Sonic postcards - Somewhere from Southeastern Europe

Somewhere around this time (late May) last year, after one of the most difficult creative struggles, I had submitted one four and a half minute ambient piece for a contest organized by Goethe Institut Belgrad (aka German cultural center in Belgrade), Radio Belgrade - Channel Three, Deutchlandradio Kultur (Berlin) and Chinch initiative for contemporary music (Belgrade) entitled Klangpostkarten - Von irgendwo in Südosteuropa (Sonic postcards - Somewhere from Southeastern Europe). We were supposed to sonically depict a certain place in this region to German audience, as the title suggests, basically in a form of "sound postcard" that would give them a taste of local atmosphere.

Apparently, one of the initiators of this project was none other than Thomas Köner, whom I personally admire to a great extent, both for his extremely deep and minimal ambient work as well as his legendary Porter Ricks dub techno project on no less legendary Chain Reaction label. As a form of an announcement, he did his own sonic postcard from Frankfurt, so that we could later create an appropriate response from Serbia in similar style. Talking about encouragement - there couldn't have been better for me.



CD package for the contest submission

Slankamen (on Newcomer Werkstatt radio show) by Koneyn

My piece was dedicated to a now quiet small village in north of the country, Slankamen, where I had spent so many summers as a kid. It's unique geographic and strategic position provided quite a turbulent history, dating back to Celtic migration to Balkans, over Roman exploitation of well known local healing water spring, to Ottoman Turkish battles with neighboring Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Eventually, among 47 works submitted, mine got into final top seven presented at the Goethe Institute premises here in Belgrade in September 2009. I won the fourth place, missing a nice cache prize by an inch, though later in all of the public reports they properly sorted only the top three, while constantly shuffling the order when mentioning rest of us. Nevertheless, it was such a great honor and privilege, it didn't matter to me that much.

If you can read either German or Serbian, here are the reports on the Goethe Inst. website. You'll also find a podcast streaming player there, with all the finalist tracks being played:
- German version
- Serbian version

All seven of us finalists also got additional exposure on a radio show entitled Newcomer Werkstatt on Deutchlandradio Kultur and later the tracks have been released on a CD by Goethe Institut:




Another few months later, in April 2010, the whole thing was picked up by Hannoversche Gesellschaft für Neue Musik that again included all of these pieces in their sound installations and exhibitions project in Hannover entitled Briefe aus der Heimat (Letters from homeland).

Transitional [AE003 / 2009]

And now for something completely different.

If I could only explain how did I get to this. Most of the year up to that point, late October 2009 to be precise, seemed to be a collection of futile attempts, unnecessary worries and days lost. In fact, right now I can't recall how did I actually spend most of my time then.

I do remember though how I found myself not knowing even how to start making new music numerous times, or when I would eventually start - it would lead nowhere. Then I tried to immerse myself in any topic that has no obvious relation to music, so that I could maybe draw some inspiration or even a whole concept from it. Eventually I got stuck with architecture, which in fact was quite interesting. Among many really fascinating examples of human imagination and skill, you also get to learn how Le Corbusier planned to demolish central part of Paris north of Seine and build this:




La Ville radieuse

Needless to say, the project wasn't approved. Paris hasn't had such "visionary" officials like Belgrade did in mid 20th century, who encouraged quite similar projects again north of city's main river. I consider myself lucky not to have had grown up there. Still, the gloominess of a large, dirty and chaotic city that is sometimes Belgrade doesn't end in the neighborhood shown in the example. "Alienation in urban environment" isn't really that much of a cliché, as it may sound, when you have to actually deal with it.

In a way, my feelings towards this topic eventually formed pieces of sound that slowly (and I mean slooooowly) grew and grew to finally become a part of this release. Strangely enough, as it usually goes in life, so many things came to a rapid climax in that short period around the time the CD was due - and all with a happy end.



Sagamihara, Kanagawa, Japan (CD inlay photo by Kanae Sato)

This change of mood from the beginning to the end, I believe, seems quite obvious on the CD. While the first track is by some people described as "too depressive to play often", the ending one offers hope and positive excitement - something I have to admit not accomplishing often enough in music.

