Manafonistas

Ich habe vor 5 Jahren sehr gerne zwei Songs von Masha Qrella gehört: In einem geht es um einen (oder eine?) DJ, der fast nur „On The Beach“ auflegt, in dem anderen darum, nicht die Schlüssel zur Wohnung des Partners zu bekommen, damit man die später nicht zurückgeben muss. Die restlichen Songs des Albums gefielen mir auch, so dass „Keys“ im Sommer 2016 sehr oft lief – und danach kaum noch. (Nebenbei: 2016, in dem Jahr der Brexit Abstimmung, der Wahl der AfD in den Bundestag und der Trump Wahl, dachte ich, dass es nicht viel schlimmer kommen könne, nun ja). Die Ankündigung des neuen Albums „Woanders“ hat mich erst nicht großartig interessiert. Gedichte, die vertont werden?! Ach ne, da kaufe ich mir lieber einen Gedichtband von Thomas Brasch und gut ist. Der Song „Geister“ gefiel mir mit seinen bollernden Beat dann doch ganz gut … und „Das Meer“ im Duo mit Dirk von Lotzow ließ mich nicht mehr los, so dass ich die Schallplatte bestellt habe. Ich mag alle Stücke, mal gehen die mehr in Richtung späte Roxy Music, dann klingt es nach Indie Pop, gelegentlich treten elektronische Einflüsse in den Vordergrund. Als Doppelalbum mit 17 Songs vielleicht etwas wenig abwechslungsreich. In Zukunft höre ich das Album wahrscheinlich nicht so oft am Stück, lege zwischendurch was anderes auf. Aber: Die Texte sind toll und wirken wie für die Musik gemacht. Keine Ahnung, ob es unter meine 16 Lieblingsalben des Jahres kommt, da muss ich noch etwas länger hören, ob und wie sich die Musik in meinen Alltag einnistet.

 

 

 

Wie bei jedem Mogwai-Album teilt sich das Meinungsbild auch hier wieder zwischen den Fraktionen „ein weiteres Album im qualitativen Mittelfeld, das keine besonderen neuen Ideen zu bieten hat“ und „ihr bestes Album seit…“ – in jedem Fall ist festzuhalten, dass As the Love Continues schon jetzt das (in den Charts) erfolgreichste Album der 25-jährigen Karriere der schottischen Rockband ist.

Ich halte mich für keinen sorgfältigen Fachmann aller Mogwai-Alben, doch wenn ich darüber nachdenke, merke ich, dass ich doch fast alles mehr oder weniger gut kenne, was die Band gemacht hat. In gewisser Weise genügt es vollkommen, die preisgünstige Kollektion Central Belters zu haben, die auf 3 CDs einen hervorragenden Querschnitt aller Alben, Soundtrack-Arbeiten und Nebenstränge der ersten 20 Schaffensjahre bietet. Doch As the Love Continues, das erste neue (Studio-)Album seit dem verhalten aufgenommenen Every Country’s Sun 2017, hat mehr auf dem Kasten, als dass es über eine gute Stunde nur die alten Ideen wieder hochköcheln würde.

Der Humor der Schotten zeigt sich bereits wieder einmal in den Songtiteln; „Ritchie Sacramento“ beispielsweise, einer der sehr seltenen Songs mit Gesang, beruht angeblich auf der missverstandenen Nennung des Namens Ryuichi Sakamoto (wie vor zehn Jahren „You’re Lionel Richie“ die zufällige Begegnung des Mogwai-Frontmanns mit Herrn Richie im Wartebereich eines Flughafens aufgriff), aber klar, auch Gags würden keine mittelprächtige Platte hörbarer machen, und „Ritchie Sacramento“ ist für Mogwai-Verhältnisse ein wunderbarer Pop-Hit, der aus dem Gesamtkontext nur scheinbar durch seine Andersartigkeit herausfällt. Denn viele Stücke sind einladend bis mitreißend, auch wenn das nicht immer gleich offensichtlich ist – und, ja, emotional eingängig, ohne plump zu sein, wie das bei solchen „Post-Rock“-Scheiben schnell passiert. Auch „Fuck off Money“ beginnt mit Gesang, allerdings mittels Vocoder bis zur Unverständlichkeit verfremdet (erinnert damit anfangs an das famose „Hunted By a Freak“ vor über 20 Jahren), bevor sich leidenschaftliche Gitarrenberge auftürmen, die die ganze bestechende Kraft dieser Band zusammenfassen, wie das auch im schroffen „Drive the Nail“ der Fall ist.

Bei „Ceiling Granny“ denken nicht wenige Hörer an den Alternative Rock der (früheren) 1990er, doch der Gesang, den man hier tatsächlich erwarten würde, er kommt nicht. Und trotzdem ist es ein Song, ein eingängiger, auf sympathische Weise womöglich altmodischer zudem. Das folgende „Midnight Flit“ wird durch mehr und mehr wirr aufgetürmte und zum Ende hin wieder versickernde Streicher von Atticus Ross zum Spektakel, bevor mit „Pat Stains“ (mit Saxofonist Colin Stetson als Gast) eine angenehme Entspanntheit Einzug hält.

Flaming-Lips-Hausproduzent Dave Fridmann, der in den Neunzigerjahren beim Album Come On Die Young im Boot war, scheint eine einnehmende Melodiefreudigkeit herausgekitzelt zu haben, vielleicht hatte die Band aber auch nach den vielen Soundtrack-Projekten mal wieder so richtig Lust auf eine recht geradlinige, bodenständige Platte. Wie auch immer: Mit As the Love Continues sind Mogwai nun erstmals auf Platz 1 der britischen Charts gelandet. Und ich sage: ihr bestes Album seit … 25 Jahren.

