Sven Hauke Erchisen conducted an interview with me for Northern Art Music (an online magazine in the shape of a FB page) a short while ago - mainly about my album "Footprints".
Follow the link to read the original German version, or read my (rough) English translation below (the person speaking in the first paragraph is the editor / owner of NAM):
https://www.facebook.com/northernartmusic.de
* * *
An interview with the electronic musician Michael Brückner
"As you know, I am an absolute fan of electronic sounds and so I was very happy when my colleague Sven Hauke Erichsen told me that he would do an interview with Michael Brückner, one of the exceptional electronic artists. Now the time has finally come. Have fun with an unbelievably cheerful Michael Brückner. KG"
NORTHERN ART MUSIC (NAM): Hi Michael, thank you very much for your latest big thing called "Footprints", with this release you let yourself be inspired by the great Edgar Froese / Tangerine Dream this time. You have been producing cosmic soundscapes and electronic sounds "a la Berlin School" for a long time, but with this record you have once again surpassed yourself creatively. How would you describe your sounds from the record and how come you are presenting these ingenious sound cosms right now?
MICHAEL BRÜCKNER (MB): Hello, Sven.
Yes, "Footprints" - in the meantime it's no longer my "latest thing"(there had be three further releases since...).
I am very pleased that the album has been well received by you - and also by others, as far as I know...
Talking about sound - the main piece of the album "Everlasting Footprints" (which is available in two different, long versions) is a few years older, it was written only a few weeks after Edgar Froese's surprising death at the beginning of 2015. Like everyone else, I was very shocked at that time.
Of course, many musicians, but also radio hosts, reacted to it, there were many tribute tracks, tribute albums, and also tribute radio programmes. At the time, I was asked to contribute to two such programmes, whose makers are also good friends, first by Christian Fiesel and later by Rebekkah Hilgraves.
But: I didn't want to do it at first. Tribute pieces are not really my thing for various personal reasons. Christian Fiesel, however, didn't let up, and finally I started working on it, but I was sceptical whether it would turn out well...
It just so happened that I had already started a Tangerine Dream-inspired project a few weeks before Edgar's death, but it was supposed to be a kind of joke between musicians - the working title was "VAT-Moss-Fear" - on the one hand an allusion to "Stratosfear", of course. But the actual reason was that the well-known and much-used music portal Bandcamp introduced the innovation at that time that the buyer was automatically charged VAT on top of the sales price (chosen by the artist). Today, this is old news, but at that time there was an outcry in the scene: "Then my music will become even more expensive - then no one will buy it anymore..." etc. I remember I was a bit worried myself. Anyway, I wanted to comment on that ironically, so to speak, with the title. But after Edgar died, I put it aside for the time being.
Then when I sat down to write the piece for the radio show, I partly drew on elements from that unfinished project.
My idea was to compose a long piece in which all the things I love about Edgar's - and of course TD's - music flash up, and to combine them in such a way that his musical life is also represented to a certain extent (I only left out his "hard rock phase" in the 60s - if only because I'm not a guitarist...).
That's why the piece first has this rather long, rather quiet and diffuse introduction, with all kinds of wobbly sounds, but also piano, lots of organ and then Mellotron flutes, guitar sounds and the like - roughly based on early TD albums like "Alpha Centauri", "Atem", but also on his two early solo records "Aqua" and "Epsilon in Malaysian Pale", of which I am a big fan.
Of course, that then leads into the phase that I (like many others) still love the most - "Rubycon", "Stratosfear", "Encore", etc. - That's where the sequences come into play, of course. I don't belong to the lucky ones who own great vintage synthesizers - therefore I had no choice but to approach the classic TD sound as best I could with the newer synths and VSTs I have.
But I also tried to bring the music more and more into the present, so to speak, over the course of the piece, because Edgar and TD didn't stay on the 70s sound, but kept up with the times, or even set new trends for a long time...
At the end, after a dynamic build-up, it ends calmly and of course also somewhat melancholically - and spherically - according to Edgar's statement that he would not die, but only change the cosmic address.
As I said, a few weeks later I was also invited by Rebekkah Hilgraves to contribute something to a similar show. Since I didn't have the time to produce a similarly good piece for it at such short notice, I then remixed the piece that I did for Christian - whereby it got a clearly different character, more relaxed, calmer, more flowing. Depending on the mood of the day, I sometimes like one mix better than the other...
In the end, to my own surprise, I was satisfied with the result, and the listeners liked it too. Even back then I had decided to release it on one of my regular solo albums one day - but I didn't want to do that right away, because Edgar's death was still too close to me in terms of time, and I didn't think it was appropriate to earn money with his memory. So I put the whole thing aside until...
...I became aware of the wonderful young label "Cyclical Dreams" from Buenos Aires at the beginning of 2020 and finally - again at quite short notice - the opportunity arose to release an album there. So now - five years later - I finally saw the right opportunity to use the material.
Originally I wanted to fill the rest of the album with pieces based on the material I had recorded in connection with the "VAT-Moss-Fear" project and "Eternal Footprints" - I did several sessions and didn't use all of it.
But unfortunately I couldn't find these session recordings again. For some reason I hadn't saved them together with the other files that belonged to the long piece, and where they are now, I still don't know...
So I had no choice but to fall back on other material (because I didn't have the time to record completely new pieces). Fortunately, there is still a lot of previously unreleased music in my archives - the three shorter pieces are therefore based on raw material from 2018, 2019 and 2020 - one piece was intended for collaboration with another musician in connection with a compilation that never came about. I have now (sadly, I must say) finished producing that without the friendly colleague. Another piece is a shortened version of a very long, three-part Berlin School composition, also for a compilation, which I then never heard of again. Finally, the last piece was a private birthday present for a good friend, namely Olaf Lux (who has now published a book about Klaus Schulze, which you have surely heard about).
These pieces are then a bit less based on the sound of Edgar TD than "Eternal Footprints" (EF...!). But of course, in the end, there is his influence in EVERY spherical sequencer music - there is no escape from it, and these are exactly the "eternal footprints" that Edgar Froese has left us...
NAM: You've certainly done live performances, wouldn't it be an idea to play in a planetarium?
MB: Yes, yes - every now and then they let me out and I can play a bit...
I think planetariums are great. I even had a gig in one of them - and not the worst, namely the one in Brussels - in 2015, together with Mathias Brüssel (sic!) as part of the Cosmic Nights Festival. There's a nice live album of it, by the way...
NAM: Who does the very creative design / artwork (for CD, Bandcamp and co. ) for the releases?
MB: Well, I'm a graphic artist and illustrator myself, so the artwork and design for most of my albums is done by me.
However, this is especially true for my (many) older albums (i.e. before 2012). Even after that, of course, I often did the artwork myself, but in the last five years or so it has happened more often that I have used artwork by artist friends (e.g. Andreas Schwieztke, Paul Nicholson or Kevin O'Neill), or even bought image rights, or that a label wanted to take care of the artwork itself because they have their own people to do it.
This was also the case with "Footprints": Tony Jimenez, who designs most of the covers for Cyclical Dreams, presented me with various motifs from which I was then allowed to choose my favourite. The rest of the cover design (with the black frame and this special font) also comes from him or the label.
However, Cyclical Dreams is a purely digital label - so there is always only the actual cover, the "front". I also offer "Footprints" as a CDr edition, for which I needed a complete booklet, an inlay for the back, a motif for the CD.
I took care of that myself - of course in line with the existing cover, but I was also kindly allowed to use Tony's motifs for the other parts of the layout...
NAM: Which instruments did you use especially for the work on the new record and which DAW was used here?
