Clutching the short straw

I am pleased to announce that the next issue of “Böse Geschichten” will feature a full-page spread of one of my shots. “Böse Geschichten” is published by Charon Verlag, whose main product, “Schlagzeilen”, is Germany’s best selling BDSM magazine and is partnered with Sklavenzentrale, the largest “alternative lifestyle” community in DACH with almost 145.000 registered users.

On another note, I just realized there’s a project I’ve never plugged here and it’s a damned shame, so let’s fix that…

Since some three years ago I’ve been working on an automated radio station using Last.fm, painstakingly adding tracks to it one by one in order to create something like the online equivalent of my live DJ sessions: a moody, atmospheric, slow and/or melancholic mixture of dark ambient, jazz, torch songs, oldies, trip hop, french chanson, southern gothic, soundtracks and any other stuff that conveys those moods for me regardless of genre.

Now, the thing is that you have control over the contents of the library but not over the order in which they are played, which has the advantage of giving the listener a different selection every time instead of making them listen to the same playlist over and over, but also has the risk of making everything sound like an inconsistent mess. To avoid this I’ve been fine tuning the song database constantly during all this time, not only by adding new tracks regularly (there are around 1000 at this time) but also by removing the ones that I believed didn’t fit so well on second thought.

Of course, there will always be times that the very randomness of the station’s nature makes for some weird transitions (say, like Bobby Vinton following Atrium Carceri or Massive Attack playing right after a Johnny Cash track; those things can happen!), but all in all I believe I’ve really managed to create a very fluid listening experience, with no nasty surprises or runs for the “skip” button.

The bad news is you’ll only be able to listen to it if you’re in Germany, the UK or the USA, as Last.fm decided to make listening to radio stations a “subscriber only” feature in the rest of the world. They really screwed my homies back over in Spain with this one.

If you want to try it out, dim the lights, grab yourself a pack of smokes, fill a glass with ice and your poison of choice, click the link below, sit back and enjoy:

Seeing as everyone and their mother has a Facebook page for their stuff, I figured it was about time to create one for mine. Support the cause, become a fan and please suggest it to those people in your contacts whom you think might be interested!

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Chaospiral-Studios/109367249090103

Guess who’s back! Anybody left out there?

It’s been three years since I last recorded anything, but ever since I left photography aside I had been feeling the need to go back to making music. It always works like that: I stop doing something and I have to do something else to keep my sanity. So some months ago I started getting my act back together, experimenting, writing new stuff and exploring new directions from where I had left off. Now I can proudly say that the first step has been taken and I have something real and solid in my hands again:

Trip hop, ambient, audio collage, nicotine, some hip hop, lots of samples and a few words: that is basically “The night watch”, the debut demo album from my new solo project, Winter Trees Stand Naked. It was written and recorded in only three weeks for the 2010 RPM Challenge, so if you’re going to bitch about sound quality (it’s not even properly mastered, just a bit compressed and maximized) or about the songs being too short, put your talent where your mouth is and prove you can do better ;P Now seriously, I think what really matters more here is the fact that this challenge has accomplished what it was meant to: to give me that kick in the ass I needed to get moving and get something done again.

Although this may appear quite different from almost anything I’ve done before, there is still of course some relation to my previous projects: the atmospheres and sample collages of the late Morpheus can definitively be heard in some places, I’ve used trip hop rhythms before in some Chaos Condensed tracks and, of course, in some ways spoken word is not so different from hip hop… In fact, I don’t see it at all as a rupture with my past, but simply as the continuation of that path I set foot on years ago: the one less travelled by. And I must say I’m really excited about what I’m seeing ahead!

But enough with the chatter: click here or on the cover above to download the album (35MB, 256kbps mp3, 10 tracks, 19 minutes). Of course, as per the rules of the RPM Challenge, none of the stuff I had been working on before February has been included here, so I still have a bunch of tracks that will probably find their way to the second record, whenever that may happen.

The future is now. Looks like it’s time to add another section to Chaospiral Studios!

A couple of weeks ago we made a photo trip to the famous Beelitz-Heilstätten complex, in the outskirts of Potsdam. I didn’t bring any cameras along because I didn’t intend to shoot anything, but a good opportunity showed up and I decided to take a stab at a couple of shots just for the sake of it using my darlin’s awesome Olympus OM-2. I must say that I’m pretty happy with this one, light leak and all!

