Fellow Earthlings,
Tonight at sidereal time 24.303.00:00 we will finally make contact with the planetary spirit of artistic recycling!
For this purpose we are opening a radio station with the functional name P.A.N. [Planetary Autonomous Network].
In addition, we will gather in our home probe “Bermuda” for the launch of the interstellar transmitter to initiate the first contact together.
Presence is essential.
Thanks to TXTX for hosting and inviting for this months Thursday Breakdown.
Both of us gonna provide you with some propper Live Sets!
11.01.24
LAUSCHANGRIFF
Rigaer Str. 103
10247 Berlin
20.00h – 02.00h
Donation for entry
Freund:innen!
Die Luft ist flüchtig – durchschneiden wir sie mit den Schwingen der Kunst – halten inne & die Luft an – und genießen gemeinsam einen angenehm chaotischen Querschnitt durch die Berliner Subkultur.
Unberechenbare Winde haben dafür gesorgt, dass unser Lieblingsfestival in diesem Jahr eine Pause macht. So hat es uns an einen wonnereich gepflasterten Stadtstrand, im Kiez zwischen Ostkreuz und der Frankfurter Allee, gespült… Am 4. und 5. August soll von dort aus vielfältiger Sound ertönen, zum Kopfkratzen und Ausrasten, während wir uns am Labsal der edlen Weinbeere berauschen, unter tanzenden Schatten ausruhen und letztlich begeistert – oder entgeistert – die Sonne unter dem Pflaster suchend, frei wandeln.
Wir laden euch herzlich dazu ein, unerschrocken auch im Tanz mit den Hyaden – uns diese Welt einzubilden.. stellt euch das mal vor! Jetzt, am Wochenende!
Bis dahin, herzlichst – eure Kill Royal Weinbar
On the first weekend in June we will be celebrating the naming of the cultural Bermuda Triangle with a three-day festival here in Berlin/Friedrichshain. We will infect all your senses with jam sessions, art punks, acid breaks, creative workshops, theater performances, a marketplace and anything else your imagination can dictate.
We will have wonderful artists such as:
Vertical67 – DR. KONTRA – TXTX – Vodor L Zeck – Axiom – Briain – Kurihara – Raving Mad Carlos – Puppenmucke – Daniel Matz – and…sure..also some Octobird
The exact location is hidden on the flyer. Just follow the “Merkelraute” (like you did for so many years 😉
Can you guess where it is?
The events are running:
Friday from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m
Saturday from 3 p.m. to 6 a.m
Sunday from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m
Free Entry, hope to see you all there!
Phew! It’s already been 6 months since my last appereance on Pr0gramma with my Bimstein EP and obviously I went back into the ethernet shadows after that. Not really – I rather went into the shadows of my studio racks, taking a recent mixture of changes and chances as an inducement to rebuild my studio setup. And as a result of some quite drastic setup changes there also went quite some time into learning new machines and software and teach them to communicate with each other.
So let’s take a few steps back and remember where we took off, shall we?! Back in April I had my last appearence on Austin Cassels radio show. And while it’s rather unlikely…maybe some of you missed that one. If that’s you…or if you just wanna listen back to some Octobird stuff, here is the set I played on Austin’s show:
TRACKLIST:
Andreas Grosser – Rhythmic Desert
UFOCUS – Fun With Fractals
Octobird – Desert Hall (unreleased track)
Dona – Vrs 2
D’Marc Cantu – Another Number
DJ Spider & Franklin De Costa – F Planet
Simon Haydo – The Territories Marked
S Olbricht – Asterid
oxvac – 7
Octobird – Monowai
DJ Spider – Inner Earth Existance
Israel Vines – Rage Appropriate
Container – Peppered
Don’t DJ – Hexentrix (Jordan GCZ Remix)
So much for the warmup and hopefully I’ll be back soon with some actual “news” 😉
Back home at Pr0gramma, back to some rough and raw structures. I’ve always been bad with timing and so I present theses rough and earthy tunes just as the brighter days are coming. And while I may be a bit better with words I stick to the valued opinion of Pr0gramma’s Ismael:
Back in the key of Octobird, we return to the pristine dynamics of Bimstein. From the onset, Palm Slap leans in with sluggish tape edit styles, tight electro rhythms, and playful earworms. Evolving into what feels like a moody 5th gen platformer, things take a more metallic heavy-rhythm turn. Controlling the color palette is a clear Octobird skillset. Passing halfway, melodic tension emerges once again from the rhythmic detour making for a very narratively guided trio of closing tracks. From the heavy side-pumping of saturated echoes to the crazy well-crafted perc throughout, PR16 feels like the inevitable polished gem of a closer. There is no lag here, just pure diamond quality.
