After some nagging by friends here in Berlin, I got my act together, wrapped myself into my at least 20 year old yellow tarpaulin cape and rode my bike through the wet streets of Berlin, entering the Berghain. This location, a former industrial building which shows huge amounts of concrete when you are inside, hosted the yellowlounge event: Patricia Petibon, who presented her debut album Amoureuses.
Everybody looked like we do: hovering around age 3X, not too stylish, not too mundane. A whole factory full of this kind of people. And in the middle of this peculiar crowd: a small stage with a Steinway & Sons piano. After more than an hour of recorded classical music tracks and light installations, the actual show began, split into two parts of about twenty to thirty minutes. I was quite enchanted by the way the soprano Patricia Petitbon presented her work (classical songs, some taken from operas, but mostly short songs written by composers dead and alive – most in French, many in English, and one or two in Italian). Good voice, of course, but also a charming performance that broke with some of the expectations that you might have about classical singing. I can definitely recommend the live performance – even if you have your doubts about people who can sing so loud that you (a) are vexed by the incongruence of bodily size and voice volume and (b) don’t understand what words they are supposed to sing.
Posts Tagged ‘music’
Opera voice & post-industrial Berlin.
Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008Full Metal Village – Nähe. Und Distanz.
Thursday, May 24th, 2007Nachdem der erste Versuch gescheitert ist, weil es keine Karten mehr gab, hat es gestern doch noch geklappt und wir sind in die Spätvorstellung des als Heimatfilm
untertitelten Dokumentarfilms Full Metal Village gegangen. Eine sehr gute Entscheidung, denn dieser Film ist wirklich hervorragend. Er macht genau das, was ich zu häufig bei Dokumentationen vermisse: die DokumentarfilmerInnen werden mit in den Film einbezogen. Die Gefilmten reden mit ihnen, sind darüber verunsichert, wie die Filmenden sie beziehungsweise das, was sie sagen, finden, schauen sie an und scherzen mit und über sie. Da die Filmemacherin Sung Hyung Cho genauso viel Respekt wie Interesse zeigt, öffnen sich die Menschen, ohne sich entblößen zu müssen. So entsteht eine sehr feine Balance zwischen Nähe und Distanz, eine Balance, die das Anschauen und Anhören dieses Films zu einem großartigen Erlebnis machen. Es gibt viele schöne Momente, es gibt wirklich witzige Momente, in denen das Kinopublikum mit großer Lust gelacht hat, und es gibt Momente in denen klar wird, wie die Menschen auf dem Land dazu kommen, nicht bloß konservative, sondern auch (mehr oder weniger latent) rechte Positionen einzunehmen. Und das alles tun sie in sehr intimer Weise gegenüber eine Filmemacherin, die aus Korea kommt. Und dann gibt es noch die schönen, traurigen und stillen Momente. Momente, die tiefe Sympathie für Menschen wecken, die einen Lebensstil pflegen, von dem meist so getan wird, als gäbe es ihn überhaupt nicht mehr. Alles in allem wird es schwer, diesen Film in diesem Jahr noch zu toppen. Für mich ein wichtiger Film, den ich allen nur empfehlen kann. Wer das Landleben aus eigener Anschauung kennt – und sei es auch nur als daneben stehender Bekannter – und wer das Herz im Norden trägt, die/der sollte diesen Film unbedingt und wenn irgend möglich auch auf großer Leinwand anschauen.
IMDb entry | Trailer
Holiday chansons made in Berlin.
Monday, January 30th, 2006If you like good music… go to the Hotelbar on January 31st of the wonderful year 2006. The Early Tapes will be playing. You will be enchanted by the groove of the music, the charme of the lyrics and the handsome line-up! And don’t forget to bring loads of money for merchandising goods.
Enveloping myself.
Sunday, November 27th, 2005I like to travel, but there is one major downside to traveling: noise. It is worst in airplanes. Even if the flight is just an hour long, I feel totally knocked out during the flight and probably for the following hours too. The noise inside the plane is just too much for me. In trains the noise is more subdued, depending on where one sits, depending on the train, and on the quality of the tracks. Nonetheless, after more than four hours the noise starts to nag at me, producing a certain feeeling of unrest – a feeling between being tired and being over-sensible.