Transitional was my first (solo) release for the Àsino Elettronico label - which I co-created with my friend Xiqhhyiecryn the year before - and it managed to get some slightly wider than usual attention through several contacts. It got a really nice review, a place in the middle of a regional "top 100" album chart for 2009 and the first ever radio play on a major radio station in Serbia (B92).

Rather strange for such an "alienated" record, I guess.


Silent street by Koneyn


Here is the direct connection to the otherwise framed page on label's website, where you can find more informations, tracklist, and of course the download link for the release (artwork included):

www.asino-elettronico.com/ae003/transitional.html

January 2011 update:
Another nice review, on Connexion Bizzare online magazine, courtesy of Paul Lloyd.

Stormfields [2008]

It was late Spring of 2008, I was being quite lazy as far as life goes at the time, then there was this unexpected change of living space conditions (for the better) and also some major investments of what you'd call "entry level professional equipment" - seems that things had just clicked together so that I could make another release, 5 months after the first one.

Initially it was supposed to be a split CD with Youth A.D., where each of us would spit out some noise or whatnot, but as usual, I drifted far into my not-that-noisy world - I've already done three tracks when I realized that this is not "it".

So what was it, then?

Just a slightly lenghtier record than the first one, Stormfields goes a little bit further in semi-improvised sonic exploration, bringing together noisy and bass-heavy humming with what appears to be a more "natural" sound. Melodies are also more prominent than before, and so are the ambiental soundscapes that wander around most of the time.


Again, it comes both as a free, limited, do-it-yourself CD-R package and mp3 files for download.

Apparently, people liked it more than the first one. At least it attracted more listeners, and still does surprisingly.





Thistle by Koneyn


STORMFIELDS

01 Intro
02 Yıldırım
03 Thistle
04 Leyl
05 Farewell


Free download under Creative Commons licence:
box.net/shared/v6cjtzk59q

Enclosed EP [2008]

Often people say that to an artist his creation is like a child. I wonder then if parents, after having two or more, secretly always love their first kid the most? Because that's how I still feel about this first attempt at publishing (in a vague sense of the word!) my conception of music.

This is where it began for me, after spending days and weeks practically isolated in my room, while now and then visiting performances that made me think "hey, I can do better than this". I know it may sound quite pompous, but the truth is, it was last year that I found out in a casual chat with a friend (who has been around in regional scene quite actively before me) that she got "inspired" in exactly the same way while watching exactly the same band. Who says it's only the best that get us going?

Still quite shy and generally lacking any real ambition, this is what I wrote in early 2008 when this cheap CD-R was released:

Self-released promotional CD, burned in small quantity for friends and labels and packed in a slim plastic case with 4-page inlay. It presents three tracks of different nature, a kind of an exercise in approaching the target from different angles. Knowing where I want to get in the end, this also helped me to learn which direction to take in the future.


I've been playing around with music software since '99 (with a few long breaks, though), and during whole that time, altogether less than ten people knew about this, of which only four of them have heard some small part of what I'd done. I actually never faced any negative response, but I haven't felt myself that it's good or mature enough, not even for a demo.


Enclosed EP was to change this, resulting in something I finaly felt comfortable with as a starting point, from which I hope to progress significantly as I get a tighter grip on production skills and the process of bringing ideas into reality.


Getting some proper equipment would definitely help, too :)

Enclosed by Koneyn

A fresh start

Spam. Bugs. Image and link censorship. Slow loading. "Unexpected errors". Ads. More spam. And even more bugs.

Got sick of all that on MySpace, and went for this good old, more practical option. Not much of a blogging person myself, I still owe a lot to this medium and with all of the mixed media work (music, design, and of recently a bit of video) that is slowly starting to pile up, I can't think of more flexible solution which would hold all of this in one organized whole, while still allowing me to easily get feedback from friends and any possibly interested people.

My first blogging adventure, some four and a half years ago finished quite soon, after only two posts. I'll make sure it doesn't happen again - for a start by putting up all the stuff that may not be quite fresh but still I hope you'll find checking them out worthwhile.

Welcome! :)