Music

I love music, and making it is one of my most favorite things. So that deserves a page here. I started playing musical instruments, after getting some basics, with diving into 13 years of drum lessons (roughly until I started university). Later on, the marimbaphone (4 mallets and transportation craziness) was in the focus, and then with 14 years bass guitar, and  a year later piano joined the setup. In short I was very busy with music in high school. I have played in big bands, chamber orchestras, rock, blues, and jazz bands, and a percussion ensemble before starting with two projects I’m still very actively involved in: Bassfrucht, an electronic music collab with Ansgar Silies, and Smokey Joe, a Ska-Rock band, with friends from high-school (yes, that long ago!).

Bassfrucht

This collab started as a jazz band at high school, four guys literally camping in the music department, once almost burning down the whole thing. We shrank over the years, after piano guy Ulrich left us to become a famous tenor, to two people not really doing jazz anymore, but building walls of the school’s (electronic) music equipment, hiding inside, and recording unbelievably wild live sessions. While studying, we remotely produced more music and played a few live sets. After these early years, we started releasing our music for free on the Internet, continued playing live, sometimes also with our friends Stefan and Till as ‘Laserconcerts‘. Our netlabel Foramel Records is still there, providing hours of free-to-download electronic music, and we are currently exploring new directions, so please come back soon…

How we work? We rent a house on the countryside, build walls of equipment like in the old days, and start jamming. Once we are so far as to look at each other’s smiling face, we hit the record button and stream everything to disk, ready for post-production. Then, the next track …

Our releases from 2001 till 2011:

All releases are available for download (including a great cover PDF to print out and glue) at our net label Foramel.

Smokey Joe

This band started with a bunch of people from high-school, simply because we had a project week in school, and nobody wanted to do cooking, crafting, or sports. We convinced a teacher to formally supervise and then leave  us alone. So much fun! After this week, from the massive band of more than 12 people (guessing here!) some decided to take it further. Some more joining and leavning over time, then we stabilized as a group of seven musicians and went live. Lots of times. One of the first gigs took place on a stage we had to build from spare wood hours before. Half-way in our performance, heavy rain almost destroyed the stage from above. We played in dirty clubs, brought once a bus of friends to win a band competition, recorded albums with awesome studio people, performed on festivals with hundreds or thousands of visitors, and most importantly had the greatest time during the last 14 years. Smokey Joe continues in 2012 with me playing drums…

The currently released album is available via the iTunes store, but also as a physical release via SJ.de:

Our past releases from 2002 till 2010: