Autor: admin

Growing up with music

My first musical memory: running and dancing around to Randy Newmans first song of his record “Randy Newman- Love Story(You and Me)”. As a child the song’s built-up cut me off my feet. With my child’s ears it sounded really wild, like a punk-rock song. Whenever I listen to the song now that memory gf wha effect it had on me makes me laugh, however I can still easily refer back the feeling of this magic moment.

The people that were close to me had an essential impact on my taste in music. I absorbed everything I heard especially from my dad and brother and dug through their music collections. Thus, my earliest influences were mainly records from Supertramp, Billy Joel, Dire Straits and a lot of classical music, later on followed by the Beatles, Giora Feidmann, Eminem, the Beastie Boys and Kings of Leon.

A while back I was told that as little child whenever I watched a movie, afterwards I always wanted to listen to the music. I It was the part which drew my attention. Movies can be a good source to discover music. My early childhood curiosity led me to actively start searching for music myself.

Throughout my childhood I collected music and made my own mixtapes which I called “Andi`s Mixxxx”, providing friends and family with my latest findings, already eager to show and share my discoveries.

However, the most valuable source finding music is whenever people show me their music, it’s a great joy for me to see their enthusiasm about the music they can get excited about. Even if the song does not exactly meet my taste, I’d still give it a try as their enthusiasm is convincing enough for me. Most of the times it would turn out to be worthwhile.

Where music can be found in my life

I can listen to music 24/7, either walking around with big headphones or tuning music with my record player. I use any moment to listen to music: on the bike, while cooking, during sports, in company with friends.

Before the Corona pandemic, I enjoyed going to concerts, festivals and clubs. It is a great loss being cut off from all the great culture we have and I wonder not without distress what negative long-term effect the pandemic will have on the cultural, musical sector.

Passioned piano player. I started playing the piano at the age of seven, after discovering a piano at a family friend’s house, making up songs while singing along about a small mouse for hours on a stretch, I asked my parents for getting piano lessons.

Record collector. Over the past three years I have increasingly invested in vinyl, buying the records that I love in hard copy. Having the music physically present is a complete different experience. Giving a specific music piece more attention through manually handling the vinyl record.

DJ-ing.

I have recently started to jock the discs myself, providing me with it is a lot of fun to experiment and pulling on the buttons 😉 If I had a DJ idol, it would be Robin Dey, a DJ mainly mixing deep house and downtempo located in Berlin. I absolutely adore his techniques, and his build-ups. His sets are extremely flowy and catchy music to dance to.

The Music I listen to.

My taste in music is very diverse. As a young girl I listen to almost all the pop and standard rock music there was and numerous soundtrack records, which gave me solid basic knowledge). I started listening to electronic music at the age of 15 being a complete addict to Ellen Alliens record „Orchestra of Bubbles”, a local Munich DJ-Duo called “Schlachthofbronx” and then soon discovering darker techno through Chris Liebing. These discoveries made me enter sub genres like ambient, minimal electronic, deep house, (hard) techno, tribal, melodic techno and downtempo.

I have always had a big interest in hip-hop, especially German hip-hop and rap. Trettmann, Kummer, Samy Deluxe, Absolute Beginner, Haiyti, Haftbefehl, Dendemann, Fatoni, Megaloh, Bilderbuch; Kraftklub, Dicht&Ergreifend and Deichkind are among those artists whose music I absolutely love.

However, records from other genres such as Alternative Rock, Singer-Songwriter, Jazz, Funk and classical music can also be found in my record collection. Genres which haven’t convinced me (yet) and probably will never appear through my reviews are (Punk-)Rock, Indie-Pop, Metal, K-Pop or Reageton 😉

Through the categories I am trying to meet people’s listening behaviour, as I have observed different habits in how people are willing to approach new music: Some people are really open into new sounds and like to explore new bands and artists, some prefer the more “convenient” way in putting on someone’s playlist which could meet their taste while others tend to listen to a few tracks over and over again. The categories “engaging with new sounds”, “being on the safe Side”, “brief inspiration”, and “playlists” will all cover these different forms of listening behaviours. I would declare electronic music as my speciality and the genre I’m most versed in, thus “a deeper dive into electronic music” will offer the possibility of discovering a diverse range of gems that electronic music provides. Lastly the category “German sounds”, as the name suggests, will only include music by German artists, thus these reviews will be written in German.

However, my main issue and a decisive reason why I review music is because I have observed the following: Through a lot of conversations with friends it has become extremely apparent, that most of them are overwhelmed with the immense access audio streaming services provide, thus they normally cannot be bothered or do not have the time and energy to properly search for new music without any references. So, they end up in the most common way by browsing through Spotify’s’ generated playlists. This development almost scares me, as users merely register what they listen to and algorithms choose what they listen to next. Artists can pay Spotify money to get included into algorithms or playlists, so only big artists and labels are able to afford this “pay-to-play-method”, which makes it difficult for small, independent artists and labels to build up a bigger audience. Us, the ones who consume the music, are not actively in control in what we listen to. The more we listen to music picked by algorithms, the harder it will be to discover something genuinely new while maintaining musical diversity.

I want to make a mark and take an active stance against this development by making small difference through my blog, giving people the possibility to receive music by someone who is very keen to be well informed, careful and critical.