In a recent discussion on Mastodon following the re-release of Schall und Stille’s debut album, “The Drunken Fisherman (And Other Stories)” on mirlo, Sam of NHAM came up with the idea that I could do a serialization of the album to be published on the NHAM webpage.
I quite like the idea, so here’s what I have written (to be published on this blog at a later time).
Ukas
In old Russia, the tsar’s decrees were called “Ukas”.
Work on “Ukas” started in February 2022, the day after Putin announced his so-called “Special military operation” against Ukraine.
In retrospect I can’t really remember what made me approach the subject in this way. I think the beginning of ‘Ukas’ was simply an attempt to express my disgust and horror at Putin’s invasion by using mainly sound design and programming; reducing melodic structure to a minimum and trying to set the overall feeling of helplessness and menace to music.
As a German, of course, my family’s history is tied to World War II. When I was a child, I had long conversations with my grandfather about it. I still remember the deep sense of horror he felt over what had happened in Germany. In contrast to many of his contemporaries, he always vehemently claimed that “everyone knew exactly what was coming and what Hitler was up to. All those who say they had no idea are just trying to ease their conscience”. He had been a member of the KPD, the Communist Party of Germany — which Hitler outlawed after coming to power. People like my grandfather were sent to the front lines as cannon fodder once the war had begun. He was lucky: he was captured and survived as a prisoner of war.
(ironically, the KPD was outlawed again after the war, making my grandfather not entitled to reparation payments because he had been member of an illegal party. You can’t imagine things like that…)
His stories left a deep impression on me. Combined with the bullying and violence I experienced at school, they helped shape me into a pacifist and gave me a lifelong mistrust of power-hungry people.
So I think all of that somehow went into “Ukas”.
Part 1, “Arrival” is me trying to paint a picture of slowly mounting tensions (Ukraine war didn’t start in February 2022, it had been brewing long before that) leading to something sinister.
Part 2, “Old Glory” was inspired by Putin’s drive to bring Russia back to its former glory, which I think is why so many people are still backing him. National pride is a dangerous thing, in Germany as well as in Russia. It’s meant to sound like something classical, fallen out of time and existing in a space where it doesn’t belong; hence the synthesized classical instruments.
Part 3, “Disappear”, with its mechanical and electronic whirring, pumping and assorted FM craziness is about decades of humanitarian progress coming apart before all of our eyes because some crazy power hungry warlords getting their will.
Part 4, “Remembrance” begun with me thinking about my grandpa and the stories he told me, and
Part 5, “Answer Me” is kind of looking into the future and trying to figure out how it all is going to end. Which of course I don’t know. But it ends with a quote from Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol’s “The Dead Souls” – a man whose works reflected the deep contradictions of the Russian soul: the absurdity and tragedy of its bureaucracy, the quiet despair beneath everyday life, and the strange blend of cruelty and longing that still seems relevant today.
Back in the early 2000s my ex-girlfriend was part of a troupe performing an experimental stage version of “The Dead Souls” – which completely fascinated and enthralled me back at the time.
When I was just finishing “Ukas”, I came upon a free audiobook of “Dead Souls” on LibriVox, read by Anna Simon. I listened to it and had this certain eerie feeling that you get when you realize, something is fitting absolutely perfectly, as if the one was made for the other.
Of course I tried to contact Anna, but unfortunately she never answered. The terms and conditions of LibriVox allow me to use the recorded audio anyway (the audiobook is in the public domain), so that’s what I did. Anyway, Anna, if you’re reading this – many, many thanks!
One thing I was absolutely set on with this album was releasing it through a netlabel. On my own, I probably wouldn’t have reached more than two or three listeners. So I reached out to three different labels, sent them the finished tracks, and asked if they’d be interested in working with me.
To my surprise and encouragement, all three said yes.
The largest of them had the biggest reach — they were also a “real” label, with an official label code, vinyl and CD production, the whole deal. They probably could have taken Schall und Stille places I still only can dream about. But they also wanted some creative control. Specifically, they asked me to leave out or rework “Ukas,” which they felt was “too experimental,” “jarring,” and “confusing.”
That’s when I decided to take my business elsewhere. “Schall und Stille” has been with the Submarine Broadcasting Co. ever since, and they’ve been an absolute delight.
Me Without You
I originally imagined my debut as Schall und Stille as a mainly instrumental, electronic album. I definitely hadn’t planned on doing “proper” songs like this one – I had done so many songs with my ex-project Botany Bay, I wanted to do something new here.
But we can’t deny who we are. I’m a songwriter at heart and some things simply need to be said. With words. And singing. And verse and chorus.