As someone old enough to remember the days before the digital music democratization but just a tiny bit too young to have experienced the magic of the Berlin post-wall-techno-revolution, for quite some time there have only be two important music labels for electronics: Ninja Tune and Warp. As much as we might moan about drowning into a state of invisibility with our own music, simply from the pure amount of supply out there, it’s always helpful to take a step back and remember how different the musical landscape of experimental music was 25+ Years ago. It almost seemed as if the top distributors of “intelligent dance music” would have passed artists and releases to each other, depending on the bpm mood of their average listener. Everything on the 90bpm landmark for the dope heads came from Ninja Tunes, at 120bpm Warp Records stepped in for the more conscious braindancer and when computer science was as far as making breakcore possible, the gap was open for Planet-µ. (This, of course is less science and more of a blurred polaroid of the 90’s.) Of course there where other labels, but our world was still so small and therefor these ones became the cornerstones that thrived the music of tomorrow.
So why care about this now, at this very moment? Well, there are two reasons: One, Warp Records finally warped their entire back catalogue onto Bandcamp, what gives me the possibility to make a BMC-List. And second, they just used some of their powers to drag you away from Bandcamp back to their very own platform veteran Bleep.com with a Boxing Day Sale. 50% of on their digital catalogue is just a great chance to fill some gaps in your Warp Collection. Which is exactly what I just did. (You might have maybe missed that deal when you read this, because this whole article took longer than I expected). I’m also guessing, I’m not the only one spending a lot of time in dim light behind concrete walls, right now. With not much else left than traveling in memories of brighter days.
And so, like many others before me, I grab the opportunity to share my perspective on this milestone of electronic music history. Deliberately not as some Top-10 kinda list, as I know there is an army of hardcore AFX/BOC/AE fans out there who wouldn’t share my views (…and shouldn’t have to). Instead I rather take on a totally subjective position and take a look back on some albums that actually had an profound impact on me at well remembered moments in time. And maybe one or two of them are part of a collective subconscious, who knows?!
Back in my teenage years there still was a very strong urge going on to decide which sonic subculture you wanted to belong to. And while I was still soaking up all these diverse influences of a blues playing father, my punkrock brothers and my hip hop homies it took some persuasion to get me into this cold, technical stuff called IDM. Weed definitely helped. And so I remember this moment like not many other stoned situations: Sitting on the backseat of a friends car late at night and perceiving Autechres Teartear for the very first time on full blast. This piece of music was the most terrifying blank peace of paper ever to encounter. Cold, mechanical, full of everything that stroke against my naive believe of “true music” but still a catalyst of strong emotions I had not experienced from music before.
This was not only my starting point into experimental electronic music, but also the moment I realized that there is a kind of music that isn’t more, but just very different from all that music that makes us feel understood, belonging or emotionally confirmed. A kind of music that pushes us into the unknown infinite spaces of our subconsciousness. Often visualized with images from space, but actually digging for unknown places right inside us. And that’s still – also in the process of making music myself – the decisive force in electronic music. It’s not purely a direct channel of emotional expression, which is enjoyed and shared with others. But more of an opened dialogue between you and the pure sonic possibilities of machines (good ol’ “men vs. machine” cliche).
While I was still busy figuring out all of these Autechrian fractal sonic landscapes, Boards Of Canada where a little bit more kind. Instead of diving into sound in their most abstract shapes, BOC provided us with associations. Their music was quite literally boiling over from them. Experiencing their music was like finding an old box of Polaroids in the cellar. Warm and earthy, like walking over the dry gravel of a country road and smelling the musty pond nearby. But this approach alone wasn’t totally new. There was something else to it. I guess, besides the total mystery of how exactly they managed to uplift these sonic landscapes, there were always some kind of hidden messages. As there are in memories too. The things we banish from our past to make room for everything we joyfully look back to. Something I just recently understood in it’s full potential with the help of a wonderful little DIY BOC documentary by the name This Is Hexagon Sun. But while this one decodes a lot of the hidden messages in BOC’s music there’s also the purely emotional level. And this is where Twoism stands out from their other releases (at least from my very subjective perception). Twoism skillfully combines the naturalistic soundscapes that made them famous (Sixtyniner), with sadly optimistic elevator music for office buildings (Iced Cooly) into a frightening mechanic force of nature (Basefree). A force they later went back to on their last Album Tomorrow’s Harvest, which still scares me so much that I’m not able to make it past the first one or two tracks.
When I had my first introduction into the world of Plaid with their Double Figure album I was totally puzzled. There were so many things going on I learned to despise in my naive belive in musical taste, and yet I’ve instantly became hooked by these playful melodies and glitchy sounds. It was a courage for melody that soon should spread all over the place with artist like Kettel, Proem or Ochre jump on the train. But Plaid pefected this sound with Double Figure very early on. They were telling stories instead of handing over big chunks of cotton candy and the complex sound design still had a tiny bit of a raw charm. Like a beautiful rainbow, this whole spectrum of sound was never ment to last. It was just there and you never knew how much of it would outlast the signs of time. But Double Figure certainly did.
