Coony

Since I was a little kid I was drenched in music,all kinds of music.Ranging from Pop,Classic Rock, Soul, R&B, Disco to Jazz, Folk and popular Electronic music.I remember really being fascinated by the track "Popcorn" (Gershon Kingsley) covered by Anarchic System and this was the first single I bought.Then I discovered those fantastic movie soundtracks by Ennio Morricone, JMJ's "Oxygene" & "Equinoxe", Pink Floyd, Klaus Shulze, Tangerine Dream and last but not least Kraftwerk with their wonderous "Radioactivity".This was all kind of groundbreaking music for the era, not really mainstream but extremely popular.All those Krautrock, Spacerock and Electronic sounds were widely heard, even by a then 8 years old little boy.This is how and why I very soon focussed on more leftfield and innovative musical styles with a particular interest for electronics which provided me with fascinating and unheard sounds. By then I was still a bit young to enjoy and understand the psychedelic and psycho-acoustic vertues of music, conciously that is! In my opinion there is good music in every genre, as long as it speaks to you, makes you think, evokes some feelings or emotions, transports you in another time or another place. I like when music has some cinematic, soothing or uplifting, mysterious and poetic, elevating and sensual qualities.Those are more likely to be found in what I would define as Avant-Garde: be it popular or experimental, retro or futuristic; be it organic, electro-acoustic, analog or digital...it's all about sound, physical vibrations one can feel and experience. I proceeded with my musical education and explorations thru the 80s with Synth Pop, New Wave, No Wave, Neue Deutsche Welle, Electro, Punk Funk, Industrial, EBM, Reggae-Dub, World music, Acid House and early Techno.By the end of the 80s the time for me had come to express myself musically and to create my own sounds so I bought my first synth (a Roland D20).I never learned about the theory of music and composition or even how to play an (electronic) instrument but over the years I had developped a good "ear" and I was soon able to squeeze some interesting (to me, at least) little tracks out of that relatively unexpressive, cold and rigid D20... Then came the whole Ambient Dub, Trance, Electronica scene with The Orb,The Irresistible Force/Mixmaster Morris, Pete Namlook, FSOL, Liquid Air, Bill Laswell,Boards of Canada, Autechre, Aphex Twin, System7, Underworld... Of course, a D20 was not enough to create the sounds I had in mind so I decided to set up a home studio and I bought a 16 channel Mackie console (still in use), an Ensoniq DP4 digital sound processor, a Roland Juno 106, a Fender Rhodes 73 suitcase piano, a Roland R8 drummachine and the ubiquitous Atari computer as sequencer. Thru the years I frequently changed gear and explored different sonic territories with the Korg MS20, PS900, Poly800, ER1MKII, ES1MKII, MicroKorg, Yamaha CS10, CS15, CS2X, Roland RS09, SH2000, JX3P, Juno 106, W30, TR606, TR808, TR727, Space Echo RE201, Moog Opus3, Little Phatty, MF-102 Ring modulator, MF-107 Freqbox, CP-251 CV processor, Etherwave Theremin, JEN SX1000, Kurzweil K2000, Novation BassStation rack & kbd, Alesis HR16, Micron, BOSS SE50, PC2 percussion synth, EH vintage Small Stone, The Worm, Coron JFM100 jet flanger filter matrix, Ibanez vintage Double Sound Fuzz, Dunlop GCB95 wah, Evans Sound Creator ES5 tape delay, Fulltone Tube Tape Echo, Maxon AD999 analog delay, MFB 502 drumcomputer, SynthII, Filterbox, Oberheim OB12, Multivox MX202, Waldorf MicroQ, Blofeld and last but not the least, the Cwejman S1 MKII analog semi-modular. Back in the 90s I had a pretty straight forward production technique: running simple sequenced drums (samples and/or drum machines) and sequenced basslines/chords on MIDI synths, playing live on top of that with non MIDI stuff ( old analogue synths or electric piano) and live fx mixing.Sometimes I even mixed in some sound sources from CD or vinyl.The whole lot was recorded in real time straight onto stereo tape with a Nakamichi standard hi-fi tape recorder.This gives to the tracks I made then a rather live,improvised, lo-fi feel which is quite nice.Lots of tracks of that era cannot be published here because they contain identifiable sounds or even complete tracks from other artists(early Kraftwerk, Neu!, Suns of Arqa...) for which I don't have clearence, some kind of unofficial remixes... If you would like to hear those, please let me know. Most of those tracks had vertical dynamics with use of drumloops and patterns and common structures (drums/bass/pads/melody/fx). Unfortunatly, for financial reasons and with the lack of space, I had to part with lots of my beloved analog gear and went for the almost full digital solution on a PC with soundcard and software.This solved my space problem but not the financial one as decent software, enough computer power and memory to cope with it was quite expensive back in the late 90s.This combined with a lack of time to spend on making music led to very few productions.At that time I also shared my record collection build up over 35 years and my love of music as a DJ under the moniker "Mr.Coony", playing Jazz, Funk & Easy Listening in sunny parks; Ambient, Dub and soft Electronica in dark & smokey chill-out rooms; Exotica & Latin in cheesy tea-rooms on lazy sunday afternoons and Minimal-Ambient house, DigiDub & Psychedelia in trendy bars. After the DJ-ing intermezzo I started making music again. The tracks I made then are based on software sound generators of own design (using a platform by a famous german software developper) in combination with external analog treatments and have more horizontal dynamics; in an attempt to obtain more drone-like compositions thru improvisational multi tracking.This leads me and the listener to those long, cosmic journeys that are "Nebula" and "Gaseous clouds"...straight into the future of Human music with the help of machines and into the past of the Universe. The future for my music would be with the inclusion of organic, electronic and electro-acoustic sound sources to blend with digital in a perfectly balanced sonic bliss. Also, my growing interest for modular synthesizer systems tends to forward my compositions to more abstract sonic fields, creating what I would call "Virtual Concrete", thus reconciling abstraction with the tangible. Always keeping the immediacy, imperfection, humanity and uniqueness of instantaneous, sonic, Polaroïd snapshots. Stay tuned!