DIE ROTE ERDE came to life in the summer of 2004. I don't remember the exact date now, as it's all shrouded in tons of marijuana smoke, projects, and bad memory if something is not written on the computer or on a simple piece of paper.
Anyway, the summer of 2004 was when I figured out I want to move beyond rock music and pop music, and structured music, and move towards the improvised realm of sound and noise.
I discovered
Maurizio Bianchi and
Merzbow that summer. It was a big surprise and revelation for a fan of Hawkwind, Black Sabbath, Amon Düül II, Nirvana, etc... to discover what you could do with extreme and industrial music. Of course, the space and improvised nature of my rock music roots remained intact.
In 2004 I was already out of my project with Mateusz Nowicki, so I was free to experiment alone in a small room (my first "home studio") with my guitar and a computer. I recorded one CD-R, and that was it for Die Rote Erde for almost 10 years.
I nearly forgot about my CD-R from 2004, but the name Die Rote Erde reoccured again in 2013, and this time I wanted to make more guitar-centered experimental music. So, I recorded the second Die Rote Erde album 2013/2014, and released it in 2014 on bandcamp.
Around 2014/2015 I discovered more interesting artists, like
Angus MacLise,
Yuri Morozov, and
Éliane Radigue. They proved to be the creative fluxus fueling Die Rote Erde for quite some time.
But it wasn't until 2018, the magic year for Die Rote Erde, that I really knew what I wanted to do sonically for the project, and also with the vision and artwork and artistic direction.
Moving back to my rock roots, but in the context of
Kosmische Musik: Kluster, Zweistein, the Chamsin soundtrack, early Tangerine Dream, studio-as-instrument by Can, etc, I decided to make Die Rote Erde a combination of space pulsations and extreme noise. Much alike imagining how would Hawkwind's Space Ritual sound only with the electronic devices left in the mix.
Die Rote Erde will celebrate its
20th anniversary next year. I never thought this name, this path, and this project, could last for 20 years. But, obviously it did. This might mean a proper re-release of the earliest materials, new material, and further archive materials appearing on the project's bandcamp.
Die Rote Erde was always on the experimental side of things, and it's not easy for pioneers. So, being a small local pioneer in Poznań, Poland, I never imagined I would last 20 years making music and noise nobody really wants to hear. Or maybe
YOU want to hear it? If so, check out the bandcamp and float on.
