Manafonistas

on life, music etc beyond mainstream

2014 4 Apr

Janek Schaefer’s night scapes and other quiet stuff

von: Michael Engelbrecht Filed under: Blog | TB | Comments off

Yesterday I had a fine interview with Janek Schaefer that can be read here, and heared, in excerpts, during my next show. He knows Brian Eno quite well, and, if I remember right Eno gave him an old drum machine. He’s currently working as a professor for sound field studies (i have to check the website), as an DJ for children and grown-ups (weddings etc.) and seems to have an immense repertoire of 90 years of dance music. He told me a lot of stories about his search for „beautiful music“, and future collaborations with William Basinski and other guys from the quiet and ambient side of musics

His  new cd, Lay-by Lullaby  invites you to take a break, pull over, and daydream as life speeds on by. The composition is his calmest yet, and is based around location recordings made in the middle of the night above the M3 motorway, right at the end of the road where JG Ballard lived, a couple of miles from Schaefer’s studio on the far west edge of London. Ballard wrote his seminal works on car culture, as the motorway was being built past the front of his house in 1973; Crash (1973), Concrete Island (1974). The 73 minute album weaves these location recordings around a series of spacious sonorities, that shimmer with analogue textures and liminal melodies that burnout in the passing headlights. The speeding traffic dopplertrails reveal fleeting passages of soporific sounds that entice you to recline, drift and fade away. An album to enjoy with your eyes closed, on repeat play until the dawn rush hour returns …

Apart from the new Janek Schaefer „night scape“, I will play some more records in my next edition of „Klanghorizonte“ on April, 12th,  by field-recording master BJ Nielsen (another trip through London, which makes even familiar places look and sound rather strange!) and Amercan singer / drone / folk artist Tara Jane O’Neil.  So these are  three records by three labels that have played an important role in my night show: TOUCH, KRANKY and 12K. There will be some more music, too, maybe from Andy Emler, Colin Vallon, or Timbre Timber. 

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