>> If "Dispel Dances" was the journey deep into the heart of Anstam - then "Stones and Woods" is the diary of living there. <<
Prologue
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"During the last year I often explained in interviews why I started using digital electronic setups for producing my music back in the mid 90's. I was never interested in any kind of analog hardware (in fact I never owned any hardware synthesizer, effect processor or drum machine at all) and at that time I wasn't interested in knob turning, pattern based techno music either. I was interested in composition. I was interested in notes. And at that time the computer became a wonderful substitution for my own little orchestra."
"At first it was a very cheap sounding orchestra because I started with an Amiga 500 and a sample cartridge that could only sample in 8 bit quality - but that was o.k. because I had my focus on the notes, on the composition and in addition it was the best school that I could go through because I really had to learn to work with sound, to bring life to these dead cold data information. And that was exactly the issue I worked on the first moment I used the computer. I've tried to bring some of the elegance and organic of a physically played instrument with me into the electronically composed music. And at a time where there was no Battery 3 humanization tool or no 14GB Kontakt drum library with 127 velocity layers - that was really something you had to work on."
"I know three releases in electronic music in the mid 90's which did exactly what I tried to do, so that I could build up a strong believe that it simply does not matter with what setup you work as a musician or composer - you can always make your own rules, even in electronic club-based music. These three releases were Experimental Audio Research's "The Köner Experiment", Mike Ink's "Polka Trax" and Squarepusher's "Hard Normal Daddy". All three releases add their own original twist to electronic club music and achieved a new state of wholeheartedness."
"So, there I was in 1997. Deeply inspired by the unbelievable coolness of Steve Reich, the inapprehensible progressive nature of all the Frank Zappa stuff, the brutal epicness of Norwegian Black Metal and these new degrees of freedom in electronic music. It was a good time. No boundaries. No genres. No rules. No blogs. No Soundcloud. No Facebook. Just me, myself and I - plus the will to do something worthwhile."
"Over the last 10 years I've lost that state of mind a little. I've studied, made and exhibit contemporary fine art, did concerts and released music. The things I did became more and more publicly aware which means that my decisions became more and more colored by my social surroundings. Which is a normal thing and nothing to worry about but I started to miss the feelings I had when I made music as a kind of an isolated self-experiment. So, I decided to get that back and I started with the Anstam debut album 'Dispel Dances'. I started an expedition to search for that euphoric state of mind that I had in 1997 and I was searching for it in Anstam."
My debut album "Dispel Dances" was about doing the first journey, about getting somewhere new and about leaving things behind. All the things Anstam could be already flashed up in "Dispel Dances" but this album was about going inevitably towards the big unknown, with all good or evil it could bring."
"Stones and Woods"
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"The second Anstam album "Stones and Woods" is not about searching anymore, it is about observing. It is about being there. Deep in the heart of Anstam. Standing there and adapting to all the Anstam mannerisms. It is about becoming a part of it."
"The whole dynamic of "Stones and Woods" is about self contained cycles. A day. A year. Who knows? But there is always a beginning and an end. Every one of the nine songs is completely worked out, a solitary significant document."
"I've structured "Stones and Woods" like an 80's pop album. Not to many songs - but every song tells his own story. There are dance songs, sentimental songs, challenging songs, the whole circus. And it's much more fragile than "Dispel Dances". The "DD" album was full of pride and very adamant in it's on rigorousness. I guess "Stones and Woods" is much more open to the idea of being introverted, emotional and sensitive. That makes Anstam much more complete now and offers more soft spots to connect with."
"But of course it is still an experimental album. Like all the other Anstam material it has a fundamental progressive approach and it definitely gives no easy answers, but it is approachable and it has that kind of elegance and organic again that brings life to those dead could data information and turns it into something self-evident like stones and woods and dusts and me."
"Thank you."
Lars Stöwe // Anstam