Ich mag diese Platte total gerne. Ursprünglich als Soloalbum eines nicht ganz unbekannten Musikers gedacht (der einst in den 80ern die Sahne auf die Torte eines Hits einer singenden Schmalzlocke zauberte), wird sie bei denen, die diesen Meister seines Instruments kennen, wahlweise für Irritation / Faszination sorgen. Es ist zurecht ein Duo-Album geworden, ausgestattet mit einer raffinierten Portion Jazz. Rein instrumental, fragmentiert, in Sekunden höllisch funky & dann wieder seltsam verloren. Das Gebräu weigert sich strikt, einem steten Groove zu folgen, wechselt nahtlos von einem halluzinatorischen Halbstil zum anderen. Das Spiel der Akteure ist sowohl abenteuerlich als auch strukturiert, und das überraschende, wohltuende Resultat hätte auch eine Veröffentlichung verdient gehabt auf Enos Obscure-Label aus den 70ern. Es wäre Obscure No. 11 gewesen. Nur ist eben eine Neuheit, und das Cover setzt genauso auf Unauffälligkeit wie der Titel dieser Langspielplatte. Die Frage ist: um welches Opus handelt es sich hier? Die Antwort wird nicht wirklich weiterhelfen, denn die Musik bleibt ein Rätsel. Wie Lana Del Ray.

 

Gestern hatte ich in aller Ruhe das neue Album von Valerie June gehört. Und ein interessantes Phänomen erlebt. Auf den ersten Eindruck schien es überproduziert. Zudem musste ich mich an die hohe Stimme gewöhnen. Das gelang mir beim vorigen Album, und jetzt auch wieder. Als ich mich dann durch die Lieder bewegte, von Raum zu Raum, in einem weitreichenden Sammelsurium der Stile – geriet erstmal alles in Schwingung zwischen den Ohren, es zirpte, trommelte leicht, sprühte Pastell mit lauter zart besaiteten Instrumenten – selbst sich rar machende Blasinstrumente (so kommt es mir in der Erinnerung vor) schienen bevorzugt im Hintergrund zu tänzeln. Zusätzlich waren die offiziellen Videos einzelner Songs gar nicht mein Fall, so edel designt. Sollte ich mir erste Krokosse ins Haar flechten? Doch dann kippte alles, was frühe Wahrnehmungen suggerierten: ich konnte mich hineinfallen lassen in den Strom feinziselierter Melodien, die Stimme entwickelt einen anderen Soul, von Song zu Song, es packte mich dermassen, dass die Zeit nur so dahinflog beim zweiten Hören. Zum Beispiel dieser Song: “Two Roads” begins as a soul pastiche but quickly morphs into a gorgeous country song, drenched in honey-sweet pedal steel. The song is about grappling with the consequences of past decisions, with June—like her soft, upper-register vocal hook— sounding lost in the clouds. Auf den Punkt gebracht: All that deepness in the lightness. All those spaces in between. Erstaunlich gute Platte.

 

Every line you draw, leads to something. And often you don´t even know to where. You go on a journey without knowing how to end it.

 

 

 

Einen Teil des Plots für seinen nächsten Film hatte M.X. Oberg schon entwickelt. Er suchte aber noch einen passenden Ort. Nach seinem Abitur hatte er als Schlafwagenschaffner bei Wagon Lits gearbeitet und damit seinen ersten Kurzfilm Dreaming is a Private Thing finanziert. Und die Girls? Ein paar seiner ehemaligen Mitschülerinnen waren damals – es war  Ende der 80er – nach Tokyo gereist und hatten in Nachtclubs als Hostessen gearbeitet. Tokyo: Metropole aus blinkendem Neon und unverständlichen Zeichen. Menschen, die ihre Meinungen nicht direkt äußern. Grenzziehungen und Grenzaufweichungen. Erotik, aber kein Sex. Ein Job, nur ein Spiel, aber es kippt.

 

Most people seem to have a goal in life. But what happens to those who don’t?

 

Chloé Winkel ist als Abiturientin Angela charismatisch in ihrer ruhigen, introvertierten Präsenz, die sich erst auf den zweiten Blick zeigt: wenn man ihr zuschaut. Angela ist Comiczeichnerin und sehr professionell in ihrer Kunst. Der Charme des Films besteht darin, dass Angelas Zeichnungen die Geschichte entwickeln, ein Stil, den ich in STRATOSPHERE GIRL zum ersten und bisher einzigen Mal gesehen habe. Es beginnt mit dem attraktiven Japaner, der auf der Abiturfeier Platten auflegt, den sie anspricht. Später machen sich Angelas Zeichnungen selbstständig. Rückkopplungseffekte blitzen auf.

 

Die Kamera führt Michael Mieke in weichen, fließenden, geradezu schwebenden Bewegungen. Er hängt sie an einer Art Seil auf, das wirkt nicht so statisch wie mit der Steadycam, aber auch nicht so nervös wie mit einer Handkamera.

 

Grandios ist die musikalische Untermalung durch die fließenden Atmosphären von Nils Petter Molvaer, vielleicht Vorarbeiten für sein einige Jahre später erschienenes Album re-vision.

 

They drift with no clear destination. And then, they get lost and disappear.

 

Christian Drosten

Melanie Brinkmann

Lothar Wieler

Karl Lauterbach

Sandra  Ciesek

u.v.a

 

Ich greife nur ein paar der herausragenden Persönlichkeiten heraus, die, ohne, sich Wirklichkeiten zurecht zu rücken, und ohne ganzheitliches Denken zu  vernachlässigen, die Art von Aufklärung betreiben, die in Zeiten dieser Pandemie dringend nötig ist. Dass sie viel zu wenig Gehör finden, liegt an dem Einfluss der Wirtschaft auf die Politik, an ihrer rein beratenden Funktion, die durch das ganze Rädergetriebe aufgeweicht wird. Karl Lauterbach plädiert für die strikte Umsetzung der Notbremse – alle Lockerungen sollten so schnell wie möglich ausgesetzt werden, JETZT, um die dritte Welle so flach wie möglich zu halten. Hinterher ist man immer schlauer – das wird im April keiner mehr sagen dürfen.

 

A talk with Rasha Nahas about her album Desert – which should be a striking candidate for Manafonistas‘ best albums of 2021 lists. Rasha Nahas was born into a Palestinian family in Haifa where she grew up and lived before she moved to Berlin in 2017. In Germany she has been working with various musical and theatre productions and has just released her debut debut album Desert on her label Rmad Records.

 

One of the many things I find remarkable about your album is that these songs sound like you had been living with them for a while. I can’t exactly tell if I get that impression from the arrangements or from that fine flow in the lyrics. Some of the lyrics have such a wild, or complex, imagery that seems to be a mix of very personal thoughts and feelings and also some sentiments about society and the places you lived in. Lots of songs have a striking energy that sounds elaborate and emotionally lived-through at the same time.They sound like songs that have had some history before they’ve been put on tape.