MB: The DAW I use is Cubase, and for the most part it's still the ancient 2003 version, which is still great and I can just work with it even in my sleep. But I also have a current version of Cubase LE on my newer laptop, which enables me to use VSTis that no longer run on my old computer. I have to say, though, that I find the new version much more confusing to use and it usually annoys me to have to work with it. Of course, my laptop only has a small screen, so maybe it would work better on a big one...
Here is the (incomplete) list of instruments (but they are the most important ones - I don't really remember the rest anymore, it's been five years and then I have hundreds of VSTis on my computer, of which I use this one and that one...):
Waldorf Blofeld, Korg Z1, Korg 05R/W, ELKA Solist 505, Behringer Model D, NI Absynth, U-HE Zebra, U-HE Diva, Propellerhead Reason.
NAM: How much time did you invest in the production of the album, what concepts do you pursue with your releases?
MB: The original track "Eternal Footprints" took me about three (intense!) weeks at the time. Finishing the rest of the tracks, mixing, mastering, fine-tuning, typesetting the cover etc. also took a few weeks, maybe four or five - but of course I didn't spend eight hours a day on it, but every now and then a few hours here, a few hours there.
Then, of course, I also recorded the raw material for the three short pieces, I don't remember exactly... For two of them, everything was done in one or two days, for the last one it took a while, I think...
Of course the concepts - if there is a concept at all - are different from album to album...
The one for "Footprints" we already discussed in detail at the beginning, and I'm too lazy to list all of the 135 other albums right now
NAM: Where does your fascination for electronic music come from, as it has been created by you over the years?
MB: Hard to say...
As a boy, before I was particularly interested in music, I was already a science fiction fan. I think sci-fi and synths - which are also often associated with space and the future etc. - go well together. But then you could ask: Where does your interest in science fiction come from? In the end, I have no idea...
Of course, there were a few early, formative listening experiences, pieces that I just loved and that just happened to be electronic, like Pink Floyd's "Shine On You Crazy Diamond, Part 1" or Jarre's "Oxygène IV".
But in reality, it's not at all the case that my musical taste as a listener is limited to electronic music. I love music in general, including music recorded only with acoustic instruments, or pure vocal music. I'm not really fascinated by the "electronic" in electronic music per se. I just like certain moods, a certain expression and a certain feeling in the music - and that can be produced well with the means of electronic instruments, but of course it can also be done in other ways. In the end, I don't care about the genre of the music...
NAM: Do you collect antiquarian instruments?
MB: Nope.
Maybe I would, if I had the necessary money...
NAM: The electro pioneer Jean Michel Jarre once recorded his first record "Oxygene" live in Munich with the original equipment from 1976, would that be something for you with your first tracks?
MB: My first tracks...?
You don't want to hear them!
No, but with me such an event wouldn't make sense - "Oyxgène" is of course a timeless masterpiece, and also (deservedly) a huge commercial success. Music that has almost burned itself into the collective subconscious. In this context, such an event of course makes sense, it attracts a lot of publicity, etc.
But in my case...? None of my albums saw anything like that level of recognition or pop-cultural significance. I can re-record, or record live with original instruments, whatever I want - no one will care...
Then of course it's true - and I think it's true for every musician who has been around for a long time - that there are older pieces or albums that I feel could have been better in terms of potential than I managed at the time. Sometimes I would like to make everything better in retrospect.
But in the end, it's far too much effort for music in which there is relatively little interest. And that's why I prefer to concentrate on future projects and try to do them as well as I can...
NAM: Where do you get your instruments from, have you ever assembled a synth yourself?
MB: Some of them from the local music store, or in the last few years also from the well-known mail-order companies. Or sometimes second-hand, often from musician friends. Or it's software that you buy via the internet. But I think (almost) everyone does it that way...
Self-assembled...?!? You don't know me very well, I can see - when it comes to technology, I'm untalented and clueless. I even have difficulties to change the battery of my clock radio...
NAM: With which artists from your field (or the concept a la Schiller with guests) would you still like to play or with whom have you played together before?
