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First of all I am really thankful that Dennis Cooper gives me space here to reveal some secret that I think it is about time to break.
I am one of these guys with glasses, 30-something, who used to play guitar in indie bands and started to work with the computer as a good substitute for the good old 4-track tape recorders (for those interested in technological history - I started to do this with a really crappy 133 mhz processor PC with 32 MB RAM). I think this was in 1999 when I started a project called ckid. Phew. Some people said what I was doing would be “indietronic”.
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Down with Ghosts
I don’t want to go into details too much with what happened (and what did not happen) in the next few years (you can see a discography with lots of free mp3s on my website) but at least I released some 12” and did some remixes for Indie Bands like Figurine, Giardini Di Miro and The Robocop Kraus and - after some sort of creative coma –I wanted to get back into releasing something on LP/CD in 2006. Some labels showed interest but had a “full schedule”, some were more honest and wrote “we are looking for real bands instead”. Maybe I should have called myself The Ckids? I also heard back from a german label that was rather looking for “female artists” with this kind of sound – something I already heard when I was looking for a label to release an album of a project called Anorak (with Nicolas Saez, a nice guy from Belgium) in 2003. One small label from the UK finally told me that they would be really into releasing an album with me. So, in 2005 and 2006 I spent quite some hours with recording what became a now free downloadable album called “Down with ghosts”. You can grab it here or there.
As you might guess it was not released on LP or CD and these plans were shelved “for a lack of money” – strangely the label High Point Lowlife is still around – so... But as I still have some good amount of Anorak CDs collecting dust I now think it is not that bad that I released it for free on Monotonik instead as I was tired of sending out demos. “Down with ghosts” is fine with me. A collection of my take on Shoegazing; multilayered with walls of sound, hidden vocals, washy textures...
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Tokyo
My girlfriend Frauke Boggasch is a painter and had a post-gradual grand from the German Academic Exchange Service for a six month stay in Tokyo in 2005/2006. I visited her and six weeks of Tokyo turned me into a huge fan of japanese culture and lifestyle.
After the release of “Down with ghosts” I felt empty and thought I am done with “songs”. I started to change my working methods and traded the multi-layered style for something more reduced and minimal.
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Le Mépris
As Myspace was exploding I signed up for a profile and called myself Le Mépris– as one of my favourite Godard movies. René Margraff turned into Reiko Matane – now based in Tokyo instead of Berlin, I was no longer a boy and became a girl (I also posted some photos of Japan into my profile). Somehow this worked much better than my real identity – the number of Myspace friends grew rapidly and the music I added was appreciated although it was done much quicker than the painful multi-layering of the ckid tracks – sticking mainly to some simple piano melodies and field recordings. One of the first friends I added was Aerotone - a german netlabel I really like a lot - and as they offered to release something from me I agreed and felt a bit stuck with my new found fake identity. There was no way out and I think that some people granted me a Japan and a girl bonus. Although I told some people and musicians the secret is still not public, not until now I guess. The album was released in November 2007, you can get it here.
What’s next? I don’t know yet. I started some new solo project called Pillowdriver - maybe a sound approach that is too lofi and too narcotic for most people but a quality I often miss in music. I also think about doing something more “electronic” again.
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p.s. Hey. Someone whom I believe was a silent reader of the blog at the time made this guest-post some years back, and you'll see why I've revived it, if you haven't already. My vacation appears to be continuing apace given the appearance of this pre-programmed rerun. If not, and I've died or something, I guess you probably know that, and, if so, reading these words by me must be rather haunting. Hope not.
First of all I am really thankful that Dennis Cooper gives me space here to reveal some secret that I think it is about time to break.
I am one of these guys with glasses, 30-something, who used to play guitar in indie bands and started to work with the computer as a good substitute for the good old 4-track tape recorders (for those interested in technological history - I started to do this with a really crappy 133 mhz processor PC with 32 MB RAM). I think this was in 1999 when I started a project called ckid. Phew. Some people said what I was doing would be “indietronic”.
Down with Ghosts
I don’t want to go into details too much with what happened (and what did not happen) in the next few years (you can see a discography with lots of free mp3s on my website) but at least I released some 12” and did some remixes for Indie Bands like Figurine, Giardini Di Miro and The Robocop Kraus and - after some sort of creative coma –I wanted to get back into releasing something on LP/CD in 2006. Some labels showed interest but had a “full schedule”, some were more honest and wrote “we are looking for real bands instead”. Maybe I should have called myself The Ckids? I also heard back from a german label that was rather looking for “female artists” with this kind of sound – something I already heard when I was looking for a label to release an album of a project called Anorak (with Nicolas Saez, a nice guy from Belgium) in 2003. One small label from the UK finally told me that they would be really into releasing an album with me. So, in 2005 and 2006 I spent quite some hours with recording what became a now free downloadable album called “Down with ghosts”. You can grab it here or there.
As you might guess it was not released on LP or CD and these plans were shelved “for a lack of money” – strangely the label High Point Lowlife is still around – so... But as I still have some good amount of Anorak CDs collecting dust I now think it is not that bad that I released it for free on Monotonik instead as I was tired of sending out demos. “Down with ghosts” is fine with me. A collection of my take on Shoegazing; multilayered with walls of sound, hidden vocals, washy textures...
Tokyo
My girlfriend Frauke Boggasch is a painter and had a post-gradual grand from the German Academic Exchange Service for a six month stay in Tokyo in 2005/2006. I visited her and six weeks of Tokyo turned me into a huge fan of japanese culture and lifestyle.
After the release of “Down with ghosts” I felt empty and thought I am done with “songs”. I started to change my working methods and traded the multi-layered style for something more reduced and minimal.
Le Mépris
As Myspace was exploding I signed up for a profile and called myself Le Mépris– as one of my favourite Godard movies. René Margraff turned into Reiko Matane – now based in Tokyo instead of Berlin, I was no longer a boy and became a girl (I also posted some photos of Japan into my profile). Somehow this worked much better than my real identity – the number of Myspace friends grew rapidly and the music I added was appreciated although it was done much quicker than the painful multi-layering of the ckid tracks – sticking mainly to some simple piano melodies and field recordings. One of the first friends I added was Aerotone - a german netlabel I really like a lot - and as they offered to release something from me I agreed and felt a bit stuck with my new found fake identity. There was no way out and I think that some people granted me a Japan and a girl bonus. Although I told some people and musicians the secret is still not public, not until now I guess. The album was released in November 2007, you can get it here.
What’s next? I don’t know yet. I started some new solo project called Pillowdriver - maybe a sound approach that is too lofi and too narcotic for most people but a quality I often miss in music. I also think about doing something more “electronic” again.
----
*
p.s. Hey. Someone whom I believe was a silent reader of the blog at the time made this guest-post some years back, and you'll see why I've revived it, if you haven't already. My vacation appears to be continuing apace given the appearance of this pre-programmed rerun. If not, and I've died or something, I guess you probably know that, and, if so, reading these words by me must be rather haunting. Hope not.