 
 

The songs went through different arrangements. Yes, I lived with them – played them acoustically, only me with classical guitar, then I did them with more electronic elements, and then with different musicians. Little by little I started gathering the band. Me and the violinist [Shaden Nahra] have played together for seven or eight years. There was a very strong connection between me and the musicians, and we definitely explored and lived the songs a lot. It’s not a matter of time, though, rather a matter of commitment and a sense of being involved artistically. I actually wrote a lot of songs for this album, I just didn’t release them, apart from an EP in 2016.

 

You developed the music partly in your hometown, Haifa, and then you toured with it before you recorded it here in Berlin?

 

Yes, the music was written during my last few weeks in Haifa and during my first few weeks in Germany. It was really written through my transition. The title track, “Desert”, for example I wrote in my apartment in Haifa the month before I left. “The Clown” and “Ashes” were written in my first apartment here in Berlin. It was really like documenting my travel, documenting that period of my life, asking myself where I want to be – and doing it.

 

And that was three or four years ago?

 

Yes, I moved to Germany in the summer of 2017. I simply had a lot of friends here in Berlin. In 2017, we played Glastonbury Festival in England and a few other gigs, and it just made sense that I stayed here. Then I started performing here and applied for an artist visa.

 

The whole album really sounds like it could have been live in the studio, although I’m guessing there was a lot of work involved with how the the violin, the cello and the instruments in general blend together.

 

After I wrote the songs, we arranged the basics with the band, like verse, chorus, the lengths of sections and such. I worked mainly with the bass and the drums to really gain this solid, heavy feeling. The songs are intense there’s something very … like stepping in mud, you know? To me that feels like heavy steps. That was the the main work, to realise this solid rhythm section to build on.

We did work a lot with the cello and the violin lines, some of which I had in my mind – for example “Ashes”, these lines [sings] I must have had forever. I was always singing that when we were rehearsing. Then we were in the studio, and we’d never discussed it before, but I just went like, “try this line“. And it worked. A few songs were done in one take, “The Fall” for example, all of us together, including the vocals. We didn’t dub anything, just mixed it.

 
 

 
 

What was the co-producer’s role on this project? Where did he come from?

 

As for the co-producer, I basically needed someone on the technical side. As a band, we had a vision – we had a sound, but with me being lead singer and guitarist, I needed someone to execute this sound in a technical way. Plus, Jonathan is a great musician; he was a classical pianist. I trust him when it comes to giving me feedback, as a person from outside the band. Jonathan also mixed the album. I needed the same engineer to mix it, because the band really had a very specific sound, which I don’t think I could have executed without him.

 

In “Cat Lady“ I like this this raw atmosphere, with the guitar sounding almost like it was improvised, very much like played on the spot.

 

For “Cat Lady” we recorded bass, drums and guitar, then added violin and cello. And then I didn’t like the guitar part. So I just played one take of guitar on it. That was basically improvised. It was two chords, this whole song, but it has many variations. We play a lot with the colours. So with the guitar part I am basically reacting to what’s happening around me.

 

Indeed, you present all sorts of different colours on this album. At first it can be a bit overwhelming – for the listener, having all these different vantage points on your creative personality. All these elements are very fascinating to roam and experience. Every time I put on the CD, it feels like listening to a new album again. Let’s take the Leonard Cohen song: At first one might think, “why does a Leonard Cohen song end up on this album?”, but having listened to the album many times I in a way forgot it once was a Cohen song … until that fabulous chorus comes in and reminds me. Your recording of that song comes across as a very personal take, even though it’s not one that you wrote. Usually I’m a bit hesitant about people covering famous songs – and Cohen’s have been covered and recorded a lot. Singers often perform it in such a way that you can hear they like the song, but their take is not in any way unique. Here, it sounds like it’s your song, like there’s a deep personal connection. That’s why it fits splendidly into the overall concept of your album.

 

He’s a big inspiration. He’s one of the greatest songwriters that ever lived, at least in English music. His work definitely shaped a certain part of how I write in English and express specific things. I love this song very much. I played it acoustically on classical guitar a lot. During one rehearsal I plugged in my guitar, we were still in the beginning, like half tuning, half jamming … I started playing it, and then the bass gave the first note, then the drums did a bit of cymbals, then we went to the six eighths, and then the cello came in… So I just felt like recording it, because I think it’s a song that speaks about identity, about not recognizing yourself, about transition, about love. It’s also a dialogue with the father that can be also God, so it’s a somewhat religious song – this whole thing about covering the face… It’s very metaphorical but also very specific. It fit the album really well.

 

It does fit on the very personal side of these songs on the album. There are lots of very personal moments to it, but they’re never as bare as if you’re talking about something private. “Ashes” is a good example. It sounds like a very personal story, and this is where “Lover Lover Lover” fits in. “Ashes”, the longest and one of the most dramatic songs on the album, starts like it’s a quiet one and then it becomes more dramatic. And in the end it calms down again. I had this feeling that it’s probably a love song, but the metaphors you chose are anything but ordinary. They could easily relate to something else than merely a personal situation from a relationship.

 

“Ashes” is a love song, yes. It started from cigarette ashes. You find an ashtray with a lot of ashes of cigarettes. But it’s also a metaphor for burning, like when you get close to fire and then lose your balance – like a musician on stage is completely surrendering to the music, and burning, and after the concert thinking what is left. That sounds a bit tragic, but it’s also beautiful. And it’s about love, about relationships and balance, learning about the line between you and the other person. “And my ashes remain in the room as you leave” – it’s a beautiful metaphor. It’s one of my favorite songs on the album and one of my dearest things I wrote so far. I’m sharing a lot there.

I love personal music. Take Jeff Buckley, for example, or Joni Mitchell. If you go back in time, there was no ego in love songs – or maybe it was ego in a different way. I feel today love songs are so much about ego, and there’s a lot of thinking about how you’re perceived.

 

It’s great how these songs are more like open vessels for my – or other listeners’ – associations. And then there are others which are more eccentric. There’s lots of these associative elements which I find really fascinating to be drawn into. Did you work a lot on the lyrics, before you decided this is the final text? How much time do you spend on developing a song?