MB: With no one in particular.Generally speaking I always like to make music with other people. But they don't necessarily have to come from "my area". Of course, it works better if they "understand" Ambient and Berlin School - i.e. if it means something to them and they can empathise with it - but the truth is that I would find it more interesting to work with people who are not synthesiser types like me (because: I can already cover that part reasonably well on my own), but rather guitarists, percussionists, cellists, flutists, jazz trumpeters - or whatever. Or if it's another electronic musician, then someone who has a different focus than me and throws an ingredient into the soup that I don't have - then it's exciting...
On the other hand, harmony is of course also great: when you understand each other directly without many words and the music just flows immediately - that's how it usually works with my two good friends Mathias Brüssel (he and I are the duo "La Mansarde Hérmetique") and HaDi Schmidt (he and I are the duo "Bridge to Imla").
Now I have already named two great musicians with whom I have done a lot of nice things together for a long time. If I now try to list all the others, I'm always afraid that I'll forget someone - because there were and are so many of them - and it was enriching and interesting with everyone. Let's have a look...
With Wolle Bechtluft and Reinhold Krämer as B4 SUNRISE. With Tommy Betzler and Sammy David (and many guests) as P'Faun (in the beginning still as "Betzler & Brückner").
There are joint albums with Mathias Grassow, Detlev Everling, Volker Lankow, Suzannah Moon, Alien Nature, Phrozenlight, Gustavo Jobim and Klaus Chmielewski.
There are joint pieces with Cilia di Ponte, Cousin Silas, Harald Bertram, Perceptual Defence, Lutz Thuns, Fryderyk Jona, Samuel Cadima, Rosmerta, Kemal Deniz, Ben I Sabbah, Milan Kolev, René van der Wouden, Gerd Weyhing, Georg Bruckmann, Rebekka Hilgraves, Harald Nies, WolfProject, Steffen Brückner, Wolfgang Kornberger, Uwe Linde, Drug Music - and probably several more...
There were joint performances with Bernhard Woestheinrich, Ralph Baumgartl and Laurent Schieber - and I took part in sessions of the ambient collective EK-Lounge for a while...
Of course, there are still dreams - such as the one of a "band" called "Michael Brückner and his Berlin School Boys" performing my long piece "Berlin School Boys" live (or in a video) - I would take care of the sequences in the background, Harald Großkopf and Tommy Betzler taking turns playing the drums, and in the individual sections Klaus Schulze, Edgar Froese, Manuel Göttsching, Wolfgang Tiepold and Michael Hoenig would take turns with the solos.
I imagined something like that in 2011 (when the piece was written) - although of course it was always clear to me that it would never happen in my life. In the meantime, Edgar has already changed his cosmic address, and Klaus has retired - at least as far as concerts are concerned...
NAM: What else can we expect in this crazy year 2020, are you planning to release something ( side project? ) as people have ( unfortunately ) more time than usual...?
MB: Since you sent me these questions, I have actually already released two new albums, one planned - namely the Dark Ambient album "POEtry" - the other came about surprisingly and spontaneously, namely "Klaustrophilia", which is actually a "bonus item" to the Klaus Schulze biography of my good friend Olaf Lux. By the way, the book is highly recommended for those interested...
And in early December my next album with Detlev Everling will be released on SynGate. By the way, that was originally planned for 2019 already.
Although I indeed had a lot of spare time this year, I recorded surprisingly little new music, even though I released quite a lot. In fact, however, these albums contained pieces that were all already written between 2014 and 2019, but for various reasons were still unreleased. Of course, it's still work to give a release its final form.
Well, a crazy year indeed - but in the meantime there are at least small rays of hope with regard to the outcome of the US election and a possible Corona vaccine. So let's hope that from now on we can look forward to happier times again...
NAM: Thank you very much dear Michael for the time you took for this very interesting interview. We wish you a peaceful Christmas season and a happy new year 2021.
