Thoughts

For this album, there is also another little story to tell.

Originally, it should be released at the Berlin label "Picosso-Records" in 1995. The label had made in incredibly short time incredibly lot of money with so-called "Shape" CDs. This CDs were issued by a patented process and could be manufactured in any shape you can imagine (for example the shape of a heart or a continent etc.)
In 1995 this was absolutely fashion and – as I said - the company made much money that had to be invested. So they invested it in techno and electronic music projects. Some of them sold poorly. Rooms were rented in Berlin-Grunewald (maybe the most expensive place in Berlin) for more than 5.000 euros per month cost. Well, the company was faster bankrupt than they had become rich. Somewhere in between, I was up and signed for a small record contract for "Thoughts". But the album there was never published. With effort and hardship, I got my rights and my master tape back. That was it with "Pikosso-Records".

Unfortunately, the with "Pikosso-Records" related music-publisher has still the copyrights of this album, but they never acted for me. I have already some experiences with this kind of situation…

Just a short time later I met Guenther Kopschinski and his label "Green Tree Records" at a “record release party” for an album from Frank Klare (ex Synco). The label had made a name with CDs from the Progressive Rock genre.
He (Kopschinski) was then very interested into electronic music from Berlin. After the release of this CD, he then published my whole back catalogue and the 8 CD box "My Little Universe". So positive this cooperation had begun: After two years it was stopped by a lawyer. Unpleasant experiences seems to be a living part of a musicians life.

A comment I would like to make. The foreword to this album was written by Winfrid Trenkler; the man who had made “our” music popular by broadcasting it in german public radio. After this, the contact to him broke. He had left Germany.

Some albums from the "Green Tree period" are still in popular internet auction houses to find. Who does not want to look at it, might look to Last.FM. There is "Thoughts" now available for download.

Activities

I am currently experimenting with my new "Octopus" sequencer around and try to understand that device even better and better. Although I'm not a fan of instruction manuals, but I must say that you should read it if you will this machine not only understand but also dominate in a creative sense.
"Try and error” leads to often into the wrong direction and supplies frustrating results. But if the principles once understood, the Octopus makes really fun (beside its fantastic optic).

With Andreas Michel, editor of the German “Synthesizer-Magazin”, I arranged to write a field report about the Octopus. The article will be explicitly no test report, because this would be too boring. The report is expected to be released in issue no.11 and I will put then a summary of the article in English language into this blog.

...too few hands for so much "Octopus"

Also I'm preparing a new studio-album which will hopefully be released at the end of this year. Details will follow soon. It is guaranteed, that Octopus will get his own role in this production...

Keep on rockin'