 

It’s different with every song. For “The Clown” it took 15 or 20 minutes to write the text. The arrangement took a bit more time, finding out how we’ll do it, rehearsing all the stops and the riffs. “Ashes” I wrote in the morning, then I went on my bike to get something in the city. I remember listening to the recording I had made on my phone, thinking about what I was going to change. Then I came back home, changed it – and that was it.

For me, with text I usually feel like it may not be perfect, and even though I could make everything sound a bit better or fix everything so that it will be more accurate, but I think that I prefer to just keep it as it is, because it’s what it is. I never felt that reservation of things not being good enough to let them out. It’s like taking a photograph and showing it to a friend. It’s a beautiful, very fluid process, and there’s no right and wrong. There is a lot of space to create and to invent.

 

You started playing music when you were very young and played classical guitar when you were about ten? Why didn’t you become a classical guitarist, or rather, where did you start taking a different turn? When did you decide to go down this path as a songwriter between cultures and countries?

 

I love classical music. But to play classical guitar is like flying an airplane – if you really want to do it in a way to pursue a career. In a way I find it classical music very impressive and very “royal” – to see people playing such sophisticated music and investing their life into manifesting it in a great way. I guess the music I make is more direct and accessible than classical music. My classical guitar studies were enriching for my experience as a musician, but I had something to say. I wanted to write songs. I wanted to speak to people. I wanted to share verbally. I just feel that I’m a songwriter.

When I was very young, I really grew up on John Lennon. He’s great. My Dad had a collection of Lennon CDs, and I just listened to them like every time I was in the car – every time we were driving somewhere, to visit my grandparents in the village or wherever. So it was like John lLennon from like my early my earliest memory of music. And later on we got Queen and Freddie Mercury, just like such great rock bands.

 

Lennon and Mercury – that makes sense to me, listening to your album.

 
 

 
 

About this album cover: What’s the story behind the image? Was it your idea, or where did this artwork come from?

 

It was a deep dialogue with the graphic designer [Haitham Haddad]. He is an amazing artist. He was a good friend of my sister’s and I’ve known him since high school. When we recorded the album I didn’t know the order of the songs, didn’t know how it’s all gonna be put together. The pieces felt so different from each other. Admittedly that was my plan: I didn’t want to create one genre. I don’t believe in genres anyway, I just want to do art and express feelings, express thoughts, express myself. And I realized it’s a collage. It moves and it takes you with it. Every song is a journey, but the whole thing is also a journey. It’s very personal, but also very theatrical – so the double exposure with the different layers basically represents the album like different personalities. The theatricality is in the distortions and the burned colour. There’s also something very clear in the face, but there’s this moving and shifting thing around it, it’s fluid. The graphic designer did a brilliant job.

 

How have you changed since the album has been finished? It’s been a while since you recorded it, and judging from all the projects you worked on since then, you seem to be in a very different place now, artistically at least.

 

Yes, it took time for me to understand what this album means. I started “Desert” in 2018 and I did a crowdfunding campaign. Then after the recording I had an injury in both my hands which stopped me from making music for almost a year. I had inflammation in my hands, and I couldn’t play guitar or carry my groceries, make food or type emails. I was not in a good place. I’m doing okay now, but I needed time to heal, time to to be with myself, prioritize things a bit.

I learned to know my limits. I started touring a lot, and it was the most important thing for me for some time. My music was more important than myself. It was a very romantic relationship to my art. It still is important, but it’s different; it’s healthier, because being ill for many months and not being able to play music taught me a lot about my relationship with music and my relationship with myself. I was forced to prioritize myself, my well-being, my health before everything else. That was the most precious lesson I learned in my life.

My relationship with music can still be the ashes that remain in the room, you know, but it’s a bit more balanced. I found a very beautiful relationship with music that is not as tragic. I just learned to do it in a way that is good and healthy.That’s the main thing that changed.

Making the album felt very intuitive. I’ve been through a lot with it, and it was very important for me to release it, before I release anything else. And it took me time to put it in a frame and say, “okay, this is what it is”, and so it’s such a perfect timing for it to be out now. It’s like opening a new chapter.

 

–

The conversation between Rasha Nahas and IJ.Biermann, recorded in Berlin in March 2021, has been edited and condensed for clarity.

 

 

Es ist noch nicht zu spät, in eine meiner absoluten Lieblingsserien einzusteigen. Auch wenn die erste Staffel noch ein paar kleine Schwächen hatte, wie eine zu aufdringliche Musik. Spätestens ab Staffel zwei gerät man leicht in jenen Sog, der uns hinter die Leinwand transportiert, als wären wir dabei, und, mon dieu, wie oft wird einem hier, innerhalb der acht Staffeln von „Spiral“, das Herz gebrochen! Viele haben versucht herauszufinden, warum sie das so fesselnd finden sollten, diese untertitelte Buddy-Buddy-Buddy-Flic-Flic-Serie, die im Großen und Ganzen auf der schmuddeligen Seite der Peripherie spielt, einem Paris fernab von Champagner, Kellnern und Touristenkram, einem Paris, das hauptsächlich von brennenden Reifen, billigen, stinkenden Schmuggelzigaretten und rüpelhaftem, düsterem Humor geprägt ist.

Der französische Titel lautet „Engrenages“, was wörtlich übersetzt so etwas wie „Räder in Rädchen“ und „Rädergetriebe“ bedeutet, was etwas passender ist: In jeder Folge wirbeln die Geschichten, kollidieren, greifen ineinander oder sprühen Funken, und man bleibt mit einem bewundernden, kopfschüttelnden, erschüttertem Empfinden zurück. Es gibt nichts als nahtlos gutes Schauspiel, sei es das Hauptdreieck der Polizisten – Laure, Gilou, Tintin – oder die Juristen, die den Richter François Roban (Philippe Duclos) und die flammenhaarige Anwältin Joséphine Karlsson (Audrey Fleurot) untersuchen. Caroline Proust als Laure Berthaud hält sie alle zusammen. So gut wie immer getrieben, ernst, unter Strom, doch wenn sie mal lächelt, dann ist das einer dieser Momente, in denen man weiss, dass es sich zuweilen lohnt, bis ans Ende der Nacht zu reisen.