More than a year ago, I read about a new generation of consumer headphones that have built-in active noise cancellation technology, which was said to reduce noise by neutralizing it with anti-noise (you should know a bit about the nature of waves to guess how this works). Since then, such a noise-canceling headphone has taken one of the highest priorities on my gadget wish-list.
A few weeks ago, after finishing some tiresome work optimizing the HTML code for a friend’s website I decided I’m in for a reward, checked the current offerings for noise canceling headphones, and decided that the Sennheiser’s PXC series is what I am looking for. After doing some price comparisons I decided to place a bid for the 250 model on eBay. I got lucky and bought the thing for 78 € including shipping.
The PXC 250 is a foldable headphone that is designed to be easily transportable. The one thing that differentiates it from other portable headphones is a stick about as thick as my thumb and about twice as long. This stick is home to two AAA batteries and (at least I would guess so) the noise-cancellation electronics. The cable from the headphone jack goes into it and another cable leads from the stick to the headphones. The stick is probably the biggest drawback to the whole thing, because one has to decide where to put it. At least it has a clip that allows attaching the stick to your belt or, as I usually do, to one of the pockets of my pants. The length of both cables is a bit less than a meter. If you’re not taller than 2.10 meters this should work for you. The headphone itself is light and comfortable to wear. It is, however, not as comfortable as my Koss Porta Pro, because the earpads exert a bit more pressure on your outer ear. This is necessary though – the pads will passively filter out the higher frequencies thus they have to fit tightly enough to not let sound pass by unobstructed. Still, after several hours of wear it is a relief to take them off for a while and massage your ears a bit.
On the stick there is a well-designed sliding button that turns on the noise cancellation. Before turning it on in a train you will hear rumbling and other lower frequency noises. After turning it on you will hear … less. The rumbling fades away to a gentler, smoother lower frequency noise. This general reduction of volume along with the smoothing has a soothing effect. The noise is definitely not gone, but it surely is less bothersome. You can use this feature without having the headphone plugged in to another device. This noise reduction is also great if you want to listen to music: you don’t need to turn the volume as high as you would have to without the noise cancellation. This makes listening to music less stressful too. Great stuff. Excellent investment.
If you turn the thing on in a silent environment you will notice a subtle hiss in the speakers. This hissing noise is, at least to me, practically inaudible in a train or a similarly noisy environment. If you want to use the headphones without the noise cancellation turned on you will be disappointed. The bass will be much to low – there seems to be some kind of loudness function associated with the noise filter. Other than that the sound quality of the PXC 250 is very good; I would say it is in the same league as the excellent Porta Pro. All in all I can definitely recommend this device. I am looking forward to test it in an airplane, but I am quite confident that it will make flying a less bothersome experience.
The only real drawback that I am feeling is that this thing will make the envelope that I build around me while traveling even less permeable. Of course I can work better and listen to music in a more relaxed manner when wearing these headphones. Nonetheless, it also lessens my contact to my surroundings. I am less approachable, won’t hear people having a conflict, won’t hear the chatter of others around me, won’t hear nice stories people might tell each other. Some chances will just pass by without being noticed. *sigh* Such is the nature of envelopment.
Wunsch erfüllt: Pfeeeeiiiiff!
Monday, November 21st, 2005Jippiehjahey! Endlich. Nach immer wieder neu unternommenen Ansätzen, Versuchen und peinlichem Rumgeatme ist es soweit: Ich kann auf den Fingern pfeifen! Ich hätte es kaum noch zu hoffen gewagt. Damit ist die Scharte ausgewetzt, die durch die mangelnde Beherrschung eines Musikinstruments geschlagen wird. Ich kann auf den Fingern pfeifen… Das war für mich seit eh und jeh eine hinreichende Bedingung zum cool und bewundernswert sein. Und jetzt gehöre ich dazu! Ich kann es kaum fassen! (Deshalb auch die vielen Ausrufezeichen.)
