Wolfgang Seidel
Friendly Electrons
GERMANY KARLRECORDS KR114 CD (2024)
Excellent set of recent electronic / synthesizer experiments from Seidel, veteran player from the 1970s Krautrock group Ton Steine Scherben, friend of Conrad Schnitzler, and one who attended the famous Zodiak Arts Lab in Berlin at the end of the 1960s.
When we first started this magazine in the 1990s, I was just starting to discover more about so-called “Krautrock” and “Kosmische” music, and indeed so was the rest of the music-loving world – CD reissues were abundant, commentaries were published by expert music journalists, books about the history started to appear, and we would always relish learning more about the evolution and background to the music. It was particularly interesting to hear the level-headed views of Conrad Schnitzler and his take on Tangerine Dream – he remained resolutely unimpressed by most so-called experimental music, and would dismiss the later T.D. records by Edgar Froese and company without hesitation, which makes Electronic Meditation such an exception. Wolfgang Seidel absorbed some influences from his friend Schnitzler, not least the level-headed no-nonsense attitude he clearly has, but he also inherited the “cassette suitcases” which Schnitzler had built for his famous cassette concerts; even though the cassettes later became CDs, the principle was the same – that of productive sound generation from very modest resources. The expectation was that he should act as custodian for the suitcases, and also continue using them to perform concerts.
When Seidel started to mingle with the Zodiak Arts Lab people in the late 1960s, he was already experimenting with contact mics and tape echo, pretty much creating an interesting sound from any physical object he could strike with his drumsticks; like many others, he too had heard the Forbidden Planet soundtrack by this time, and was bewitched with an electronic vision of the future of the culture. However, by 1970 pretty much everyone in Germany wanted to be in a rock band, and Seidel was recruited as the drummer into Ton Steine Scherben with the guitarist and lead singer Rio Reiser. By Seidel’s account, they were popular; to him they represented the voice of wide political unrest and dissent, probably active since May 1968 across Europe, and he notably points out “it wasn’t just students” who were doing the protesting. Connoisseurs of Kraut and Prog history tend to align Ton Steine Scherben with the two other major political ranting groups, Floh De Cologne (cerebral sound poets) and Checkpoint Charlie (shouty and punk-rockish), although stylistically the groups are quite dissimilar. Seidel refuses any nostalgia or delusions about this early 1970s incarnation: “today I read that the band was a legend. Back then, they were one thing above all: poor”. In other words, Ton Steine Scherben wanted to change the world, but they were still skint. Seidel also grew tired of playing the same repertoire and reciting the same slogans; “you have to have the freedom to do…whatever interests you,” was the life lesson he learned.
This brings us to the recordings on Friendly Electrons; it’s neither the experiments from Zodiak Arts Lab, nor out-takes from his 1970s work with Ton Steine Scherben, but studio pieces made quite recently; some of them may date from the lockdown time, or come from Seidel’s archives, or both. Some are apparently based on earlier ideas and sketches. While you might have been expecting a set of stern-faced electronic noise in the Schnitzler / Kluster mode, in fact this set is improvisation mixed with electronics; there are percussion and piano elements, as well as the pure synthesized sounds. This reflects Seidel’s improvising performances from the 2000s onwards, when he drummed in free-jazz and improv groups, including with Hans Joachim Irmler and Alfred Harth. As pointed out in Thomas Herbst’s notes (a friend of Seidel’s, who compiled this item), two things come over very strongly; one of them is the very free-spirited approach of Seidel, an instinctive player who has no need to make formal compositions, but simply starts playing and recording, then refining as he goes along, through a process of editing and selection. The second thing is the sheer sense of optimism; the music, and the album title, show clearly that Seidel loves the modern world, and his view of Battersea Power Plant on the opening cut is a vivid sound portrait of this most singular monument to modernist architecture and imaginative design. Much more upbeat and listenable too, than that rotten Pink Floyd LP with the inflatable flying pig.
As a footnote, be sure to investigate the Live at the Zodiak Berlin 1968 album by Human Being, to learn more about this moment in Berlin’s cultural history and the spark that led to the Krautrock explosion. Having written that, I wish Seidel himself were here now to reproach me for that sort of hyperbole! From 10th June 2024.