 

Man sollte doch vorsichtig sein, wenn man diverse Formen existenziellen Elends „gegenrechnet“. Als könnte man die steigenden Suizidraten und die steigende Zahl von Depressionen als Argument für kontrollierte Öffnungen verwenden! Die sich als zunehmend unkontrollierbar entpuppen. Recherchen in NRW haben ergeben, dass die Schulen miserabel vorbereitet sind, was die Praxis von Schnelltests, angemessenen Räumlichkeiten, Sicherung von Sicherheitsabständen, etc. angeht. Geht man davon aus, dass die B.1.1.7-Zahlen weiterhin so steigen, ist laut RKI in der Woche ab dem 5. April »mit Fallzahlen über dem Niveau von Weihnachten« zu rechnen. Konkret schätzt das RKI für die Woche ab dem 12. April eine Sieben-Tage-Inzidenz im Bereich zwischen 220 und mehr als 500. Die mittlere Schätzung liegt bei 350 pro 100.000 Menschen. Das entspricht gut 41.000 gemeldeten Coronafällen pro Tag. Kürzliche Öffnungen und Lockerungen sind bei diesem Blick in die Zukunft nicht eingepreist, wie Der Spiegel es deutlich sagt. Und man halte sich ganz sachte vor Augen, was durch die Öffnungen der Schulen zwei Wochen vor den Osterferien in Gang gesetzt wird (s.o.). Es gehört zum Drama dieser Pandemie in Deutschland, dass jetzt langsam fast alles schiefläuft, was schieflaufen kann. Das Murphy-Prinzip. Und statt zu lernen von den USA (unter Biden), von Israel, sogar England, was die Impfpolitik betrifft, greift hier seit Wochen ein logistisches Wirrwarr um sich, das das Bild von Deutschen als Organisationsgenies ad absurdum führt. Zum Schwarzsehen hat keiner Grund, wenn er nach Australien oder Neuseeland (mit ihrer rigorosen Handhabung einer klugen, verdammt klugen Zero Covid-Politik) übersiedeln kann. Kann halt kaum einer. Es geht von Lockdown zu Lockdown, von einem Stotterrhythmus zum nächsten. Was die eingangs zitierten Depressionen und Erschöpfungszustände chronisch werden lässt. Bald sind auch die Ü-40-Menschen vermehrt auf Intensivstationen, wie vermutet wird, dramatische Verläufe gehen bei den Alten aus bekannten Gründen sachte zurück. Auf seine Weise ist das Virus in seiner tückischen Mutationsfähigkeit „intelligenter“ als all die supervernetzten Zeitgenossen und ihre Aufrufe zu massvollen Öffnungen. Als wäre die brasilianische Variante hier nicht bald anzutreffen! Und das im sog. Superwahljahr. Laschet gibt schon jetzt den Weihnachtsmann. Wie sagte er vor ein paar Wochen, grundgütig in die Kamera lächelnd wie einst Doc Welby auf Hausbesuch: „Es dauert noch ein paar Tage.“ Aber was regen wir uns auf. Schon Hans Magnus Enzenberger schrieb in einem Prosagedicht, dass die Toten ohnehin in der Mehrheit seien. Und  Leben, so schrieb Michel De Montaigne, heisst schliesslich sterben lernen. Aber bitte nicht die Art von Sterben, die von politischer und sozialer Wirrnis befeuert wird.

 

Über 73000  Corona-Tote. In Deutschland.  Es ist ethisch hochproblematisch, zu implizieren, die „Alten“ sterben sowieso : die sog. „Alten“  hätten noch  gut zehn Jahre oder mehr leben können. Durch die neuen Mutationen verändert sich das Bild wieder, weil auch „Jüngere“ die Intensivstationen füllen werden. Bekanntermassen ist die britische Mutation mittlerweile am weitesten verbreitet und ansteckender. 

 

AKTUELL: 14.3.2021. Im Kreis Düren liegt die Inzidenz über 100. Ein Antrag des Kreises Düren, die Schule geschlossen  zu halten, wurde von der NRW-Landesregierung abgelehnt. Wahnsinn. Dass Frau Gebauer eine komplett inkompetente Bildungsministerin ist, ist schon lange bekannt. In vielen betroffenen Familien regt sich massiver Widerstand.

 

In diesem Jahr wird das spoken word-album zehn Jahre alt, das Brian Eno und Rick Holland gemeinsam entwickelten. Es hat nichts von seiner Anziehungskraft verloren. Brian hatte stets ein Faible für spoken-word-music, ein frühes Beispiel kann man auf seinem ersten Songalbum „Here Come The Warm Jets“ finden. Er war vollends fasziniert von jenem Album von The Books (das mit dem grünen Cover), das ich ihm 2005 mitbrachte zu unserem Berliner Interview im Adlon anlässlich „Another Day On Earth“. Und auch bei dem im April erscheinenden spoken word-Album von Marianne Faithfull ist er mit zwei, drei Arrangements und einigen „treatments“ dabei.

Das Interview mit Rick Holland war ein Highlight meiner Interviews jenes Jahres, und es zeigt, dass solch vielfältige Poeme einen immerneuen Ansatz der musikalischen Darbietung einfordern. Genau das ist Eno gelungen, und deshalb ist DRUMS BETWEEN THE BELLS so schillernd geworden, Füllhorn, Klangrausch, „food for thought“, und, wie es ein Kritiker nannte, „electronic soul music for the mind“.

Damals habe ich mit Freunden alle englischen Gedichte ins Deutsche übertragen. Sie finden sich, unter „Ältere Beiträge“, in den Sommermonaten 2011. All meine Texte von jenem ersten Jahr der Manafonisten, die es m.E. wert sind, erhalten zu bleiben (ungefähr 10 Prozent, schätze ich), werden sich, anlässlich des zehnjährigen Bestehens dieses Blogs, also hier wiederfinden, anno 2021, im Laufe der Zeit. Der Rest wird vermüllt. Die Übersetzungen der Gedichte, oft direkt neben die Originale platziert, werden allerdings wie Ruinen in jenem Jahr verharren. Wenn uns nichts Besseres einfällt. Viel Freude bei der Entdeckung oder Wiederentdeckung eines ganz besonderen Albums.

