Bruno Spoerri studio visit

Bruno Spoerri (*1935) began experimenting with electronic devices 50 years ago (he mentions seeing Rolf Liebermann's piece "Les Echanges" at Expo 64 as an important moment of inspiration). First with simple, homemade effect machines, an Ondes Martenot and manipulated magnetic tapes, and later as one of the first musicians in Switzerland to own a big synthesizer system (an EMS Synthi-100) and use a computer. With a background in jazz - he has played and composed with successful jazz bands since the age of 17 - improvisation has always played a major role in his mu­sic, and as of the 1980s he began to speak of 'computer­assisted jazz'­. A trained psychologist, he was virtually self­taught as a musician and scholar of music technology. In the course of his career, Spoerri has not only given countless concerts and re­corded dozens of albums, but also forged a groundbreaking career in advertising, TV and film. Among other things, he was the inhouse composer and sound designer (before the term existed) of one of the first agencies for TV ads in Switzerland and composed the soundtracks for approx. 500 ads. Check this previous post for some of his TV ident soundtracks.

If you're a frequent reader of this blog, you know that I'm a big fan of Bruno Spoerri's work. I had the pleasure to work with him on several occasions, especially at the 2010 Shift Festival in Basel, where Bruno gave a concert and a talk and we showed a programme with film- and videoclips with his soundtracks. Here's some pictures from a recent visit at his Studio in Zurich.

After the Ondes Martenot (he had since 1965) came the EMS VCS-3 in 1970, and he still has it. He modified it: "I used a Pitch to Voltage Converter to control the VCS-3 with my Saxophone. I needed my hands to play the saxophone, so I added some sort of "presets". There are switches that gave me the approximate functionality of a Minimoog without the need to use the patch panel. I also added trimmers to the oscillators and filters with a 4-way switch, so I could change transpositions easily. I could e.g. play in a 3 voice polyphony and even reverse the voltage to play mirrored voices. But I had to control and re-tune the trimmers before each concert. Most of the time it worked, but sometimes it got horribly out of tune in the middle of a show."

The thing above the pitch to voltage converter and random generator is a home made unit to switch between the controllers saxophone, random generator and keyboard.

Bruno has a very well organised archive and has digitized most of his tapes. This is a page from the index of his archive of sounds and noises, showing recordings he made in factories for two of his great promotional records commissioned by the machine industry: Oederlin (iron foundry) and Lansing-Bagnall (fork lifts). The Lansing-Bagnall 7" was the first of Bruno's tracks popular among rare groove collectors.

Bruno is still experimenting with new technology, ever improving his unique "computer-assisted Jazz" setup. He creates/composes machines with software and hardware that leave room for improvisation (and chance). Here he showed me a composition that involves among other things Max/Msp (he's been an early adopter) a Buchla controller (not in the picture) an iPad - and a home made controller-ball inspired by Michel Waisvisz' "Hands" and Laetitia Sonami, as he told me.

Talking about Waisvisz brought us to the Crackle Box. Of course Bruno has one:

Some of Bruno Spoerri's electronic and experimental music is available through excellent compilations on Finders Keepers records. Some of his jazz band records were beautifully reissued by Sonorama.

Bruno is currently in a legal battle against Jay-Z and Timbaland because they used one of his compositions for the Lilith soundtrack from 1978 (with minimal modifications) for a track on Jay-Z's recent album without asking (he would have said yes and his phone number is on his website, would have been an easy thing). Read the story here. So, if you happen to know Jay-Z or Timbaland, please tell them to be so kind and give Bruno and Finders Keepers credits (and some decent money) for his work they re-used.

Previous Spoerri-related posts:
Irmin Schmidt (Can) and Bruno Spoerri about their collaboration
Exclusive Spoerri TV idents
Bruno's collaboration with artist Betha Sarasin
And in most of my mixes...

Betha Sarasin and Bruno Spoerri

Concrete relief for a church, 1972. I found this picture of the church itself:

Just in time for the rerelease of Bruno Spoerri's 1982 LP "AX+BY+CZ+D=0", a collaboration with artist Betha Sarasin, whose sound sculptures Spoerri used, I scanned some pics from a catalogue of Sarasin's work from 1979. Her work is mostly in the tradition of Concrete Art, which was big in Switzerland due to Max Bill's work. Sarasin's interest in geometry continued when she started to collaborate with computer scientists to realize "threedimensional trompe l’oeil drawings" and later the sound sculptures.

Here are some stills from a recording of Bruno Spoerri's performance with Sarasin's sculptures plus loads of synths:

DJ Mahssa's set from the intercontinental psychedelic dance party

DJ Mahssa set at intercontinental psychedelic dance party, Sud Basel, 2/24/2012 

I'm very happy that DJ Mahssa from Los Angeles (via Teheran) stopped in Basel on her long European tour to play at the intercontinental psychedelic dance party I recently organised. 

I'm a big fan of her (essential) Pomegranates compilation with Persian pre-revolutionary funk/pop/psych. Among many other things she's also running the US-branch of Finders Keepers Records, is a member of the B-Music collective and is about to open a shop called Mount Analog for europhile psychedelia-loving Californian connoisseurs.

She kindly let me record and now publish her smashing set of Persian, Turkish and other delights from the party. Thanks again, Mahssa!

Stream from Mixcloud or download here.

Previously: My own set from the party.

intercontinental psychedelic dance party

I'm organising a little intercontinental psychedelic dance party this friday. Let me know if you're on my corner of the world (Basel, Switzerland) and come to the party! DJ Mahssa from Los Angeles will play, who compiled the wonderful "Pomegranates" record with persian pre-revolutionary pop.

Support Finders Keepers

Finders Keepers Records helped us rediscover some of the most amazing music from the past: Pakistani synth-meets-accordion soundtracks, hungarian fuzz, Swiss musique concrète / synth jazz, Krauty cuckoos, psyched out Frenchmen, heavy heavy thai stuff and Czech fairy tale music among many other things. I wish all reissue labels worked in the same careful way, clearing all the rights, adding extensive liner notes and amazing cover art.

Now Finders Keepers is in danger after a fire during the London riots destroyed 90% of their stock, as well as the stock of about 100 other independent labels, interrupting their income immediately.
Help them recover by buying Mp3s through their Mp3 store, T-Shirts and the series of special CDs they set up with the help of Jarvis Cocker, Gruff Rhys, Demdike Stare and many others.
I had the pleasure to work with Andy Votel and Doug Shipton  from Finder Keepers in the past - they are also extremely nice people. So, please go buy some Mp3s, ok?

The two clips below were created for an event in the context of the essential FK-release Pomegranates with pre-revolution pop from Persia/Iran.

TV ident month: Commercial break & geometric germans

Northern German commercial break announcement, 70s.

We interrupt our programme for the following ad:

I'm organising a little soirée with some of my favorite DJs. Please drop by if you're in our corner of the world.

Now back to our programme, to the WDR channel, West Germany:



What's on? Oh, it's Educational TV (probably on geometry).