Wie kam es nun zu dieser bemerkenswerten Entwicklung, fragen sich vielleicht die werten Lesenden. Olli und ich haben uns darüber unterhalten, dass wir beide Looser sind, weil wir diese nahezu unerlässliche Fertigkeit nicht beherrschen. Anstatt wie sonst beim Denken dieses Gedankens mit gesenktem Haupt da zu sitzen und Trübsal zu blasen, hat mich dieses Mal der Kampfgeist gepackt. Flott griff ich also in die Tasten und googelte “auf den fingern pfeifen”. Unter den Treffern haben mir die beiden folgenden Links ausreichend Variationen des Themas geliefert, damit auch ein Pfeifstümper wie ich unter ordentlichem Gepruste und Gezische irgendwann begreift, worum es geht: Tutorial: Auf den Fingern Pfeifen? und Kurze Frage? Schnelle Antwort!
Nun sitze ich tief beglückt, allerdings mit etwas angespucktem Bildschirm und veritablem Schwindel in der Birne an meinem Schreibtisch. Hört es euch an:
Freunde, Musik, Oslo.
Tuesday, November 8th, 2005Lars Saabye Christensen ist einer meiner zeitgenössischen Lieblingsautoren. Ich mag sowohl seine Kurzgeschichten als auch die Romane, die ich bisher gelesen habe. Hier möchte ich etwas zu Yesterday schreiben, einem seiner älteren Romane. Der Held der Geschichte ist ein Junge, der mit seinen Freunden, zwei großen Jugendlieben, Eltern, Lehrern und Nachbarn aufwächst. Die Sprache ist direkt, die Geschichte weitgehend chronologisch erzählt – das Thema, das sich durch den Roman zieht, wird im Titel angekündigt: die einzelnen Kapitel und Lebensabschnitte werden mit den damals veröffentlichten Liedern und Alben der Beatles parallelisiert. Dieser schöne Aufhänger wird nicht überreizt und behält seinen Charme, auch für Leute wie mich, die bisher eher wohlgesonnene Passivhörer der Beatles sind. Die Geschichten und Lebenswege kommen einem nah, rühren an und erinnern an Episoden aus der eigenen Vergangenheit. Das Lesen dieses Buches von Saabye Christensen ist ein schönes Erlebnis, viele Bilder sind bei mir hängen geblieben und bereichern meinen Alltag an den Tagen nach Yesterday.
Rating, rating, rating.
Thursday, October 27th, 2005Finally! Today I finished rating all the appropriate tracks in my iTunes library – yay! This means I have rated more than 3600 songs. Whew. I guess have been gnawing myself through my library for a time span of about ten months or so. I did and do not rate classical music, audiobooks, and plays (which would add up to another 500 tracks). As regular readers will already know, I am tending to be a generous rater/reviewer, which gives me 440 five star ratings, 1673 four star ratings, about 200 two star ratings and just 39 single star ratings (those are the songs which I might eventually delete anyway). Now I only have to rate songs when I add them to the library – something that I will only do step by step, since the 40 GB hard disk of my PowerBook doesn’t offer much space anymore.
Being a fan.
Sunday, March 13th, 2005This weekend I had ample opportunity to hone my skills as a fan. The most challenging aspect of this endeavour was the difference between the acts that I was participating in: On Friday, a Ska-Punk concert; yesterday, Pop-Music at the German qualification for the European Song Contest.
The concert of the Skatoons took place in the Tommy Weissbecker Haus in Berlin Kreuzberg. An adequate location. There were quite a few kids there, and not few of the female population was inspired by Avril Lavigne-ness. The concert was great fun, even though several members of the Band were ill or still recovering from illness. Fast rythms, great ska-brass-blasting-sounds and a fun crew on the stage. I have to admit that my oldest friend Henning is part of the Band, along with others that I know like Inga, Tobe, and Holle, therefore I might have been slightly non-objective in my judgement. However, I had the opportunity to watch kids that knew the lyrics of the songs they played (not of the cover versions!), and they seemed to have a lot of fun, too. Buy their records, visit their website, dance to their music!