Sven Hauke Erichsen
Northern Art Music
.
Follow the link to read the original German version, or read my (rough) English translation below (the person speaking in the first paragraph is the editor / owner of NAM):
https://www.facebook.com/northernartmusic.de
* * *
An interview with the electronic musician Michael Brückner
"As you know, I am an absolute fan of electronic sounds and so I was very happy when my colleague Sven Hauke Erichsen told me that he would do an interview with Michael Brückner, one of the exceptional electronic artists. Now the time has finally come. Have fun with an unbelievably cheerful Michael Brückner. KG"
NORTHERN ART MUSIC (NAM): Hi Michael, thank you very much for your latest big thing called "Footprints", with this release you let yourself be inspired by the great Edgar Froese / Tangerine Dream this time. You have been producing cosmic soundscapes and electronic sounds "a la Berlin School" for a long time, but with this record you have once again surpassed yourself creatively. How would you describe your sounds from the record and how come you are presenting these ingenious sound cosms right now?
MICHAEL BRÜCKNER (MB): Hello, Sven.
Yes, "Footprints" - in the meantime it's no longer my "latest thing"(there had be three further releases since...).
I am very pleased that the album has been well received by you - and also by others, as far as I know...
Talking about sound - the main piece of the album "Everlasting Footprints" (which is available in two different, long versions) is a few years older, it was written only a few weeks after Edgar Froese's surprising death at the beginning of 2015. Like everyone else, I was very shocked at that time.
Of course, many musicians, but also radio hosts, reacted to it, there were many tribute tracks, tribute albums, and also tribute radio programmes. At the time, I was asked to contribute to two such programmes, whose makers are also good friends, first by Christian Fiesel and later by Rebekkah Hilgraves.
But: I didn't want to do it at first. Tribute pieces are not really my thing for various personal reasons. Christian Fiesel, however, didn't let up, and finally I started working on it, but I was sceptical whether it would turn out well...
It just so happened that I had already started a Tangerine Dream-inspired project a few weeks before Edgar's death, but it was supposed to be a kind of joke between musicians - the working title was "VAT-Moss-Fear" - on the one hand an allusion to "Stratosfear", of course. But the actual reason was that the well-known and much-used music portal Bandcamp introduced the innovation at that time that the buyer was automatically charged VAT on top of the sales price (chosen by the artist). Today, this is old news, but at that time there was an outcry in the scene: "Then my music will become even more expensive - then no one will buy it anymore..." etc. I remember I was a bit worried myself. Anyway, I wanted to comment on that ironically, so to speak, with the title. But after Edgar died, I put it aside for the time being.
Then when I sat down to write the piece for the radio show, I partly drew on elements from that unfinished project.
My idea was to compose a long piece in which all the things I love about Edgar's - and of course TD's - music flash up, and to combine them in such a way that his musical life is also represented to a certain extent (I only left out his "hard rock phase" in the 60s - if only because I'm not a guitarist...).
That's why the piece first has this rather long, rather quiet and diffuse introduction, with all kinds of wobbly sounds, but also piano, lots of organ and then Mellotron flutes, guitar sounds and the like - roughly based on early TD albums like "Alpha Centauri", "Atem", but also on his two early solo records "Aqua" and "Epsilon in Malaysian Pale", of which I am a big fan.
Of course, that then leads into the phase that I (like many others) still love the most - "Rubycon", "Stratosfear", "Encore", etc. - That's where the sequences come into play, of course. I don't belong to the lucky ones who own great vintage synthesizers - therefore I had no choice but to approach the classic TD sound as best I could with the newer synths and VSTs I have.
But I also tried to bring the music more and more into the present, so to speak, over the course of the piece, because Edgar and TD didn't stay on the 70s sound, but kept up with the times, or even set new trends for a long time...
At the end, after a dynamic build-up, it ends calmly and of course also somewhat melancholically - and spherically - according to Edgar's statement that he would not die, but only change the cosmic address.