There were multiple inspirations to this song. The terrible flood that devastated the Ahr valley, not even 30km from where I live, the eerie fact that people simply don’t want to realize that events like this are happening at an increasing rate as a direct result of climate change; some kids from the village buying ever more and bigger and more polluting cars and motorcycles and proudly adorning them with “Fuck You Greta” stickers (cf. “So Wrong”, below)… and, last but not least, a drawing by Humon (who back then was on deviant art) and which gave me the idea of writing a song from the viewpoint of Mother Earth:
I adore this drawing because I think it really sums up the state of our civilization quite expertly.
Of course I know the kids present their cars and their Fuck-You-Greta-stickers only because of their insecurities and fragile masculinity, all probably brought about by misguided upbringing – but in the end it won’t matter. Upbringing won’t matter. Politics won’t matter. Wars and power and money won’t matter. All of that won’t matter. And once we’re all gone, it’s going to be ok again. It might take a couple of million years to effectively undo the damage we caused, but it’s going to be ok. Without us. That’s the plain truth.
I find that as sad as I find it immensely comforting.
“Me Without You” marks the first collaboration with guitarist / multi-instrumentalist MyLoFy who contributes wonderful acoustic guitar to this track. Our partnership has lasted until this very day, and MyLoFy should go on to play a very important role on my second full-blown album “Malers Hüs”.
Before The Flood
After having finished most of the other tracks, I felt that although I very much liked the new material, I really wanted to do something less dark, less angst-laden, less mature and more… well, carefree and childlike.
Which is quite an endeavour, because my childhood wasn’t exactly carefree, mainly due to the fact that I was bullied quite often at school.
But then I thought, hey, what if I try to let my mind travel back to a time before all that shit began, before I was enrolled in school? And I actually managed to conjure up three different instances of childhood wonder that predated school:
Part 1, “Romanesque Columns” was inspired by the trips my father used to take me on. My father was a restorer, and his work often brought him to ancient churches. Sometimes he would take me with him inside those old walls, and I can vividly remember the feeling.
Part 2, “Ariadne” is based on a memory of my parents and their friends taking me along on a picknick on a clearing in some forest. I must have been 4 or 5 and my parents’ friends had a huge St. Bernard dog named “Ariadne” who I was very fond of. The instrumental piece is basically that memory put to sound – the crickets, the sunlight, and that big dog that was my friend majestically roaming through the undergrowth.
Part 3, “Rain” is a memento of the rain in my home village, which was halfway between the big city and (to me, then, seemingly) endless meadows, woods and fields. How the water gathers in puddles, how it felt and how it smelled. I remember one particular downpour of rain which must have happened a few days or weeks before me starting school – and that’s what gave the whole song its title.
In keeping with my desire to do something less controlled, I decided to try improvise most of the tracks in one take. Overdubs would be ok, but no redos. There’s only one melodic structure consciously constructed on these tracks: The last part of “Ariadne”, which is a reprise (or rather: an anticipation) of the Chorus of “Ground Truth”.
The improvising was easy and came quite naturally to me.
The real work here was the sound design. All sounds on “Before The Flood” were specifically programmed for this purpose.
“Romanesque Columns” is mainly my try of a voice-like FM patch on the Opsix, with some Waldorf Blofeld thrown in for good measure. “Ariadne” heavily features a Yamaha TG77 providing my idea of crickets, shimmering summer light, undergrowth and a big dog, and “Rain” has me going crazy on the custom operator mode of the Opsix with lots of cyclic operator feedback and lots of delay.
All three parts have one common element: A bright, bell-like sound which I programmed on the minilogue xd, and which I thought to represent the little child wandering through these scenarios.
So Wrong
“So Wrong” was inspired by both Putin’s war on Ukraine and the initial situation in our neighborhood.
My wife and I had recently moved into our new home, hoping to finally settle down and make our own little peaceful nest in this world… only to discover that some parents from the upper village had just recently rented the barn across the road so that their “children” (i.e. 17-19 year olds) could let off steam there.
The result? A constant invasion of an ever-changing cast of teenagers throwing parties, blasting stupid music with lots of stupid bass, revving their engines, tearing down the road in makeshift motorcycle races with screeching tires, firing potato cannons across our estate (and sending our poor dog shivering and shaking under the bed in the process), slapping “Fuck You Greta” stickers on their stupid cars and motorcycles, shooting defenseless birds with air rifles, chasing stray cats down the dirt road …and all kinds of other assorted deeply antisocial and downright punishable-by-law shit right on our doorstep – every two to three days, and, for some weeks during the summer holidays, every single fucking evening.