Change of subject; different scene altogether. A bunch of friends and yours truly are in the Arena in Berlin Treptow, entering the set for the European Song Contest qualification. We were cheering for Mia, a good friend of my apartment mate Olli. It was warm there too, though much less sweaty, and more heads with hair on top were present. We had excellent – the best, I would say – seats right at the side of the catwalk that belonged to the stage set, and enjoyed a perfect view on the performances. Which weren’t always that great, sadly. Nonetheless, we enjoyed the event immensely, cheered as much as we could every time Mia Aegerter was mentioned or visible on stage and hoped the best for her. Bad luck. Somebody else had more active fans voting for their star and Mia did not qualify… I liked her performance of the song Alive on stage – surely the vote has not a lot to do with her performance though. Reinhold Beckmann, the moderator, was terrible: neither funny nor clever nor sincere. The one shining light (hehe) for me was: Emma the former Spice Girl. The choreography of her dancing crew on stage was really funny, and really well done. I can’t recall much of the song, but the performace was great. What is even better: when she passed our seats I could not resist and hollered Emma!!
and received a charming smile from a real, life Spice Girl! What a day…
Oh, what a beautiful movie.
Thursday, January 13th, 2005This is not the title of one of my favorite songs by Ray Charles. But it could be said about this movie. Lars, Sybille, and yours truly enjoyed watching the story of Ray Charles’ life unfold on the screen. Listening to the great musician and watching how and where those songs were created and performed makes me wonder why I have never taken the opportunity to go to a concert of the recently deceased Ray Charles. This is not an outstanding movie, but it is very decently made, Jamie Foxx’ performance is great, and the music makes it a definite recommendation for everyone who doesn’t hate Jazz.
Ah, almost forgot it: the title is another quiz. The first person who guesses the title of the song that I hint at will be invited to a free beverage!
IMBd entry | Trailer
Swiss Guard and the Red Army.
Sunday, October 17th, 2004One of the most hilarious news since I started watching the news feed of BBC world showed up yesterday. Red Army choir performs for Pope. Check it out. I would have loved to witness that event. I am sure one could make at least three or four really interesting sociological articles based on this event. A chance I missed, to my utter regret…
Massive silence and the accordion.
Wednesday, May 12th, 2004Horst Krause plays a retiring miner, who slowly (very slowly) discoveres life after and outside the mine and his small hometown in Eastern Germany Schultze Gets The Blues. Both time and space play a major role in this movie, and they are used accordingly – if you have a problem with dialogue and action poor movies this is probably not a very attractive movie for you. If you sometimes find joy in the solitude of people and places and small moments of genuine community you will find plenty of that. Preparing Jambalya in a conservative Sachsen-Anhaltinian setting, playing something that is not Polka on the accordion, and running aground in Lousiana’s swamps all have their particular charms in this pleasantly open minded and well casted movie.
IMDb entry
Tanz in den Mai – Yoho!
Sunday, May 2nd, 2004Well, that was something. Friday night we went to the 603qm here in Darmstadt and participated in the Tanz in den Mai party. After a perfect, lazy Friday afternoon with soundchecks, sun, and an impromptu picknick with a few stray raindrops in the air the sounds of the event finally lured a few people from our post-graduate college and me to the place.
The evening opened with a live performance by Stahljustiz called Dance Baader, Dance
. First, I just perceived the performance as a somewhat blatantly weird but still funny act, but when the kidnapped victim was portraied as a person, not just a victim, the atmosphere changed for me, and I actually got involved with the performance, giving up some of my distance as an observer.
Turbulenzia, the first band to enter the stage, did not really get me on the hook. Their songs did not have a real profile, were not straight enough, and did not seem to really let loose and rock.
