glitterbug

Our friends at bln.fm had me over for a long studio talk about me, my current album and projects, as well as a lot of personal things. So if you feel like listening to me talking for an hour straight, tune in!

Listen to the stream on their website if you don’t live in Berlin and thus can’t receive the radio signal, on either Tuesday 25th of May at 8pm // Saturday 29th of May at 4pm // Sunday 31st of May 9pm.

“Wenn ein Künstler heutzutage ein Album veröffentlicht, ist das schon mit einem hohen Risiko verbunden. Die Verkaufszahlen stehen meist nicht mehr in einem angemessenen Verhältnis zu den Produktionskosten. Wenn es sich dann auch noch um ein anspruchsvolles Konzeptalbum mit künstlerischem Anspruch handelt, ist der Zugang für den Normal-Endverbraucher fast schon zu hoch. „Kunst? Da muss man sich ja anstrengen!“

Till Rohmann alias Glitterbug hat mit “Privilege” diesen Mai ein solches Album abgeliefert. Einen Menschen, der so gekonnt Emotionen in elektronischer Musik fassen und zu einem fragilen Klanguniversum verweben kann, wollen wir nicht mit einer “einfachen” Rezension ziehen lassen. Deshalb hat Tim Thaler Glitterbug ins Studio eingeladen und mit ihm über sein Leben, seinen Werdegang und seine Einflüsse geredet. Herausgekommen ist eine einstündige Reise durch Glitterbugs Welt, durch seine Projekte und das ganz private Leben mit Kunst und Musik.”

Amidst the possibly most stressful period prior to the release of ‘Privilege’ in four weeks, i thought to share a few updates.

I have been awfully busy with remixing, and, even more importantly, mixing endless podcasts for some of the large platforms out there. Watch out for some nice surprises… mixing the podcasts was an especially wonderful thing, since I have been mostly listening to ‘Privilege’ while finalizing the album, and to endless rehearsals for the new show that we’ll start touring with in May. So going through endless promos and fishing for exciting new music was an amazing treat after all that Glitterbug music…

In the meanwhile, the vinyl edition of ‘Privilege’ came in:

It’s a hand numbered, strictly limited (to 500 copies) double vinyl. No. 1-360 have the beautiful CD booklet as part of the package. The vinyl edition has a bonus track that won’t be available digitally or elsewhere, and since we could not fit the whole 20 tracks / 2,5 hrs of music of the CD on vinyl, everybody that purchases the vinyl (and sends us a picture of the hand written number and of the vinyl in a beautiful surrounding of their choice) will receive a download link to the whole CD album.

We have many great shows in the queue for this summer (among them Spot Festival/ Denmark, Off Centre Festival Amsterdam, c/o pop Cologne, MIGZ Festival Moscow, and Oslo Live Festival), so make sure to check the dates section every once in a while and come visit us in one of our shows!

The worst period of them all has started: the waiting period. My next album is done and ready, printed and stocked and sent out to journalists and reviewers, and at the moment there is very little to do for me, other than waiting in suspense and curiosity to see what the rest of the world will think of this epic double album I have been working on for more than a year. There is a bunch of other really exciting projects I am involved in at the moment- I am writing a score for a film, working on a remix for my most favorite Danish band ever, play with my cats and endless other things- but the main project that did not let me breathe for such an intense period is done and settled. Strange feeling!

But amidst all this waiting, I finally have time to listen to music that is NOT my from next album or written by me, and to take a deep breath and to re-discover some parts of the world that were lost out of sight amidst the isolation that intensive production periods come with.

And in the past few days I rediscovered a few things that have been unbelievable influential in my life and in my artistic upbringing if i may call it that way, and that still love and admire whole-hardetly.

So let’s call this the beginning of a new blog series: discovery / rediscovery.

I would like to start with Meredith Monk. I first discovered her music on a CD in 1987, at the troubled aged of 15… and even though at the time I could not find the right words to describe why this music touched me so much, it did and I immediately started buying everything of hers I could find. Until today, some of her works make me cry. I am not sure if I can relate to her newer stuff all the much, but ‘DolmenMusic’, ‘Book of Days’ and ‘Turtle Dreams’ remain three of my most favorite records ever, besides the materials she released on Wergo.

A few days back, I randomly stumbled upon a documentary that Peter Greenaway did in 1983: it’s called “Four American Composers”, and the part on Meredith Monk can even be found on youtube, strange but thankfully true. I sadly never saw her performing live, but to see her talking about her work and to see excerpts of her performances strangely made me understand myself a little more, and why i could always connect to her work and music so much. Even though it does not do her work justice to watch it in shitty youtube quality, it might be really hard to get your hands on the VHS tapes of the original series, so- enjoy the movie! It’s incredible. And incredibly touching.

