Thanks to Christiane Böhnke-Geisse and the partial easing of pandemic restrictions we could play a Tonic Train concert at the old (soon to be replaced) Schwere Reiter hall during our residency stay at Villa Waldberta.
The performance also doubled up as a launch event for our first CD, published on the Antenna Non Grata label.
For the second part of the concert we invited our Munich friends Gunter Pretzel on viola and Gunnar Geisse on laptop guitar to join us for a quartet.
March 2, 2015 by Mobile Radio | Comments Off on MUNICH March 2015
Tonic Train is the name of our longstanding music duo, and in the beginning of March we started a tour with our friend and collaborator Haco in Munich’s signalraum.
Sarah, Haco & Knut (photo: Horst Konietzny)
To fill an evening’s programme we decided to play three sets: a Tonic Train duo, a Haco solo and as our trio called Mobile Radio Band. The day after the performance we spent recording in the former brewery cellar as a trio with a view to a possible CD release.
February 8, 2012 by Mobile Radio | Comments Off on MUNICH February 2012
The team at Lothringer13 invited us for a concert at their gallery as part of their Noisy13 series. On this visit, due to problems with residential neighbours, the audience was gathered together and escorted to a different space – a somewhat uninviting room in the basement of a huge art space behind the shopfront gallery. It was a small concrete box with the classic rock band rehearsal room fragrance. In the end, it turned out very well and we put the budget PA system through its paces. We positioned the audience all around us and a few of them were close friends, which produced an intimate atmosphere. Our most loyal supporter was there, and our sounds triggered a reverie in which she travelled off somewhere interesting in her mind. We were happy that we were able to open up such a space for her. Munich is always a special place for our music…
The after show discussions are intense
The recording you can hear above is a mix of our own mixer output recording and a binaural room recording by Michael Kurz.
January 27, 2012 by Mobile Radio | Comments Off on MUNICH January 2012
The Munich improvisers ensemble ICI invited us as guests to take part in their week-long festival: ICI Konzepte & Improvisationen at the venue Schwere Reiter (Heavy Riders).
We visited on the Thursday evening to watch the fun – GEWÜRFELTE STÜCKE (dice-throw pieces). The evening was split into two groups of musicians; each member played within a set of 6 rules in a series of pieces with varied instructions. The audience were invited to either throw the dice randomly or select specific numbers: to dictate which rule each musician should play, and for how long
We joined in on the Friday evening – FREUNDLICHE ÜBERNAHME (friendly takeover). The first half was based around a composed new music piece performed by the ‘piano possibile’ ensemble. It was played five times over with pauses in between, accompanied by free improvisation from the rest of us. The second half was a group improvisation along with the Portuguese singer Mafalda de Lemos. Photos by Christian Schallert
July 9, 2011 by Mobile Radio | Comments Off on MUNICH July 2011
We travel to Munich to play at a special house concert in honour of our great protagonist Yvonne Schwemer-Scheddin. (She’s the kind of person who sprinkles a little cultural magic dust wherever she goes.)
Yvonne introduces the line-up of artists for the evening. We play a trio with Gunter Pretzel on viola. Afterward the event Yvonne reports:
“Despite thunder, rain curtains etc. it was just lovely. One person was afraid of getting another Hörsturz (acute hearing loss), some found it gewöhnungsbedürftig (needed getting used to), but mostly they considered it as very interesting and were glad to have been exposed to new music. So together we did our small job to shake people out of complacency…..”
Knut and Yvonne’s daughter Jeannine helping fix up the bronze drumhead of Limpe Fuchs for a performance with Ulrike Stoltz in Yvonne’s resonant stairwell. The construction looks fairly precarious, but you have every confidence in Limpe as she charges ahead, and creates amazing instruments as a result
Limpe performs on her ‘row of stones’ with Ulrike reading from her own texts. At the end of the evening Sarah joined the duo with a little electronic device and together we performed a dynamic and surprising impromptu improvisation. It seemed to wrap the party up somehow in an unusual atmosphere, the audience were delightfully mellow as the evening closed
October 29, 2008 by Mobile Radio | Comments Off on MUNICH October 2008
The Bosch Experience played at the t-u-b-e Klanggalerie and Sarah and Knut played a trio with Gunter Pretzel at Galerie Dagmar Behringer
Click on the bottom of a slideshow picture if you want to pause it
Our set-up for the trio at the gallery
Knut and Gunter soundcheck. It turned out to be a very nice concert
How does this work?