Since we were new and didn’t want to make an enemy of the entire village, we didn’t call the police but tried very hard to settle things in a responsible and adult way; talking with the youths, and when they didn’t relent, talking with their parents.
Big mistake. All pleading and trying to act rational from our side was in vain. In fact one day, two of the mothers stood there, arguing with me and using the 3rd person though I was standing right beside them…: “He won’t let our kids be! But our kids need some space to let off steam!! My poor boy is unstable, he needs this to unwind! It takes a village to raise a child, doesn’t he know that? He can use earplugs if they’re too loud, can’t he? Yeah, I think so, too!” etc. pp.
It was such a staggering and completely inconsiderate display of insolence that it almost seemed unreal – like a case of “where’s the hidden camera”?
I vividly remember sitting there one night watching the news about Putin doing one of the first really severe bombings of Ukraine, while some idiot kid tried their new subwoofer right in front of my door, and the sheer menace of it all, the fact that people do this to one another, in my mind it all became one and the same thing – the effects of a sickness we have, a complete lack of empathy. And that it’s wrong. So very, very wrong. And that’s how this song came about.
Fortunately, the kids are gone now, but the whole experience left us damaged, distrustful and distant for a very long time. We never received any sort of apology, but at least they’re gone.
Which can’t be said for Putin, unfortunately.
“So Wrong” has me on lead vocals for the first time since Botany Bay’s 2009 production “Stupid Summer Dreams”. The extraction of my thyroid in 2017 took its toll on my vocal cords which is the reason why I’m very reluctant to sing nowadays. But things are slowly getting better there, too. Instrument-wise it’s mainly me experimenting with (as so often on “The Drunken Fisherman”) organic FM sounds courtesy of the opsix and the TG77.
Little Glitch
“Little Glitch” is a song about the little things happening (or not happening) in our lives leading to great and profound changes.
It is one of the oldest tracks on the album, written during the first big Covid-19 lockdown, with me sending Nicole over some recording equipment and then her and me exchanging tracks via cloud services.
It has a special place in my heart because in a sense it’s of course about me and my ex-band, as well as about me and ex-friends, ex-partners, ex-people who once were important in my life… and the way things developed so fast without anyone having a chance stopping them.
It’s not me looking back in melancholy and saying “oh if we only did this and that”; I am through with that. It’s rather acknowledging the fact that life sometimes works this way.
Nicole, who has kindly provided lead and backing vocals throughout the whole album, here sings with a sincerity and vulnerability which I absolutely adore from the bottom of my heart… and which we weren’t able to replicate in the studio once lockdown was over and it was reasonably safe to meet again, no matter how hard we tried. So in the end we kept the demo version.
El Pescador Borracho
When recording “Me Without You”, I was looking for some additional sonic textures for its dark and droning coda.
It was then when I stumbled upon these rogue amateur shortwave radio transmissions from what supposedly was a drunken fisherman.
Having him in the mix suddenly it struck me what a good metaphor for mankind he is – sailing out into a storm, happily fishing the seas, both vulnerable and threatening in his stupor, and oblivious to the danger around him and to his own mortality.
The image became so vivid in my mind that I not only decided to explore the theme further with its own instrumental track, but also named the album after it and incorporated fishing and nautical imagery into the artwork.
Ground Truth
The ending of The Drunken Fisherman is a simple song, but a deeply personal one. It’s as much about “AI” as it is about friendship, fame, and the fragility of connection.
I wrote it thinking back to my time with Botany Bay – about all the “friends” and fans, the people who wanted to be part of our journey, who offered support, who were drawn in by the idea of something special. And how quickly all of that vanished when my parents fell seriously ill and I had to shut everything down for a few years. No one was left when I came back. No one seemed to care about me or the music anymore.
That disappearance made me question what’s real and what’s not – what actually matters when things can fall apart that quickly. Yeah I know it sounds kinda cliché, but that’s what it is about.
And that’s where it touches upon all the scary questions that the advent of LLMs bring about. What makes a connection meaningful? What is authentic in a world where interactions are faked and manufactured? Can something – or someone – be appreciated for what they truly are, rather than for the illusion they project? Why bother at all?
Today, far fewer people listen to my music than during the Botany Bay years – but I’m so much more thankful to them because I really like to think they’re here because of my music and not because they see something shiny and mysterious which I not really am.
The song was recorded live with me playing the opsix and singing along. I then added a final overdub with a pad programmed on my trusty old Wavestation A/D.
