AG Geige

A week after I had seen Frank Bretschneider perform at the former GDR broadcasting studios in Berlin (see this post) I found an LP, Trickbeat, of his former band AG Geige by chance. It was recorded only a few weeks before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. AG Geige was part of the GDR cassette tape subculture, but somehow found their way into Lutz Schramm's niche programme of the state youth broadcasting station DT64. This lead to the release of the LP Trickbeat on the state-owned Amiga label. The band was based in Karl-Marx-Stadt (today: Chemnitz) and existed from 1986 to 1993. AG Geige members Olaf Bender and Frank Bretschneider later founded the Rastermusic/Raster-Noton label and are still active.
There's a brand new documentary about the band (I haven't had the chance to see it yet). The photos above are from the film's facebook page and from the Band's homepage.

The Funkhaus Nalepastrasse and the Subharchord

I had the chance to attend an amazing event in Berlin recently. It was about the history of the Subharchord and took place at the Funkhaus Nalepastrasse.
The Funkhaus Nalepastrasse (architect: Franz Ehrlich) was the home of the radio broadcasting organisation of East Germany from 1956 to 1990. In its heyday, 3000 people worked there.
Its core are top notch recording studios for big and small orchestras, still known for their acoustics and in use (in need for some restoration though).
The Subharchord was a proto-synthesizer developed in the GDR in the 1960s. Based on the Trautonium (1930), it continued the pre-war history of electronic instruments in Germany.
In the context of the CTM festival 2013, its developer Gerhard Steinke talked about the instrument, film maker Ina Pillat showed excerpts of her forthcoming documentary about it (see video above), and two newly commissioned compositions for the instrument were played (by Biosphere and Frank Bretschneider). Furthermore, US-composer Frederic Rzweski talked about his experience of working with the Subharchord in East Berlin in the middle of the cold war, crossing the border from West to East Berlin every day. He also said that the fact that he worked with technology from the other side of the iron curtain made it difficult to play the resulting piece in the west. Nobody believed that something good could come from there. The event was also a gathering of GDR engineers involved in the project and the building. It was good to see that their work got some appreciation after having been largely dismissed for a long time after the fall of the Wall because they had created their top out-put in the wrong country.
Here are some (mobile phone-) pictures I took during the event.

Since 2008, there's a Futuro House (architect: Matti Suuronen, produced in Finland 1968-73) next to the Funkhaus. That's a whole different story, but was a nice addition to my afternoon of time travel. More information about this particular Futuro House here.

flexi-discs from the eastern block in primary colors

I found these years ago, possibly in Berlin. All three are labeled with the Melodiya logo. The blue one is easy listening instrumentals, label in cyrillic. The yellow and and the red one are from the GDR youth magazine "Frösi". The yellow one contains songs from the FDJ (the official GDR youth organisation), among them the infamous (yet catchy) who-is-not-with-us-is-against-us hymn "Sag mir wo du stehst" ("tell me where you stand"). The red one is a feature about the conquest of the Kosmos.

All run on 33 1/3 and are double-sided.