 

 

 

 

 

THE APPEARANCE OF ELISHA MUDLEY

 

Michael Engelbrecht:   On a lot of his albums, Brian only rarely works with clearly defined lyrics when entering a studio. This time, he had your poems – and, as I imagine, letting their impact on him work, he was inspired to approach every track with new ideas, new sounds. You have only a rare apparition as one of the nine voices on the album; how have you been involved in the studio work? Did you offer him any musical ideas, from the point of view of a “real” non-musician?

 

Rick Holland: You are right that each track was approached as a unique organism, and there were nearly fifty pieces when we first sat down to finish the record. I do offer musical ideas and also extremely vague and over-reaching requests, Can you make this part sound more like primordial sludge Brian?’, that kind of thing. Of course his answers tend to be, ‘Yes, yes I can.’.

We worked together in his studio throughout the intensive final weeks and also at most of the sessions that spawned the initial ‘skeletons’ of the tracks over the years. I think we both took some steps away from our comfort zones over these sessions, which is what collaborating relies on, and there was certainly never a sense that he ‘did’ music and I ‘did’ words. Poems and Music were equally likely to change in the process of making, and the making process was an open forum of ideas.

‘The Real’ is perhaps the most recent example of a ‘school’ of song formation whereby  Brian would have several pieces on the go and I would provide or write words for the ones that most spoke to me. The first stage in these tracks was to superimpose a vocal over the existing music. Sometimes, a vocal just steers the piece towards its final shape and many musical ideas were provided by the vocalists, not directly, but in the nuances of their readings and more specifically their own ways of forming spoken words.

The components of this one just fell into place with a combination of reshaping an existing ‘poem’ I had been working on, and the beautiful chance arrival at the studio of Elisha Mudley, who really did appear like an angel that day, unannounced, and just in time for us to record. Not all days ran that smoothly!

 

Michael:   Your poems allow the listener to drift freely between the impressions the single words and pictures are offering. As a material that is not fixed to transport a certain message, and more open to free associations, one can experience the words in a very relaxed way. Can you explain this a bit, with a look at the opening track, this London poem “Bless This Space”. And what was the first idea that brought this poem on its way? The albums starts,  almost programmatic, with the words “Bless this space / in rhyme and sound”…”

 

NEAR OLD STREET IN LONDON

 

Rick: This is a very good question. The great interest for me in the whole of this process has been the giving up of control of meaning. Many poets would really not like this idea. By allowing the idiosyncrasies of accent and word formation in foreign English speakers the centre stage, and then enjoying and exploiting the accidents of meaning those sounds can create, the poetic process is often greatly enhanced, and often in surprising ways. I was already a poet who enjoyed leaving ‘image lines’ and indeed sounds to trigger a journey into personal meaning before I met Brian, but over the years of working with him, I have developed a clearer idea of the middle ground between pure audio material and carriers of meaning and how the two can play off each other.

The example you cite ‘Bless this Space’ is an interesting one, as it is not typical of how we worked. The poem was inspired by a production job of sorts I had for the Map making project in 2003 (the event I met Brian at actually). It was a very ambitious collaboration between artists of all kinds, from ballet dancers to painters to orchestras; I was unofficially tasked with pulling the show together with some kind of thread. It was set in St Luke’s, in what used to be a church near Old Street in London but is now the home of LSO and a beautiful music venue. I was asked to write something to accompany the dance piece that opened the show, and so I decided to play on the idea of the art venue being a place for people to come and ‘unfold’ the daily pretences of life. The rhythm and feel of it was ritualistic in keeping with the motions of the dance and for me it made a good opening ‘blessing’ for the performance to come, like a call to the audience for an open mind, or a mock invocation of the spirits.

I included it in a bundle of words I once printed out for Brian and forgot all about it, until one day I received an email from Brian with his reading over a pulse track. I liked it, but again we forgot it for a long time, and then it re-emerged in this form after Leo Abrahams and Seb Rochford had worked their magic; Leo’s guitar part and Seb’s drums knock it off kilter and add even more a sense of the intoxicating freedom after the ritual, as though you are marched to the precipice and have no choice but to jump into the unknown. Now it is a piece of music which as you say can be linked into lyrically, or just grooved to, or both. Hopefully, lines jump out differently for different people. And it keeps the half life of that original poem but adds a new life, or several new lives at once to it. For me, ‘step through mediums/outside of the race/to look in’ works on many levels for individuals and society. I love this track.

 

BRIAN´S FREAK-OUT SECTION

 

Michael:  On Glitch, as on many other poems,  you´re working with the freedoms of “Konkrete Poesie” (Gomringer, Arp, Jandl a.o.) by using the whole space, letting go traditional forms of arranging words. The graphic space between the words (white canvas) produces an airy climate for the words, sometimes even a kind of rhythmical pattern. Can you describe the story behind the writing of “Glitch”, and how Brian´s music did  surprise you?

 

Rick: Before meeting Brian I had set out on writing directly to music, and in ways that were inspired directly by music; in fact I had been experimenting with writing as a direct translation of  other forms of expression, of which music is for me the most direct and enjoyable. ‘Glitch’ was written a long time ago, but I think it was written only in relation to a very sparse drum pattern that I had asked a friend to make for me and without much editing for meaning. This perhaps explains the context you give it and why it worked so well in relation to the graphic space you mention. The space was perhaps already there, a la Konkrete Poesie  but it was certainly consciously manipulated in Brian’s transformation to music. Brian is forever asking readers to ‘go slow’ for precisely this reason. I don’t have much knowledge about “Konkrete Poesie” so I will investigate, thankyou.

So, ‘glitch’ started from the words, and Grazna Goworek (who looked after Brian’s studio some years ago) was invited to read. She didn’t even bat an eyelid when he asked her to go and sit in the toilet to read the poem, which is where the rasping atmosphere of the reading comes from, along with Brian’s processing of her voice. Then the music was built from these starting points, the words and the voice became a pulse and an atmosphere, so actually the music did not surprise me in this case.

