost all gear I used throughout the last 25 years. Here are some more pics, just because I didn't want to make that page fuller than it already is ...
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2015 live set up w/SBE - Later I added a Keeley Compressor, the EHX Pitchfork and a MXR Carbon Copy delay. |
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That Fender Rhodes is now part of Richard Behrens' Big Snuff Studio in Berlin-Weissensee. |
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70s Suprem Keyboard Amp - if I were a gear hoarder I probably had kept this, just because it looked cool ;) |
Tuesday, July 27, 2021
My 30s in a playlist
"Fuzz Sagrado" EP
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New 3-track EP available via Bandcamp! |
First review via DENPA FUZZ: "In Spain we sometimes use the phrase 'la cabra tira al monte', which is a way of saying that something returns to its natural environment, and this is precisely what Christian Peters, the guitarist and singer of SAMSARA BLUES EXPERIMENT, has done in his new personal project FUZZ SAGRADO. If in recent times Christian had been creating albums under his pseudonym SURYA KRIS PETERS, in which the main instruments were synthesizers and his sound was electronic, now he takes up the guitar again to create new songs.
After having put an end to his little offspring SAMSARA BLUES EXPERIMENT, the bug to continue making music brings him back to the scene. A week ago Chris told me, to my joy and amazement, this great news that brings a great musician back to the present, with this new project called FUZZ SAGRADO. Here Chris plays guitar, bass, hammond, mellotron and mini-moog being accompanied only on drums by a mysterious character named Mr. Slater, providing the perfect groove for his songs.
So far only three tracks that represent a return to the origins, with vintage atmospheres, psychedelic touches, progressive atmospheres and guitar rock. The EP contains three tracks with a common denominator in their sound, but each one has its own identity. From southern vibes and aromas, to moments of great intensity in which psychedelia appears majestic showing a wide chromatic range; without forgetting the progressive vibes of the early seventies, it makes the songs become more complex and majestic.
If you add to that the contrast between some of the beautiful melodies with the intensity and heaviness of some passages, we can conclude that we are in front of a fascinating debut and a new hopeful stage. If here all the themes are instrumental, in future releases we will be able to find songs with vocals, which can be one more incentive for this exciting return ..."