One nice summer day back in 2006 Reinhold Krämer, Wolfgang Bechtluft and myself (widely unknown as B4 SUNRISE, the only neo electro kraut art folk rock band ever to emerge from the provincial little town of Alzey, Germany) were invited to play a session at the barn of Martina's (then) "hippie commune" (Martina is a long-time friend of my wife and the barn had been rebuilt into a small "event hall" for parties etc.). So we and some friends met there and tried to play something decent, but messed it up completely and finally gave in quite dissatisfied.
Nevertheless, we had recorded the whole "happening" (in mono !!! ), and when I listened to it later, I had the idea to remix the material severly and turn it into an album that would "work". And what can I say?
Somehow I succeeded. Still, the result sounds "experimental" to say the least. But also quite fascinating in a way. Maybe King Crimson after some drinks too much incognito in some provincial american café.
Especially noteable is the three-part Berlin School-esque "Interplanetary Travel Agency", where I did produce ALL sounds just by transforming the last single short guitar note at the end of the recording - and all sounds means: drums, bass, effects, sequences, pads - anything that is audible throughout the whole track is a transformation of the same short, simple note, a feat of "remixing" I'm still a bit proud of, I confess...
Oh, and of course the album title is an anagram of "Martina's" (place).
P.S. On occasion of bringing the album to Bandcamp I decided to add a previously unreleased bonus track to the album, actually an unedited 17 minute excerpt from a later session in 2010 where the band was in (slightly) better shape.
Still, to make it very clear: this music is weird, and also harsh in places, and may not be what You expect from me if You only know some of the tamer of my more recent albums. Just to give You a fair warning.
P.P.S. "Martians" was our second full running album (there had also been an "EP" after our debut in 2003) and one of my reasons to put it together - actually without telling the rest of the band about it until it was done - was to bridge the waiting time for our next - and so far last - "regular" album, "Poison Tongue", on which we actually had started to work three years earlier and that would take us three more years to finish.
"Poison Tongue" will be on Bandcamp soon, too...
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