Over the last year I’ve recorded quite a few of the semi-regular sessions I’ve hosted with artist and experimental musician, Angelika Höger. This album, Duette (Duets) – now available to download on Bandcamp – is a small selection chosen and edited down from hours of recordings capturing Angelika and I exploring the possibilities of improvisation between acoustic and electric instrumentation. Angelika uses a vast array of instruments and sound sources, while I use synths, guitars etc. The studio was very much a live instrument here. In a couple of places I’ve used more than one session to complete a track, but only as a means of connecting passages which seemed related in some way (this is reflected in the titles)https://jonesisdying.bandcamp.com/album/duette. Only one track (received any overdubs over the live original. It was a lot of material, but I think I’ve extracted the essence of what this way of playing can produce when the wind blows in the right direction.

The final track is formed from recordings made recently in the Alten Synagoge des Kunstvereins Oerlinghausen (see image above). The track creates a soundscape from the sounds of Angelika’s creations coming to life as well as ambient noise from the amazing environment (truly one of the greatest sounding spaces I’ve heard in a long while). It also contains some music taped there during the building of Angelika’s exhibition, Im Raum, which runs from 31:8:25 – 12:10:25.

Angelika and me will be performing 11:10:25, 3-5pm. Entry is free, and everyone is free to come and go as they please!

My latest soundtrack work for filmmaker Christoph Girardet: 100 Years Later gets its premiere this Saturday, 3rd May, at this year’s Short Film Festival in Oberhausen, as part of the German competition.

Tickets

I’ve just completed work on a new film by Christoph Girardet, entitled 100 Years Later.

It’s a short (8 min) black and white found footage film (utilising the same archive of old Hollywood second unit found footage as used on Jishin), and its subject matter is the USA (as you may be able to work out from the screenshot above). More details will be revealed over the next month or so, but it was both a challenging and incredibly rewarding project for me (as it always is when I work with Christoph), and I’m very satisfied with the results, which gave me a chance to road test some new orchestral software. More details to follow…

Last year (2023) I had a catastrophic equipment failure, leading to the loss of a bunch of multitracks. At the time I’d prepared a rough tracklist and running order etc. for an album to be released via fantastic Belgian label: Off Records. Faced with either a reworking of the rough mixes or just ploughing on with new material, I consigned these tracks to the ‘vaults’ and moved on. A year or so later I’ve reassessed this work as being ‘pretty fine, all things considered’ and decided to unleash them in their (slightly) unfinished form. I hope you like them.
Some of the tracks date back at least four or five years, some were completed only last year. All were recorded in my studio here in Bielefeld, NRW.

Out today – part one of a project I was very happy to contribute to: the latest release from @offrecordlabel – a series of EPs with remixes/reversions of audio pieces from @alinovsky24 – with contributions from Japan, USA and the UK:

This is the basic idea behind the music from Apoptose. Starting with a basic track and degenerate it to make new forms of music.

Alinovsky says:

“I had 3 tracks left from the Voxolator album that I was ready to erase when I read an article about Apoptosis… which translated into the idea to give those tracks for a destructive remix or whatever to some of my fellow Off musicians from all over the world.
To my surprise they all responded yes and emailed back a lot of great sounding pieces of music to the extent that instead of thinking of a short ep with four tracks there will be now 4 volumes with no less than 22 remixes!
Enjoy!”
Link: https://bfan.link/apoptose-1

I was honoured to be asked by the Bielefeld Cooperativa Neue Musik e.V. to take part in a performance/art walk at the beautiful old house and farm of Gut Oberbehme near Kirchlengern. It was an amazing afternoon with a large bunch of very talented people – thanks, guys!

With special thanks to Angelika Höger for the invitation.

In June it was time, once more, to help out with the Bielefeld Kunst und Kultur im Karee, where several shops and galleries open their doors for special events. I performed an ambient piece with the artist and musician, Angelika Höger over the course of the whole day (me: guitar; Angelika: violin – see the image and short video below) to accompany an exhibition of Angelika’s sculptural work in upcycling fashion shop, Tragbar on Bielefeld’s beautiful Ravensberger Strasse. A lovely time was had by all!

With special thanks to shop proprietor, Katrin Stallmann for being an excellent host!

Two new videos are now on my Current Work page.

These are edits taken from the recent performance I gave in the Altstädter Nicolaikirche, Bielefeld, while supporting Manu Delago. See the videos here

A few shots and bits of video from my latest concert with clarinettist, Shabnam Parvaresh, in the old mill near Warendorf: home of artist, Klaus Seliger. A great night was had by all!

More details here on Klaus’ blog page.