Hope you enjoy it after all these months without any updates, but you’d be well advised not to sit around waiting for more for the moment. I’m still not exactly feeling the urge to resume my photographic activity just yet :)

On the other hand, I’m happy to share that I’ve been working on some tracks for the last weeks and it’s quite possible that they’ll end up amounting to a full album in the near future. Now, if I could only find a good name for this project… “Morpheus” just doesn’t do it for me anymore.

So, yeah… As I mentioned in the previous post, I’ve decided to put my all photographic activity on an indefinite hold. I have aborted the “Wunderkammer” series because I don’t think I’m achieving the results I wanted, but that’s only the symptom of a deeper problem. Or rather two:

One, I feel exhausted. Jaded. Dried up. I feel like I’ve said everything I wanted to say when I started doing collages, shooting and striving to communicate something, and that right now I’m only going through the motions. I’m not exploring anymore, but at the same time I don’t really know if there’s anything else I want to express. It’s as if all this was only the prelude, the learning stages for something else. During all this time I’ve been shooting I’ve moved towards something, creating a kind of a personal style in the way, something hinted at but still too inconsistent. I now look at all my work and, with few exceptions, see it as steps towards that, but with no actual achievements; as if I was defining the elements, but not creating the works themselves yet. Maybe it’s time to just let it steep, to assimilate everything I’ve done all these years and see what comes out of it after some time.

Two, money. I simply can’t afford it anymore, not for now. It’s bleeding me to death because doing what I do implies spending money in every stage, from buying film to printing a photo, from purchasing wallpaper and atrezzo to lights, paper or chemicals. I’ve managed to turn some weaknesses into strengths (I don’t need “proper” lighting for what I do, for example; neither do I require a space-age tripod; and so on), but right now I’m so broke I can’t even have prints of my own shots. The most I can do with my crap scanner is order a 20x30cm print at some digital lab, which to someone who got into this because he loved to do everything using his own hands, simply does not cut it. No money for prints leads to no possibility of exhibitions, which leads to no exposure, which leads to no money for prints. Vicious circle.

So that’s it. I’m hanging my hat for now. I don’t know what I’m going to do next, if I do something, or when I will start shooting again, or if I even will. If I do, I don’t know if I will show it. I don’t know anything and that’s what it’s all about: starting anew, with no intention and the least expectations possible… but not a tabula rasa, as I intend to carry everything I’ve learnt and that has made me what I am now with me.

Thanks to all who cared and helped, and hope to find you all somewhere along the way.

Cheers!

This Sunday, November 9, I will be present at the Duncker Club‘s monthly Dark Market, selling photo prints, books, framed photos, postcards and other fancy stuff. If you’re in Berlin, drop by, say hi and take a look!

Some news for a change… Since a couple of days ago, my albums “Babylon” and “Elohim” and Chaos Condensed’s “Cantus Post Machina” can be downloaded for free under a NC-BY-SA Creative Commons license. Of course, physical CDs are still available if you want to own the object itself, but I think releasing these works into the open is something that I should have done a long time ago.

The artwork for “Babylon” and “Elohim” is not free for distribution as I don’t own the rights to it, but you can check it out at Ricardo Marichal’s site, http://www.hablagarmin.com.

The "Rebis" deck is now available in a single volume at Blurb.com, in both hard- and softcover versions! 30 pages, 20×25 cm, beautifully printed thick semi-matte paper.

This deck, created as an accompaniment for my project Morpheus’ last album (which can be downloaded for free at www.chaospiral-studios.net under the Morpheus Discography section), was my first photographic endeavour. It was made entirely by hand with traditional darkroom techniques and it took me more than a year to complete.

Up until now, it was only available as individual 13x18cm prints, but now you have the chance of enjoying them all together in a single book for a mere €29,90 (hardcover) or €19,90 (softcover). Grab it while it’s still hot!

Some time ago my flatbed scanner died, thus impossibilitating me from uploading print scans. Now my negative scanner has gone to hell too… I’m afraid this means I won’t be able to upload anything for some time, at least until I get a new scanner or can get access to one. No, I’m not buying a digital camera.

I will continue working in the meantime, so when everything’s fixed you’ll probably get a huge update. Until then I’ll be lurking around, checking you out and preparing the edition of the “Rebis” deck book which will come out this week. Take care!