As I said, a few weeks later I was also invited by Rebekkah Hilgraves to contribute something to a similar show. Since I didn't have the time to produce a similarly good piece for it at such short notice, I then remixed the piece that I did for Christian - whereby it got a clearly different character, more relaxed, calmer, more flowing. Depending on the mood of the day, I sometimes like one mix better than the other...
In the end, to my own surprise, I was satisfied with the result, and the listeners liked it too. Even back then I had decided to release it on one of my regular solo albums one day - but I didn't want to do that right away, because Edgar's death was still too close to me in terms of time, and I didn't think it was appropriate to earn money with his memory. So I put the whole thing aside until...
...I became aware of the wonderful young label "Cyclical Dreams" from Buenos Aires at the beginning of 2020 and finally - again at quite short notice - the opportunity arose to release an album there. So now - five years later - I finally saw the right opportunity to use the material.
Originally I wanted to fill the rest of the album with pieces based on the material I had recorded in connection with the "VAT-Moss-Fear" project and "Eternal Footprints" - I did several sessions and didn't use all of it.
But unfortunately I couldn't find these session recordings again. For some reason I hadn't saved them together with the other files that belonged to the long piece, and where they are now, I still don't know...
So I had no choice but to fall back on other material (because I didn't have the time to record completely new pieces). Fortunately, there is still a lot of previously unreleased music in my archives - the three shorter pieces are therefore based on raw material from 2018, 2019 and 2020 - one piece was intended for collaboration with another musician in connection with a compilation that never came about. I have now (sadly, I must say) finished producing that without the friendly colleague. Another piece is a shortened version of a very long, three-part Berlin School composition, also for a compilation, which I then never heard of again. Finally, the last piece was a private birthday present for a good friend, namely Olaf Lux (who has now published a book about Klaus Schulze, which you have surely heard about).
These pieces are then a bit less based on the sound of Edgar TD than "Eternal Footprints" (EF...!). But of course, in the end, there is his influence in EVERY spherical sequencer music - there is no escape from it, and these are exactly the "eternal footprints" that Edgar Froese has left us...
NAM: You've certainly done live performances, wouldn't it be an idea to play in a planetarium?
MB: Yes, yes - every now and then they let me out and I can play a bit...
I think planetariums are great. I even had a gig in one of them - and not the worst, namely the one in Brussels - in 2015, together with Mathias Brüssel (sic!) as part of the Cosmic Nights Festival. There's a nice live album of it, by the way...
NAM: Who does the very creative design / artwork (for CD, Bandcamp and co. ) for the releases?
MB: Well, I'm a graphic artist and illustrator myself, so the artwork and design for most of my albums is done by me.
However, this is especially true for my (many) older albums (i.e. before 2012). Even after that, of course, I often did the artwork myself, but in the last five years or so it has happened more often that I have used artwork by artist friends (e.g. Andreas Schwieztke, Paul Nicholson or Kevin O'Neill), or even bought image rights, or that a label wanted to take care of the artwork itself because they have their own people to do it.
This was also the case with "Footprints": Tony Jimenez, who designs most of the covers for Cyclical Dreams, presented me with various motifs from which I was then allowed to choose my favourite. The rest of the cover design (with the black frame and this special font) also comes from him or the label.
However, Cyclical Dreams is a purely digital label - so there is always only the actual cover, the "front". I also offer "Footprints" as a CDr edition, for which I needed a complete booklet, an inlay for the back, a motif for the CD.
I took care of that myself - of course in line with the existing cover, but I was also kindly allowed to use Tony's motifs for the other parts of the layout...
NAM: Which instruments did you use especially for the work on the new record and which DAW was used here?