Spot the mistake. One of these buildings is an actual church. We stumbled across this amazing display of public art on a day out
Here you can see the simulated church in the foreground (below Munich stadium), and the ancient church hiding in the trees on the right
We stopped off at this hill to catch sight of the alps, as there was a föhn which produces the optical illusion of zooming the alps in to the edge of the city. Munich shows itself to be tidy and flat. It also has a beautiful wild river running through the centre of it
t-u-b-e Klanggalerie
Tuba in the t-u-b-e
Soundchecking. Perhaps time for a little background. Børre (tuba) is a masterful Nowegian musician, member of No Spaghetti Edition, No, Gutvik, Circulasione Totale Orchestra, My Midnight Creeps, and bardal caminada mølstad trio. Gunter (viola) is a member of the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra, Debussy-Trio München, and he has a solo project called peltzer-pv. He works alongside Michael in a duo called Violet Cab. Michael (live processing) has a rich history in electronic music and computing. In 1973 he was a member of the group Amon Düül II and from the mid 70s ’til the mid 90s he developed sofware and hardware for music computing. He currently works as a music producer at his studio Plan Blue
Trying out various speaker combinations with the excellent surround-sound system
November 24, 2007 by Mobile Radio | Comments Off on MUNICH November 2007
We are invited to give a circuit-bending workshop as part of the festival A=V *AUDIBLEIMAGE=VISIBLESOUND* run by Natalia Borissova
We decide to focus entirely on radio hacking in the workshop – turning old radios into electronic instruments
A parallel workshop was run by Andrey Smirnov and Givan Bela (pictured standing) concentrating on many uses of theremin sensors in combination with self-programmed Max patches
The soldering table saw plenty of frantic action, as the participants made full use of the little time available to get their wonderful instruments performance-ready
When needs must – a bit of gaffer tape always works wonders
The variety of sounds produced by the different radios, and the unique approaches to instrument design made for a rich outcome
After two evenings of rehearsal, the Munich RadioHacking Orchestra was ready for its premier to an appreciative audience. Particularly impressive was the anonymous woman who chortled throughout the half-hour set. She grasped a truth – a lot of the sounds are hilarious
March 11, 2007 by Mobile Radio | Comments Off on MUNICH March 2007
We were asked to perform in Munich at an event in the darkly historical building of the Haus der Kunst. We took the opportunity to stay longer and catch up with our good friends in the area, from our homely base in Planegg.
For the Grosse Kunstausstellung end-of-show celebration in the Haus der Kunst we choose to perform as a trio with the other performer Gunter Pretzel, a viola player from the Munich Philharmonic. We have previously played together in other combinations in the studio and as contrasting elements in an ambitious conceptual piece, but this was the first time we dircetly combined our improvised sounds in a live setting. It was enjoyable and and worked very well, delighting some of the unsuspecting audience and horrifying others. Photo by Christian Schallert
July 28, 2006 by Mobile Radio | Comments Off on MUNICH July 2006
Back in Munich at the energetic Yvonne’s to prepare for her house concert to end all house concerts
We played as Tonic Train in Yvonne Schwemer Scheddin’s garage. Also present are Gunter Pretzel on amplified viola in the super-resonant bathroom, and Judith Egger on objects, light and smoke in the garden shed. 70 well fed & watered guests sample the Experimental Garage-Bath-Shed Concert
May 29, 2006 by Mobile Radio | Comments Off on MUNICH May 2006
We went Munich to take part in Anselm Caminada’s project Short Frites at the underpass venue ZKMax
The band: Anselm Caminada, Judith Egger, Børre Mølstad and Sarah Washington
The engineer & feedback meister Knut Aufermann
We took the opportunity to do a recording session at Plan Blue with our sometime collaborators Gunter Pretzel and Michael Feller. Happily, Børre Mølstad was able to join us before his flight back to Norway and…….
The Bosch Experience was born (I didn’t want to let Børre go to the airport!)
