Cologne. A room.
Over time I collected quite a bunch of instruments. There are strings to be plucked and wooden sticks to blow air into, things to be hit and things to be shaken, millions of ways to set some kind of material into motion, to make another resonate with sound. If people ask me which was the first one I picked up, I tell them it was the recorder. But actually, if I want to be precise, there was another one before.
In fact, the first cords I ever made vibrate were right in my throat, the first body I made resonate my own. Before I could even think of ways to hold or play another instrument, I had already discovered I was equipped with one: a voice. It still took a long time to get to know it and befriend with it. You have to go through the unsettling, dissociating experience of hearing your recorded voice for the first time, and believe me, you won't like it. You have to face its flaws and maybe learn to use turn them into benefits.
Finally, at a time when the weight of my guitar would feel wrong in my hands and the strings of my banjo were only alienating, I sat down in a corner of my bed, stripped of all musical protheses, and decided to finally attempt to make as much use of my one very own instrument as possible.
Over some time, a little collection of purely a-capella songs evolved and is now being released into the world.
Cologne 2010 - Berlin 2012
Over time I collected quite a bunch of instruments. There are strings to be plucked and wooden sticks to blow air into, things to be hit and things to be shaken, millions of ways to set some kind of material into motion, to make another resonate with sound. If people ask me which was the first one I picked up, I tell them it was the recorder. But actually, if I want to be precise, there was another one before.
In fact, the first cords I ever made vibrate were right in my throat, the first body I made resonate my own. Before I could even think of ways to hold or play another instrument, I had already discovered I was equipped with one: a voice. It still took a long time to get to know it and befriend with it. You have to go through the unsettling, dissociating experience of hearing your recorded voice for the first time, and believe me, you won't like it. You have to face its flaws and maybe learn to use turn them into benefits.
Finally, at a time when the weight of my guitar would feel wrong in my hands and the strings of my banjo were only alienating, I sat down in a corner of my bed, stripped of all musical protheses, and decided to finally attempt to make as much use of my one very own instrument as possible.
Over some time, a little collection of purely a-capella songs evolved and is now being released into the world.
Cologne 2010 - Berlin 2012
download is free, but donations help pay my rent. if you give 5 euros, i will send you an actual postcard from some place I am visiting this month. if you give ten, that postcard will be handdrawn.
Coming up: the next postcard will come to you from a loft in Berlin. if you want to make sure to stay up to date you can sign up to my newsletter.. you'll find the subscription form as well as more info about this and other projects on the actual website. And here is the last release..
these tunes were crafted between spring 2010 and winter 2012 in Cologne. Performed and recorded, mixed and arranged by Julia Kotowski aka. entertainment for the braindead, then released a long time later as the third in a series of audio Postcards in December 2012. Released under Creative Commons License CC BY-NC-SA.