MB: The DAW I use is Cubase, and for the most part it's still the ancient 2003 version, which is still great and I can just work with it even in my sleep. But I also have a current version of Cubase LE on my newer laptop, which enables me to use VSTis that no longer run on my old computer. I have to say, though, that I find the new version much more confusing to use and it usually annoys me to have to work with it. Of course, my laptop only has a small screen, so maybe it would work better on a big one...
Here is the (incomplete) list of instruments (but they are the most important ones - I don't really remember the rest anymore, it's been five years and then I have hundreds of VSTis on my computer, of which I use this one and that one...):
Waldorf Blofeld, Korg Z1, Korg 05R/W, ELKA Solist 505, Behringer Model D, NI Absynth, U-HE Zebra, U-HE Diva, Propellerhead Reason.
NAM: How much time did you invest in the production of the album, what concepts do you pursue with your releases?
MB: The original track "Eternal Footprints" took me about three (intense!) weeks at the time. Finishing the rest of the tracks, mixing, mastering, fine-tuning, typesetting the cover etc. also took a few weeks, maybe four or five - but of course I didn't spend eight hours a day on it, but every now and then a few hours here, a few hours there.
Then, of course, I also recorded the raw material for the three short pieces, I don't remember exactly... For two of them, everything was done in one or two days, for the last one it took a while, I think...
Of course the concepts - if there is a concept at all - are different from album to album...
The one for "Footprints" we already discussed in detail at the beginning, and I'm too lazy to list all of the 135 other albums right now
NAM: Where does your fascination for electronic music come from, as it has been created by you over the years?
MB: Hard to say...
As a boy, before I was particularly interested in music, I was already a science fiction fan. I think sci-fi and synths - which are also often associated with space and the future etc. - go well together. But then you could ask: Where does your interest in science fiction come from? In the end, I have no idea...
Of course, there were a few early, formative listening experiences, pieces that I just loved and that just happened to be electronic, like Pink Floyd's "Shine On You Crazy Diamond, Part 1" or Jarre's "Oxygène IV".
But in reality, it's not at all the case that my musical taste as a listener is limited to electronic music. I love music in general, including music recorded only with acoustic instruments, or pure vocal music. I'm not really fascinated by the "electronic" in electronic music per se. I just like certain moods, a certain expression and a certain feeling in the music - and that can be produced well with the means of electronic instruments, but of course it can also be done in other ways. In the end, I don't care about the genre of the music...
NAM: Do you collect antiquarian instruments?
MB: Nope.
Maybe I would, if I had the necessary money...
NAM: The electro pioneer Jean Michel Jarre once recorded his first record "Oxygene" live in Munich with the original equipment from 1976, would that be something for you with your first tracks?
MB: My first tracks...?
You don't want to hear them!
No, but with me such an event wouldn't make sense - "Oyxgène" is of course a timeless masterpiece, and also (deservedly) a huge commercial success. Music that has almost burned itself into the collective subconscious. In this context, such an event of course makes sense, it attracts a lot of publicity, etc.
But in my case...? None of my albums saw anything like that level of recognition or pop-cultural significance. I can re-record, or record live with original instruments, whatever I want - no one will care...
Then of course it's true - and I think it's true for every musician who has been around for a long time - that there are older pieces or albums that I feel could have been better in terms of potential than I managed at the time. Sometimes I would like to make everything better in retrospect.
But in the end, it's far too much effort for music in which there is relatively little interest. And that's why I prefer to concentrate on future projects and try to do them as well as I can...
NAM: Where do you get your instruments from, have you ever assembled a synth yourself?
MB: Some of them from the local music store, or in the last few years also from the well-known mail-order companies. Or sometimes second-hand, often from musician friends. Or it's software that you buy via the internet. But I think (almost) everyone does it that way...
Self-assembled...?!?
You don't know me very well, I can see - when it comes to technology, I'm untalented and clueless. I even have difficulties to change the battery of my clock radio...
NAM: With which artists from your field (or the concept a la Schiller with guests) would you still like to play or with whom have you played together before?
