An island.
A room to myself for seven days, far from everything, detached from motorized traffic, from city noises, from the entire world. The only sounds being the sea and its boats, horse carriages and birds in the heath.
I spend the days climbing over rocks and dry bones of sea gulls, collecting flint stones and shimmering shells of dead beetles, lost in thought about how they are all tiny traces of lived life, discarded and left there to dry and weather, just as a song is always a piece of slough, slipped off the moment it's written and left as a trace, a piece of the past being cast into some kind of graspable artefact.
But the instruments I brought remain silent for most of the time. While I had hoped that the peace of an island would give my wry mind enough space to unwind, instead it feels muffled and all that it spits out are fragments, loose thoughts and musical miniatures that I scatter across my apartment‘s floor like the flint stones and shells I brought home.
I‘m not really there. Not really anywhere at all.
Well, these are the few sounds I managed to harvest. A sense of absentmindedness. A peace. A yearning. The sea and the gulls.
Hiddensee, August 2010
Very special thanks to the guys from aaahh records who sent me to the island in the first place.
it was their idea to ship me to the coast and give me a chance to let some new sounds ripen..
A room to myself for seven days, far from everything, detached from motorized traffic, from city noises, from the entire world. The only sounds being the sea and its boats, horse carriages and birds in the heath.
I spend the days climbing over rocks and dry bones of sea gulls, collecting flint stones and shimmering shells of dead beetles, lost in thought about how they are all tiny traces of lived life, discarded and left there to dry and weather, just as a song is always a piece of slough, slipped off the moment it's written and left as a trace, a piece of the past being cast into some kind of graspable artefact.
But the instruments I brought remain silent for most of the time. While I had hoped that the peace of an island would give my wry mind enough space to unwind, instead it feels muffled and all that it spits out are fragments, loose thoughts and musical miniatures that I scatter across my apartment‘s floor like the flint stones and shells I brought home.
I‘m not really there. Not really anywhere at all.
Well, these are the few sounds I managed to harvest. A sense of absentmindedness. A peace. A yearning. The sea and the gulls.
Hiddensee, August 2010
Very special thanks to the guys from aaahh records who sent me to the island in the first place.
it was their idea to ship me to the coast and give me a chance to let some new sounds ripen..
01 BLEACHED BONES
02 SOLITUDE
03 THE DREAM
04 THE LAST DAY
last night I had the same old dream again: everything was coming to an end; the trees were all trembling and smoke filled the air and you looked so frightened
but I didn't care
and when I did my last breath I still wondered what they were making such a fuss about. I heard thunder rolling and screams of despair and all hell broke loose;
I still didn't care
and now that I'm awake again and breathing and realize that all is still alive,
despite all this beauty, whatever I do, I silently wish for that dream to come true
I still didn't care
and now that I'm awake again and breathing and realize that all is still alive,
despite all this beauty, whatever I do, I silently wish for that dream to come true
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 (there are a few..). if you give ten, that postcard will be handdrawn.
Coming up: the next postcard will come to you from a room with a piano in istanbul. 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
these tunes were crafted in early August 2010 on the island Hiddensee on Germany's Baltic coast. Performed and recorded, mixed and arranged by Julia Kotowski aka. entertainment for the braindead, then released a long time later as the first in a series of audio Postcards in September 2012. Released under Creative Commons License CC BY-NC-SA.
