Music

Besides my focus on engineering, with its potential to actually earn a living, I also have a great interest in music production. I started producing tracks with my friend Julius in Munich in our late teens. A few years later we moved to Berlin together to be closer to the heart of the German electronic music scene. Even though that was in 2000, a few years after the “Wende”, the re-unification of east and west Germany, the sense of enthusiasm of being reunited and gradual merging of the eastern and western part of the city were still strong.

Infinity, below, is one of the tracks we made during this time. Julius created the beat, I played the synth lines and threw in a sample from the iconic anime Ghost in the Shell.

Initially I amde tracks with a pirated copy of Cubase Audio. Julius introduced me to Fruity Loops, which at that time had just come out, was affordable and quite powerful for being a new kid in the DAW block. Using Fruity Loops and a newly acquired Korg synthesizer I set out to produce an EP, collaborating with a vocalist friend called Mira. My two favorites from this record:

We published this on vinyl, mastered and cut at Calyx Studio in Berlin at that time “the” insitution for vinyl production. And guess what, just looked them up, they still exist. Big up Calyx!

This EP was self-published on my own project label Kitchen, I had no publisher or distributor for the records. Therefore I had to take the vinyls to various record stores in Berlin myself and put them there on commission.

A few months later I connected with another musician friend Mirco who was on board with a more serious effirt to create our own music label, called Spoiler Music. We started producing and pressing records and, through another friend, were able to sign with a distribution company, the at that time famous Intergroove records. We were excited, our records made it all the way to Japan! My favorites, some good stuff, albeit a bit eclectic:

There’s a ton more stories and tracks that I want to add here! TBC.