I wanted to take the opportunity to wish everyone a beautiful new year from California (it’s Rosh Hashana today, that’s also the reason that I am here- to meet up with some friends and Ronni and her family) and thank everyone that made the past year such an amazing period for me and us at c.sides.

‘Supershelter’, my last album, got so much love and support internationally, I had the opportunity to perform in all these amazing places around the globe, we had at a blast at our last c.sides Festival in Tel Aviv this February  (against all odds, meaning, the war in Gaza and the elections one day before we opened the festival), we had great and well attended shows with our installations (for example the Jewish Museum Frankfurt), and I feel so very very fortunate and privileged for having the opportunity and freedom to do all these things. All of this is pretty overwhelming and beyond anything I could have hoped for.

As you might know, I am taking a performance break right now, and am working on my next album (and things are going really really well).

I’ll be back on the road (and in the club) starting on the 23rd of October at the amazing Insomnia Festival in Tromsø, Norway. After that we’ll (we: Glitterbug and Ronni Shendar with the joint A/V live show) play at the Elevate Festival in Graz/ Austria (24th of October), and then we’ll be off to a performance tour in India with our dear beloved friends Andy Vaz and Murat Tepeli. Post India we go directly to Poland to perform at the Plateaux Festival in Torun on the  21st of November, and more exciting things, projects and gigs are cooking up… I’ll keep you posted.

If you are in Cologne, come visit me at the Ouest Bar on the 10th of October and celebrate the release of my next 12”, the ‘Dim Flares EP’ (coming out on the 12th of October), with me.

Until then: love and peace from California…

As some of you might know, i am at the Dancity Festival in Foligno/ Italy. The first thing i noticed when i came in was that the Italians obviously used a picture of our beloved cat Pnina for some strange name tagging on kittens campaign in the airport:

Is it something about nameless cats not accepting borders? I have to work on my Italian i guess.

I am trying really hard to oppress the memory of the 2 hour car ride from the airport in Rome to Foligno… the scenery was (or better: would have been) breathtaking, sadly our driver had this strange desire to exceed the speed limits by at least 100 km/h. I was in the same car with some of the other artists that i would later on play with, the amazing Juju & Jordash and legendary Move D, and it was quite a bonding experience for all of us. Scared for life as Tracy Moffat would say…

But once we arrived, we met such wonderful and amazing and dedicated people that made us forget the car ride immediately. Thank you all in the Dancity organization for making this such a great festival experience for all of us!

Sadly, it was raining all day and evening, so the outdoors stage where us three were supposed to perform at was closed, and we had to move the performance to the indoors. And if that would have not been enough, Italians have no clue how to deal with rain in the summer, so there were less people in the audience as anticipated by the organizers. Such a pity, such a great line up! I hope that everybody that did not show up last night is banging their heads against the wall. Tonight is going to be amazing too, so i hope the crowd will come and that the weather will be a little nicer today. Look:

As always, i did not take many pictures of the venue or performances, i guess we were all pretty stressed about moving our equipment all the time… here is our poor little stage that drowned in the evil rain:

and the inside stage for the seated performances:

But this was our hotel garden:

and the scenic view from my roof top balcony (which even has a private Jahcoozi…):

While walking through this nice little town, we found a huge “Hello Kitty” store- and i totally need those suitcases:

Here is an example for a very special snack bar:

Activities took place all over the city, sometimes using locals as awkward decoration:

and yes, we also had a lot of coffee:

First of all, sorry for not writing for such a long time… it’s been a rather calm period, at least from the outside, i have mostly been in the studio, working on new materials (there is a new EP on c.sides coming in September, and: a new album in the making too), and Ronni Shendar and I have been busy rehearsing and working on our brand new show, that we will start touring with next week.

So, I am about to leave our beautiful cozy studio and to start to mingle with the real world again. I am sure that there will be a lot of amazing stories to be shared… Next week, we will start in Italy with the MUV Festival in Firence (Florence), after that I am very excited to be playing at the Dancity Festival, and in July i will be in Berlin and Beijing… thats right, i get to play in China!

So, stay tuned via the dates/gigs page and watch out for many new interviews, articles, videos and photos from all these amazing places, that I will start posting shortly. I can’t wait!!

As you might have noticed, not much happened here after my return from the last c.sides festival. But actually i have been quite busy in the studio. I am finishing up a new EP (most likely under the title “We Could”), probably released still before the summer break, and Mathias Schaffhäuser of Ware asked me to work on a remix for his last (and amazing!) album, “Unequal Equality”. Ah, and in addition i remixed myself for the last and final “Supershelter” release…