Pornophonique has a new fan. Too bad I missed the opportunity to buy a T-Shirt, since they don’t sell them on their website. I am no music geek, but for me their sound was fresh, funny, and not too ironic. The mixture of gameboy, acoustic guitar, and C64 sounds was a new thing for me. Covering both Britney Spears and AC/DC is cool enough, but their own songs were even better. Sad, Sad Robot already entered my mind during their soundcheck in the afternoon. Felix Hauser is the Vince Clark of the Nintendo Age, while Kai Richter successfully took the difficult route between cute boy and rock’n’roller – together they made a great team on stage. For their future gigs I envision crying girls being carried away because they totally passed out.
Die Türen from Berlin were great. I was surprised that they were playing here in Darmstadt for this party. During the soundcheck I sat with my back to the stage and did not see that they were playing, wondering where and when I heard this cool sound before, asking the waiter if he knew the name of the band which we were hearing. Well, he pointed behind me and said it was them, playing live a few meters behind me. Call me Clint. They got the crowd moving! I just love it when a band is standing on stage, all of them frontally rocking, playing their guitars, everybody singing into their mikes and giving what they got. Which was a lot. Their tracks are very danceable, their German lyrics sometimes even irritatingly good Wenn Du willst, dass alles so bleibt, steh auf. Wenn Du willst, dass alles so bleibt, klatsch in die Hände.
NDW meets breakbeat meets punkrock – great band with a website that sucks.
Und es hallt dumpf.
Sunday, March 7th, 2004Gestern habe ich nebenbei (wie man so sagt) die Echoverleihung im TV verfolgt. Man kann Götz Alsmann nur Recht geben, der im anschließenden Interview kritisierte, dass es für eine Preisverleihung unangemessen sei, andere Preisträger schlecht zu machen. Auf Preisverleihungen feiert man die Preisträger, auch wenn sie anderes machen, als man selbst. Es zeugt nicht gerade von Format, nur sich selbst und seinen eigenen künstlerischen Stil als in einem solchen Rahmen feiernswert zu behandeln.
Abgesehen davon hat es mich ja besonders gefreut, dass Wir sind Helden so hervorragend abgeschnitten haben. Es ist ja nicht so, dass ich mich nicht mehr freue, wenn eine solche Band gewinnt, die einen eigenen, nicht rein marktorientierten Stil entwickelt – insbesondere freut es mich, wenn das auch geht, ohne das die Sängerin eine “Superstar”-gerechte saubere Gesangsstimme hat. Ein Hoch auf das sich Versingen und die sich überschlagende Stimme!
Gilbert, malt and classic hits.
Monday, February 2nd, 2004A short report of Saturday Night: The Sumpf is definitely a very pub-ish pub; with aged rockers working behind the bar, a nice selection of beers and whiskies (including a “malt of the week” for € 2.70 – which was a Bushmills in our case) and a relaxed clientele between 23 and 50, most of which were probably between 27 and 35. The music was excellent and quite diverse, as Saturday was an event featuring the Nathalie Bar. Steffen and I stayed until about two o’clock, then we checked out the 603qm which was already closed. We decided to go home and get some sleep. Alas, on my way home I rode past the Schloßkeller, another location which is related to the AStA of the TU Darmstadt. Well, there I stayed late and enjoyed the usual serving of “classic hits”. Sunday was a day of sleeping, relaxation and web site actualization for the post-graduate college’s homepage.
Darmstadt, office, home.
Saturday, January 31st, 2004This weekend I will stay in Darmstadt. It has been a while since I did this the last time. It might have been during last year’s fall, and it seems to me that the weather must have been nice enough to go to the Biergarten and enjoy outdoor sociability. This weekend the program will have to be different. Much lounging in the common office of our Kolleg; tomorrow night will be spent with a few other collegiates in the Sumpf (engl. swamp or marsh) – an institution in Darmstadt’s pub landscape I was told. Perhaps I’ll report on this event. Other than that? Not much I guess. Some work on my project, perhaps an ethnographic field visit to the train station here in Darmstadt, some online gaming on the Avengers of Coramir server, perhaps a Linux install on one of the college’s machines here in our common office?
Hamburger Schule.