I still remember that Plaid were performing live quite regulary in the early 2000’s. It was just on of these acts you would always stumble into and I also remember one of my early gigs on the second floor at Maria am Ufer (R.I.P.) where Plaid was playing the Main Floor. It was funny because they would always come with some big sound concepts, like playing Dolby Sourround sets, just to fail on the technical possibilities on site. At the end they were just playing their tunes, one after the other, in stereo. So for me, personally, their legacy still is the creation of the perfect electronic home listening music. Because the sad truth is, once you reach perfection in electronic music, everything to come is just sound design.
Whenever musical genres like Glam Rock, Big Beat or Minimal Techno vanished and got replaced by something new, in retrospect it always seems like there was one defined moment in time to declare the death of a genre. If we would have had this moment in Intelligent Dance Music it would have been Drukqs. It was the perfect IDM album even though at a first glance it was quite complicated to understand it as an album at all. The odd contrast of pseudo accoustic instrumentals and hyper complex breakcore masterpieces just didn’t seem to belong together at first. But in effect you would just listen to it again and again, because both sides where just too beautiful on their own to be put aside, and before you could figure it all out you inevitably felt in love with it and it became the one IDM album we could all agree on. In this sense it was also one of the last great albums of the CD era, I guess. The last time we performed the great braindance unitedly, everyone in his own brain but interconnected trough the shabby connections of a 56k Modem. The death of IDM, only that we just kept going afterwards, everyone in his own niche of breakcore, acid and whatnot.
At first glance, nothing seems to fit on this 2 track split-tape. A solo piano piece on the A-Side and a 15 minute lofi house jam on the B-Side. And yet it apparently reflects the experimental musical melting pot of this New York collective. I say “apparently” because I couldn’t really find out that much about Kapha Selections, except that they have been releasing split tapes for about a year, which largely reflect the underground culture of their hometown.
A little more obvious is the International Winners Collective, to which this tape is dedicated. They’ve been organizing events and parties in Brooklyn, New York and releasing stuff on Bandcamp for a number of years now. Constantly strolling between art gallery and club without seeming to give a damn about whether they should please one or the other target audience. With a cross-eyed look across the Atlantic, such a concept, of course, brings up prejudices about would-be high culture immediately, which are also shaped by experiences from my own hometown Berlin. However, these can be completely dispelled with the two tracks on this EP alone. Because two things come to the fore here: curiosity and honesty. As different as these two pieces may appear, they are both a sincere invitation to a physical, spiritual experience. Both pieces do not want to be viewed and evaluated from the outside, but rather be experienced. (Sorry that I’m doing exactly the opposite of that at this point 😉 )
For these reasons, however, I will simply save myself from describing or even explaining the two tracks in detail. Instead I close with the realization that this short tape is a wonderful reminder that music is a living part of our confused cities and communities and that we will not be able to transport these experiences into virtual spaces.
And that’s a good thing!
Hold on!
Well, I guess that’s called a sellout without income. In a better future, we would all be busy squandering our pocket money on Bandcamp and in record stores. But streaming platforms like Spotify have probably changed our listening habits permanently. And no matter how you understand the statements of a generation of poor bedroom producers, it may not be so much about paying for music, but rather about giving it a value.
No matter! Octobird is on Spotify and all these other Major Players now. Because, well … everyone else is there too … and admittedly I also use Spotify. So go along, click all these links, push all these subscription buttons and give your thumbs up at the checkout.
SPOTIFY | APPLE MUSIC | TIDAL | YOUTUBE | GOOGLE
I love you all!
Regardless of whether you are fully immersed in global insanity or just chilling out with a tequilla on your hermetically sealed veranda. It’s good to be on acid!
I could expand this cliffhanger now. With pupils dilated in surprise, ponder where the omnipotent influence of psychedelic sound roots comes from. But the real reason for this list is that I generally have a hard time writing extensive reviews for people who are close to me personally. It is obvious! You’re just too scared of hurting your dear friends feelings.
So let’s keep it short and sweet! Shall we?!
My dearest musical colleague and friend Vodor L. Zeck gets busy! In addition to countless releases on his own Zanderhythm, he pours out some funky quirky acid stoners on Acid Waxa and Sitdownanddance!
My new favorite Argentinean trip sitters Franco ‘D and Cruz Coronado have a brand new label! The first long player on Infinit Records features wonderfully trippy downtempo acid jams. Stoned to infinity!
I only met Briain recently when he sold me his Elektron Octatrack on Ebay. Damn nice chap, part of the Berlin Skizze Crew, who (kinda like my good old Various Veterans) do their part to keep the Berlin club culture diverse. And a pretty talented Amen Breaker too!
My best pal Vertical67 has already made way too much acid. Now he lies horizontally and creates a nice ambient. I like it very much! I guess I’ll leave him there for a moment.
Gajek – a companion from the early days of our acid diaries. And someone who had obviously already way too many Kraut! I guess it helps him not to be so cerebral. But it’s the mixture of both that makes his music so great. Cerebral Kraut!
And me … Octobird. Oh, I’d rather not say anything. I am afraid to hurt my feelings!