Senhor Coconut (Flanger) I-view

Abbiamo fatto qualche domanda al simpatico trasformista Uwe Schmidt (aka Atom Heart, aka Señor Coconut, aka Geeez 'n' Gosh, aka Lassigue Bendthaus, aka etc...) in occasione dell'uscita del nuovo disco firmato Flanger, progetto di cui è gamba assieme a Burnt Friedmann. Questo Spirituals pesca da un'immaginario sonoro che Uwe -co-fondatore del MACOS- ama definire "pre-jazz", ovvero un affastellato cosmo di sonorità che vanno dallo swing al be bop passando per i tabarin jazz di Marsiglia. Pochi sono i termini di paragone di questo disco forse paragonabile ad esperimenti più che risuciti come quello della Matthew Herbert Big Band-, su cui avremo modo di ritornare in futuro. L'invito all'ascolto appare quantomeno scontato. Flanger "Spirituals" (Nonplace, Audioglobe) Tracklisting 01.Funeral March 02.Crime In The Pale Moonlight 03.How Long Is The Wrong Way? 04.Down The River 05.Music Is Our Secret Code 06.Tiny Tina 07.Hope To Hear Back Soon Honey 08.Peninsula 09.In My Car (single version) 10.In My Car (bolt mix) 11.How Long Is The Wrong Way? (extended) 12.Crime In the Pale Moonlight (short version)

Hi... ehm I'm not sure of your name... Senhor Schmidt? "Don Atom" please!

Anyway how are you? At the moment i am on tour with the "flanger" project. This means travelling...different cities every day and trying to relax in the free space that travelling gives you. Beside that it's been a very busy year which brought lots of good and rather interesting music.

Why do like changing identities? Any purpose trascending the artistic one? It all began as a purely functional method. Back in 1990 it was the only way to work with different record companies at the same time...you had to change the artist name if you wanted to release music through parallel sources. After a while i realized that it had become a really nice mechanism to avoid artistic stagnation. I usually work in a parallel manner on many things at the same time: music, artwork, lyrics, etc. and this allows me to keep producing without ever facing the frustrating experience of running out of ideas and practice. Throughout the years then i realized that this method made me think in musical universes when thinking about music. I suddenly started to create fictive creators of music, i admit, in a kind of schizophrenic manner. Changing identities is my method of creating different musical universes, which, in itself is a pretty interesting exercise and brings surprising results to me. don't know if there is another purpose besides that....if there is, i can't see it...

Let us speak of your Spirituals -great album, compliments!-... Hey that funeral march reminds me a videoclip by Kid Koala - Basin Street Blues if I remember well-... with that strange funeral procession... Thanks for the compliments! Actually the working title of the funeral march used to be ,march to the funeral of the united states of america", but we found it a bit tool political in the end. However then it kind of frightened me, when the new orleans flooding disaster happened, because this was just the event we could have created this song for. I think funeral marches will be in fashion very soon again J

Just out of curiosity... as I remember one videoclip with your music directed by Dirk Holzberg (Options In the Fire?), which hit my mind... are you planning any collaboration with Mr.Holzberg? What was the meaning of that astonishing video? About the meaning i think you should ask dirk himself. I really can't speak for his work. I have to say though that i also liked the video back then. As for collaborations, there are none in planning at the moment. I have lost touch a bit with him throughout the last couple of years to be honest.

So Music Is Your Secret Code... Any key for decrypting??? There are levels of decrypting of course. For you our secret code May not be that interesting...therefor we have created a level you are able to decode and which will give you sufficient satisfaction. There is of course the musical code itself, but also the interpersonal code of those Creating it. It's a net of references and meta-musical meanings. For the listener, in my opinion at least, this "can" be interesting, but i am sure it all makes perfectly sense without knowing about it.

You explored a lot of music languages and styles... do you think there any limits in nowadays music technology? or do you think that music business is still imposing limits to music evolution? I am convinced that musical possibilities are endless these days. Only limit is our individual and cultural restrictions. This is of course true today more than it used to be years ago. Digital technology gives you incredible possibilities and lets you blend simulation and reality in an almost frightening way. Music business is of course a restricting moment if you decide to involve it into your creative decissions, something i usually don't do. unfortunately just too many think about business first and this is why todays music is such a boring experience when looking at the general tendencies. I have always tried to leave music business as far from me as possible, without becoming the typical "artist" kind of character which will be abused by the music biz surrounding you..

What about your partner-in-art-crime, Friedmann? He is at my side at the moment, sharing the tour experience with me. He's busy too, working on collaborations of some sorts. Details though i don't know and you may rather ask him yourself.

So, how long is the wrong way??? :) It depends. In the worst case it is eternal.

Sorry if I bother you... did anyone say that track 7 -hope to hear back soon, honey- is the perfect soundtrack for a rich breakfast before a working day??? o.k., i gonna check it out and will listen to it in such situation...

I'm just rehearing Spirituals... Woooh what a great fuzzy sound!!!! Any specific source of inspiration??? Inspiration was indeed a musical and in general a historical moment which i usually tend to call "pre-jazz". Let's say the years 1900-1930. at that time the recording of music still had purely documentary reasons and the entire approach to "recording" and therefor music itself used to be VERY different from nowadays approach. Basically music and culture itself had a different sensibility. Not only how instruments were played, but also the content of the lyrics just to name one more example.. i listen a lot to music from that area and proposed the "spirituals" idea to bernd who really liked it.

When in Italy for some live gigs????
13.10.05 trieste
14.10.05 bologna (link)
15.10.05 roma (brancaleone)

You were the co-founder of MACOS? Do you wanna speak to our readers about this great initiative? How's things about copyright in your viewpoint??? To be honest, "macos" doesn´t exist anymore. I terminated that project about 6 years ago. In general that entire copyright topic doesn´t interest me very much. It stopped interesting me 6 years ago. The same is true for my interest in "sampling", which in my opinion stopped to exist at a certain point of technological development. Another thing that happened with "macos" was, that it was created in order to give us artists a certain free space to explore things, instead of a new set of rules and laws. All of a sudden then i realized that people, instead of accepting a new, open system of dealing with that topic, asked for a new set of rules and i found that really annoying. I mean, "macos" never had anything to do with an "anti-copyright" idea or similar things, yet it slowly slipped into such a context which i do not consider my area really.

greetings, don atom