Saturday, January 24th, 2004Es ist doch immer wieder großartig, Jungs aus der Heimat zu hören. Heute während der Heimfahrt hab ich zum ersten Mal mit wirklicher Muße das Album “Blast Action Heroes” von den Beginnern gehört. Nicht nur der angenehm zwischen feinsinnig und krude changierende Witz ist tipp topp (am liebsten mag ich vielleicht die Zeile “dann ist mir das wie Kaffee Latte” – Hey! Ho! muß ich da rufen… ); ich mag auch das Lied über Schily und Schill mit seinem netten pseodobiografischen Versen zu zwei wirklich finsteren Gestalten unserer politischen Landschaft. Weiter so, Dicker! Ich groove mich hier durch die Zeit im ICE Abteil und hab ein ernsthaftes Lächeln auf den Lippen. So soll es sein.
Frankfurt/Oder und siebzehn Hippies.
Sunday, January 18th, 2004Endlich, lange Zeit nachdem der Film in den Kinos lief, habe ich Halbe Treppe gesehen. Der Film ist zu einem großen Teil aus improvisierten Szenen zusammengeschnitten, die Akteure haben sich lange Zeit mit dem Milieu vertraut gemacht und der Imbiß auf der halben Treppe existiert tatsächlich – all diese Aspekte, zusammen mit einer guten Kamera und hervorragenden Darstellen (wie dem großartigen Axel Prahl) verleihen dem Film eine besondere Kraft und Authentizität. Der Film ist zwar nicht sooo unglaublich super, wie ich nach all den Empfehlungen erwartet hätte, aber er ist immer noch unbedingt sehenswert. Die 17 Hippies tragen natürlich das Ihrige zu der außergewöhnlichen Atmosphäre des Films bei. Die DVD ist sehr gut produziert und beinhaltet viele interessante und gut gemachte Extras.
Marc says: the music is good.
Sunday, November 2nd, 2003There won’t be much debate about the soundtrack of Kill Bill. Even though it is unlikely that it will have as big an impact on party dance music as Pulp Fiction had, the soundtrack is very nice too (and in style similar to Pulp Fiction). Then, there is Uma Thurman, who is a good actor and, of course, extremely good-looking. The rest is more controversial: the amount of spilling of blood and cutting off of limbs in this movie is huge, and I am not sure that this actually pleases me. Some of the fighting scenes are somewhat close to Hero in the way they use color – but in my opinion Hero‘s aesthetics beat those of Tarantino’s movies by several leagues. What remains is a typical Tarantino product with some extra blood and a stylish Lucy Liu. Ah, almost forgot: you will find yourself reminded of Hable con ella in the beginning of the movie. Never knew that Tarantino is an Almodovar fan…
Could it be better?
Friday, September 5th, 2003It took me a while but now I have seen 8 Mile, directed by Curtis Hanson (who also directed Wonder Boys and L.A. Confidential) and featuring Eminem. I was positively surprised by the funny and witty dialogues. Luckily, there are no special effects and stuff like that – instead it’s a good story with good characters and, of course, lots of good music. Even if you’re not into HipHop or Eminem you could like the soundtrack. There is room for passion and some sex (‘we’ have Kim Basinger and a really gorgeous Taryn Manning in this movie). Fans of sports movies can breathe the same exhilaration they experience before and in Rocky’s final fights when Eminem enters the stage for rap battles against the bad guys. The ending is quite open and un-Hollywoodesque. I definitely recommend this movie, even if the user rating on IMDb is only 6.9 of 10. Check out the trailer.
The weekend.
Wednesday, July 2nd, 2003The trip into the Brandenburgian province was worth it. We took a train to Chorin, rode our bicycles to the Parstein lake where you can find a great spot to swim and refresh yourself in the water. *aaahhhh* Then we raced down into the valley of the river Oder and rode on the dike through the southern parts of the Nationalpark Unteres Odertal. Getting somewhat tired and we wanted to go to the closest train station after that. We went to Oderberg. And found out pretty soon that the station has been shut down a while ago :-( Well, it was only a 12km ride to Bad Freienwalde…
There is one more thing to tell you about this weekend:
Olli had his first public gig! He sang the future chartbreaker Kastanienallee in a club called Bad Kleinen. Of course, it was a great success!>