MB: With no one in particular.Generally speaking I always like to make music with other people. But they don't necessarily have to come from "my area". Of course, it works better if they "understand" Ambient and Berlin School - i.e. if it means something to them and they can empathise with it - but the truth is that I would find it more interesting to work with people who are not synthesiser types like me (because: I can already cover that part reasonably well on my own), but rather guitarists, percussionists, cellists, flutists, jazz trumpeters - or whatever. Or if it's another electronic musician, then someone who has a different focus than me and throws an ingredient into the soup that I don't have - then it's exciting...
On the other hand, harmony is of course also great: when you understand each other directly without many words and the music just flows immediately - that's how it usually works with my two good friends Mathias Brüssel (he and I are the duo "La Mansarde Hérmetique") and HaDi Schmidt (he and I are the duo "Bridge to Imla").
Now I have already named two great musicians with whom I have done a lot of nice things together for a long time. If I now try to list all the others, I'm always afraid that I'll forget someone - because there were and are so many of them - and it was enriching and interesting with everyone. Let's have a look...
With Wolle Bechtluft and Reinhold Krämer as B4 SUNRISE. With Tommy Betzler and Sammy David (and many guests) as P'Faun (in the beginning still as "Betzler & Brückner").
There are joint albums with Mathias Grassow, Detlev Everling, Volker Lankow, Suzannah Moon, Alien Nature, Phrozenlight, Gustavo Jobim and Klaus Chmielewski.
There are joint pieces with Cilia di Ponte, Cousin Silas, Harald Bertram, Perceptual Defence, Lutz Thuns, Fryderyk Jona, Samuel Cadima, Rosmerta, Kemal Deniz, Ben I Sabbah, Milan Kolev, René van der Wouden, Gerd Weyhing, Georg Bruckmann, Rebekka Hilgraves, Harald Nies, WolfProject, Steffen Brückner, Wolfgang Kornberger, Uwe Linde, Drug Music - and probably several more...
There were joint performances with Bernhard Woestheinrich, Ralph Baumgartl and Laurent Schieber - and I took part in sessions of the ambient collective EK-Lounge for a while...
Of course, there are still dreams - such as the one of a "band" called "Michael Brückner and his Berlin School Boys" performing my long piece "Berlin School Boys" live (or in a video) - I would take care of the sequences in the background, Harald Großkopf and Tommy Betzler taking turns playing the drums, and in the individual sections Klaus Schulze, Edgar Froese, Manuel Göttsching, Wolfgang Tiepold and Michael Hoenig would take turns with the solos.
I imagined something like that in 2011 (when the piece was written) - although of course it was always clear to me that it would never happen in my life. In the meantime, Edgar has already changed his cosmic address, and Klaus has retired - at least as far as concerts are concerned...
NAM: What else can we expect in this crazy year 2020, are you planning to release something ( side project? ) as people have ( unfortunately ) more time than usual...?
MB: Since you sent me these questions, I have actually already released two new albums, one planned - namely the Dark Ambient album "POEtry" - the other came about surprisingly and spontaneously, namely "Klaustrophilia", which is actually a "bonus item" to the Klaus Schulze biography of my good friend Olaf Lux. By the way, the book is highly recommended for those interested...
And in early December my next album with Detlev Everling will be released on SynGate. By the way, that was originally planned for 2019 already.
Although I indeed had a lot of spare time this year, I recorded surprisingly little new music, even though I released quite a lot. In fact, however, these albums contained pieces that were all already written between 2014 and 2019, but for various reasons were still unreleased. Of course, it's still work to give a release its final form.
Well, a crazy year indeed - but in the meantime there are at least small rays of hope with regard to the outcome of the US election and a possible Corona vaccine. So let's hope that from now on we can look forward to happier times again...
NAM: Thank you very much dear Michael for the time you took for this very interesting interview. We wish you a peaceful Christmas season and a happy new year 2021.
Sven Hauke Erichsen
Northern Art Music
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