However, we returned to ‘glitch’ several times over the years, and the greatest surprise came in the very last week of working on the record. In response to one of my more outlandish requests (something like ‘Could you make a section that sounds like the sub atomic code of the universe?’) Brian constructed the ‘freak out’ section that I think now takes the track to the next level. That part is the real language of the piece for me, condensed and magnified like a real poem should be. It speaks in greater volumes than all of the words!

 

BLAIR AND THE BIRDS

 

Michael:  One of the beautiful moments  in “Dreambirds” is when the words say “invent new colors”, and the music sounds like a perfect example for synasthesia, the transformation of colors into music. In the lyrics there are two interesting elements that produce a kind of tension: the dreamy skyscape with the birds, and then, the  political allusions…  a kind of “utopian poem”, so to speak?

 

Rick: Yes absolutely in the synaesthesia sense. We experimented with various ways of representing words with sound, and in this case I agree, the elements hang together like a visual trace across the sky. The politics are also there, and they are a strange mixture. Having worked as a teacher in various guises, in London and further afield in Central Africa and India, the untrammeled potential of youthful imagination is always inspiring to me. It is also violated by the ‘facts’ of life so often, when the young person’s perspective is very often the right one but is denied.

The financial crisis most recently points to this fact so I’ll use it as a slightly cumbersome example; while I was growing up in a country of people doing jobs that I couldn’t really understand I always sensed very strongly that our economic foundations were built on make believe, but I would dampen these impressions and assume there was someone who was far more intelligent than me in control. In the Blair years, the promises of equal opportunities for all youngsters to learn and aspire made me feel equally uneasy. We were ‘rich’ as a nation, but no-one really understood or even bothered to understand why this was, and we had a government rolling out initiatives that always sounded as flimsy as the new labour theme tune to me.

What was clear is that back in the real world we needed truly ‘brilliant’ young rather than political spin versions of brilliant young who weren’t really prepared for anything useful by this aspirational lie of an education. So ‘Dreambirds’ was a poem about the tussle between the true potential of imagination, and the mirage that was being sold that let everyone ‘express themselves’ and have the impression that they were on the ladder to somewhere better when perhaps they weren’t at all (a blank dioxide perhaps).

Thankfully, the beautiful musical accompaniment allows the imagination to roam and doesn’t focus instead on that satirical edge, and ultimately in  the poem and in the music, it is the imagination that wins! We do need brilliant young inventing new colours that fly, and they are out there working very hard at it, right now. When I listen to this one now, I imagine wonderfully odd semi-robotic species of bird full of character and colour. This piece makes me smile, as though we live in a very complex world that is still full of charm.

 

Michael: “Seepods” is a good example for your preference (sometimes) to use very sensual, miscroscopic details of everyday life and then build up a kind of impressionistic picture… does this poem in some way reflect your interest in a free, unconditioned way of perceiving things that can produce magic without being linked to a certain message?

 

Rick: ‘Yes’ is the best answer to this question. I can’t express this better than you have! I will add that I have a belief that the internal world and the external world can both be understood far better by just looking; looking carefully at them both in the context of the other. ‘Looking’ itself needs examining and re-evaluating too. Relationship (like that of the very large to the very small) is everywhere in this album, and in my work in general. I also recognise lately that so much of  what we experience as ‘feeling’ is just projected, and from the top of the 344 bus in London (where I wrote this one) it is possible to see ‘seven different feelings’ responding in their ‘seven’ different ways to the same trigger at any given moment. Only a conditioned mind fails to see this every day in London.

 

LIVING IN MUMBAI

 

Michael:  One of my favourite poems and tracks (in fact, they are nearly all favourite pieces)  is “the real”, a fine  example of producing mistrust  about so-called “reality”.  By repeating some of the words and changing them subtely, the listener´s security is more and more feeling like a fake. Could be a Buddhist poem for the Western world, couldn´t it? And Brian enhances this by heavily treating the voice in the last part of the long track…

 

Rick: This is one of my favourite tracks too. An undressing of the myths of language, and because of Brian’s wonderful idea of stretching and elongating the ‘repeat’, an undressing of the very myth of speaking (and telling ‘facts’) too, it is an opportunity to meditate on your own understandings.

Living in Mumbai for a while really opened my eyes to the fact that these ideas are not new or strange, and are also not ‘hippy’ (or any other similarly Western kind of identifying word to discredit anything ‘other’). In India I found a society that was able to talk about things not from a self conscious position of quasi-scientific authority but from an open position of questioning and critical thinking built into the fabric of daily life by an ancient tradition of such thinking. Exact ‘classification’ was not the stated end of this thinking, unlike the West, rather an acknowledgement that giant forces of the world and universe were in flux, and that human beings played only a small and equal part to all other forms of life.

I am not Buddhist, or a Hindu, nor have I studied either way exhaustively, but I do see the frontiers of science shifting all the time and making fools of experts, and the fact that people have also long agreed on one simple truth, ‘the unexamined life is not worth living’. At the ends of our formalized intelligence lives imagination. Ultimately, we are all looking for the same thing and anyone who tells you ‘no, you are wrong, life is rigidly this way, full stop’ is almost certainly selling you something.

 

WHAT TAGORE SAID TO EINSTEIN

 

Michael:  Who is “The Airman”… Where does this title hint to? A space traveler?  Quite often in your poems you´re writing  about stuff from a kind of “outsider perspective”. A kind of “alien perspective”… Another good example is the poem “A title” that offers some excursion to evolution theory…

 

Rick: The airman is a representation of my own attempts at thinking logically through smaller and smaller building blocks of life in an attempt to understand it. Like deep sea divers and space explorers, we are still searching our own consciousness and wondering where it can take us; often it is our ability to travel further away from ourselves that allows us to better understand ourselves. The actual idea of ‘airman’ I am almost certain was taken from Auden or the ‘pylon poets’ of the 1930s, and really is just about jumping on the back of technological advance to steal a clear view of its secrets like a magpie (Auden’s airman I think was a first world war pilot scanning the earth to make maps). “a title” is similar, as we get closer  to understanding ourselves through a meditation through a microscope, or appreciating our true nature beneath all the constructs.

 

Michael:  “Sounds alien” has, from the lyrics,  clear musical references, like  “sounds are alien and dense…”.  Did you write this or other poems with the idea in the back of your mind that Brian will make the music?

