does anyone in here have any fotos, videos or recordings of my first live act on the mayday - the one with the dreaded kimono?

or any other material (”housefrau”) of this early period?

The voice of a “stewardess”? A valley of echoes? Physical Existence?

Does ECHOVALLEY leave more questions than answers to you? Or does it in fact give you a cool story? Something about technology and friendly invitations?

Tommorow, friday the 3rd of april, beginning at 8pm i will be in the oldest german dance radio show MAXIMAL by Tillmann Uhrmacher… as far as i know you can listen to the radio via internet as well…

www.sunshine-live.de/liveradio

Morgen, Freitag den 3.4.09, bin ich ab 20:00 bei Tillmann Uhrmacher in der ältesten deutschen Dance-Radiosendung Maximal bei Radio Sunshine Live!

Es werden wohl ein paar CDs verlost und natürlich wird auch ne Menge über THIRTEEN STORIES gequatscht…

My story this time is not a real story but a brief look into how creative projects can evolve…

The Story of STELLARIUM began as the album concept still was about buildings. There is a software that can make any Instrument sound like it is being played in an enviroment that the developer have “sampled” (Technically i am speaking of Impulse Response Reverb - in this case the program is called ALTIVERB) and i had this new great sounding virtual Steinway Grand Piano (by Garritan). So i wondered how it would sound to play one of the biggest Pianos in one of the most impressive ancient buildings - the Gol Gumbaz.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gol_Gumbaz

The Reverb and the detailed Sound of the Grand Piano were so inspiring that i found the main melody of STELLARIUM in about an hour of improvising. This early version of STELLARIUM was simply called “gumbaz” and didnt have any drums at all. It was just a simple but heart touching melody.

Later the concept changed into the stories concept and i came back to this melody i´d really like to have on the album. I thought what kind of story i could derive from it. I didnt want it to be about the architect or the ancient ruler that was buried there - it had nothing to do with the feeling of the melody. But i realized that without quite new technological advances (Impulse Responses and a sampled Piano with Gigabytes of Data) i wouldnt have found this melody because it was the sound that inspired me.

Some days later i read a detailed article about the LHC - the large hadron collider and the physics behind it and found it very impressive. There even was a DVD the CERN put into a magazine to show people how important the LHC is. People gladly profit from earlier technological improvements but often dont understand the neccessity to go FURTHER. And that was analog to my new piano sound: If the software programmer in the year 2000 stopped looking for something better there would not have been the great sound inspiring me. So in a way my melody stood for pioneering spirit.

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This is a pre version with a sample about the LHC that really reflected my thoughts about (technological) progress and i found that synthline easily with my head full of pioneering spirit

The only problem was that such a lot of talking was in the way of the melody and later i saw that the song didnt need any samples to work and i kept it fully instrumental. The pioneering spirit idea and the long reverb to my mind sounded like space travelling, too (i like sci-fi stuff ) and there was a picture of kai hoffmann that on the first glimpse looked like stars and planets that would really fit the cover it there was a single of STELLARIUM (its in the booklet!) So the story i always had in my mind as i was finalizing the song was the very important human attribute of “going further” combined with pictures of stars…

Another idea was to call the song ULTRA DEEP FIELD after the pictures of the hubble telescope that looked further (in space AND time) into the universe than ever before. But STELLARIUM with the combination of an old language and “stars” seemed to fit even better…