 

Rick:  ‘sounds alien’ came from a collection of consciously shorter work that I was writing at the time it was made (I think around 2006) and almost certainly these shorter poems were influenced by the fact I was working with Brian and other musicians and with music in mind. The rhythm of these words certainly lend themselves to manipulation or repetition (very much in the vein of what Tagore said to Einstein about ‘Eastern’ music with its words that were not necessarily anything other than structural stepping stones in a greater and more vivid picture.

These words also relate to a long term love of ‘drum and bass’ music, with the ability it had to take me out of my own thoughts through its broken beat repetitions and alterations. It is worth mentioning here that I think it was listening to music with live MCs and rappers that first made me interested in ‘poetry’, I have always loved hearing a voice adding its layers to music, and in the rare instances that the images are vivid too, that is my musical heaven.

I do draw a great deal of fuel from music and drums, as a writer but also just as a stress reliever in day to day life. If I remember correctly Brian picked these words from the group of short poems I brought to one of our sessions and read them with Aylie over an existing piece. We made this track in the same session as ‘multimedia’ and ‘the airman’ (which were written with the words as starting points).

 

CLOUD 4  

 

Michael:  And then there is this wonderful poem – and the wonderful song „Cloud 4“. For someone who likes Brian singing it´s  a bit sad that  it is so short, but the form is perfect. Do you have a relationship to his song albums… have you been a fan of Brian´s music before you met him personally. I mean he had written great  song lyrics in his song albums, and then there is the ambient work full of strange moods that might inspire the writing of  poems with the music running in the background, So what´s your story with Brian´s music?

 

Rick: I grew up with Brian’s music forming part of the background of my life without realising it. A lot of people of my generation can say that. I didn’t have a direct experience of or knowledge of Brian’s music until I met him. It is lucky really, because I had no preconception of working with him, and so no reference to either influence me or intimidate me. I have learned so much from him and have been really interested to discover his work after meeting the man, rather than the other way round. I have to admit that it was a good few years even after working with him that I really grasped his attitude to lyrics. Maybe I wouldn’t have gone that first day if I had known what I was letting myself in for! I did actually have a crack at writing words for a lot of the songs that came out very differently in his previous two ‘song’ albums, including the lovely ‘Strange Overtones’.

I love his song ‘This’ incidentally and I think that is a good example of his approach to lyric writing as I can imagine the words came in streams and in servitude to the music. I’ve also heard some unreleased songs that are just stunning and perhaps lyrically incomplete. Perhaps my story with Brian’s music is that of the covert secret operative who has had access to the vaults. My relationship to all of his work, across art forms, is one of ongoing illumination. Most recently I’ve read about Stafford Beer and loved those parts of his work I could understand, and while I still perhaps know less of Brian’s ‘song albums’ than some do, I have certainly heard him sing a lot.

A quick aside, regarding the length of ‘Cloud 4’. The option of continuing with it and building it did come up, but we both thought it delivered its message. As an aside to an aside, I remember also Brian saying that one of his favourite songs ever, Maurice Williams’ ‘Stay’ was the perfect song encapsulated in 1 minute and 39 seconds. I certainly know what that song is saying!

 

THE RAIN WAS HAMMERING DOWN

 

Michael:  Starting  reading a poem with the title “multimedia”  I didn´t expect some strange archaic rituals? What triggered this fantasy of caves and elemental sounds…?

 

Rick: Aboriginal spot paintings, Australia, Fire, Music, ‘Click Sticks’ and also the ‘archaic’ rituals that are carried out in techno parties all over the world or anywhere where people dance to drums. A lot of us find release in dancing to loud beats (expertly so in Germany). I wrote this at a time where a lot of self conscious multimedia art was around and it made me think that mixing art, dancing, music and ecstatic energy was nearly as old as the most ancient human practices and not perhaps as clever as smug artists were implying (in the ‘Dreambirds’ years!). I had also seen an Aboriginal man on ‘walkabout’ in central Sydney which was a contrast that had a great impact on me in a country whose real history fascinated me, with it’s stories of totemic beings singing the world into existence and naming the land. The very common need for release is the thing that triggered the fantasy, projected onto an outback scene from the other side of the world. It is a poem that is proudly from my youth, when the political climate and behaviour of a lot of my peers seemed a million miles removed from what I thought was real.

 

Michael:   Did Brian tell you why he decided to sing the last track of the album with an utterly deep voice. The “silence” before it is well-chosen after the poem that ended with pure optimism and the words  “things will be good”.   The change of mood makes the silent period nearly necessary, and,  what  seemed to be a happy ending of the album turns into something dark. Can you give some suggestions about your perception of this last track?

 

Rick:  I am going to take some credit here for pushing Brian to do something he wasn’t necessarily comfortable doing. We were in a new part of his studio, he had moved all of his equipment into what had previously been an office, with large glass skylight windows. The rain was hammering down in heavy drops, the daylight had disappeared behind the clouds, and he had this dark and thrilling sound on the go. In short, the stage was set to try ‘Breath of Crows’, a slow meditation that is both dark and uplifting in my opinion. His choice of singing voice fitted the whole atmosphere, and I pushed him to carry on with this sung approach. I think he enjoyed confounding his own doubts, and I love this track. The silence was completely necessary, yes, and the atmosphere too different from the rest of the album to place anywhere else.

As for my perception it is completely bound up in where the poem was written, which was under a Mumbai monsoon, in my small room over there, which was at tree level and meant I lived in close proximity to the city’s crow population. It was the culmination of a lot of reading, thinking, working as a teacher at Utpal Shanghvi School, and living closely with these very intelligent animals in a culture that revered and took notice of all living things. The song is perhaps like a non religious hymn.

 

Michael:  Anything you like to add? At the end…

 

Rick:  I would just like to add that working with Brian enabled me for the first time to watch a full time artist at work; someone as committed to his work as a research scientist and constantly pushing himself and his ideas and modes of thinking. While the working process necessitated give and take I never once felt anything other than his complete equal and this is down to his total commitment to remaining open and curious to the world. I am proud of the album and the journey we have taken to realise it, but most of all I am just very grateful to have been given the opportunity to meet him and work with him. I hope you enjoy the record, and give it some good quality time to listen to (perhaps on shuffle mode for best effect).