Production info
see also Track Info

With the encounter of "Tunsch" (AGR 011, 1999) and its soundscapes heavily dripping from the swiss hammered dulcimer - the Hackbrett - I mused, what if we keep this rootical instrument but add a more modern aspect to it than "just jazz". Roland (Schiltknecht), the hackbrett player, surprisingly took the bait and so we "visioned" the incredible vault of improvisations he had recorded while playing for months with the great santur master Alan Kushan. The santur is the persian ancestor of our national instrument - the hackbrett, which was kind of 'pushed away' with the arrival of the accordion at the end of the 19th century.
We culled 4 condensed hours of improvisations out of which I extracted 3 pieces which I 'moulded' into a time frame so to lay grooves and other soundscapes under it.
This result made us want to add other facettes to the blend. e.g. Roland's brother Gabriel brought a balafon tune to which the incredible instrumentalist Ljubo Majstorovic  added a balkanic "wing" (hence the title "Balakan").
I played with some remix ideas and picked one piece from Schildpatt (the Schiltknecht brother's former live-constellation) and the now 20 year old "Beacon of Hope". With the arrival of the voice, we thought it interesting to have - besides the alpine aspect - yet another guideline through the album, adding a voice to (almost) each tune and present like a "call" from different corners of the world.
While recording other bands (e.g. like the fantastic mongolian "Ensemble Khan Bogd"), I always try to obtain a contribution from such 'outer-worldish' recordings. Which is how the mongolian poem took birth (in "Kuh Sha")

Bi mongol Chun

Argaliin utaa borgilsan
Maltschnii gert törsön bi
Atar cheer nutgaa
Oelgie min gej boddog
Tsencher manan suunaglasan
Alsiin baraag shirteed
Tselger saichan nutgaa
Setgel bachdam charachad
Uleej baigaa salchi ni
Unseed ch baigaa jum schig
Oerschöölt eejiin min gar
Ileed ch baigaa jum schig
Enerengui saichan sanagdachad
Eleg zurch min dogdloj
Chosgui bayariin nulims
Chojor nudiig min burchdeg.

(a mongole sits on a mountain and contemplates his surrounding.
Thinks how beautiful home is. He feels the wind caressing his cheeks,
like his mother used to.
Tears fall in his joy.)

And as so often in the creative process, while producing "Manoeuvres d'automne"

(an industrial music project), I discovered a phenomenon, since when I keep my ears stiff all the time: we built a gigantic symphony of frogs, from swamp- and other nature_recordings. To do this at the time (in the early eighties), sampling was out of financial reach, so we really "built" the puzzle with individual tape snippets, printing it with industrial metal noise.
It is magic, how this frog-symphony is "unmuteable", it "adapts" to any tonality, to any groove and I keep using it every once so often... (check it out on "Canabeat") - or see "Kulu Hatha Mamnua".

Another fond memory is how the farsi rendering of 12th century poet Saadi took place (in the long version of "der mit dem Derwisch...") or the african dialogue in "Balakan". It's not sampling per se, but very well a contribution of fine musicians that passed here and left an indelebil mark. Yet it's meant exclusively to be "just music", there is no pretentious "cultural message", it's purely "a joyful noise" with an incredible amount of thoughtful details attached to each tune.
Obviously Roland wanted me to throw in a reggae, so I culled two ostinati from another recording he was making at the same time ("The Alpine SoundScapes Trio"), invited my old friends Rico and Steve Gregory, called in my neighbour (guitarist Hubert Osterwalder) and 'Sha-King Reggae' took place.

While plowing through my own vaults within the "hunt" of voices, I picked up that muezzin I recorded in Jeddah sometime in 1982 (and used on two previous recordings). It fitted perfectly on one of Kushan's improvisations. I "married" the voice to the tune with a simple bass-line that "uncoupled" the arab scale of the muezzin into a chorale-like blend.
However, with the explosion of the "Danish prophet-caricature drama" and the overall frenzy of the topic (...), I decided to better inquire before releasing such a 'dangerous' thing. I inquired via internet forums on the topic and was advised from other sides, too, to leave the muezzin out, because there might be people to take offense in this.
Although the sure (verse 30:39, Ar-Rum), which the muezzin recites, is a peaceful, non-fundamentalist aphorism to which anybody can relate, really, Quran or not Quran

وَمَا آتَيْتُم مِّن رِّبًا لِّيَرْبُوَ فِي أَمْوَالِ النَّاسِ فَلَا

 يَرْبُو عِندَ اللَّهِ وَمَا آتَيْتُم مِّن

 زَكَاةٍ تُرِيدُونَ وَجْهَ

 اللَّهِ فَأُوْلَئِكَ هُمُ الْمُضْعِفُونَ

But I decided against the use in order not to offend anybody of the muslim comunity. However, I didn't want to lose the 'melody' of the muezzin, which - as I was told - was not a big thing; a muezzin's chant has nothing to do with a 'melody' but is just 'an inflection'.
So I analysed all the consonants and the vowels of the muezzin, juggled and inversed them and sang this new 'esperanto derwish' myself, driving the voice through a megaphone to make it sound "authentical"...
Now, the muslim comunity rewarded me with compliments of how respectful I am, because I took care to inquire and respect the "tabu" (the Quran being 'put to music').
I mused that it's yet another eresy of this world: so I want to spread a peaceful message from a prophet but I take the risk to be assassinated by some wicked, narrow-minded fundamentalist. And opposed to this situation, I spread a meaningless/nonsensical stanza and earn respect? We don't have to wonder then, why people elect marshmallow for presidents!
The sure basically just "recycles" the zoroastrian thought "do and think good onto others and good will become onto yourself" (all this very long time before any Mohammed, any Koran and/or any Allah... (and most probably before - but certainly without - any fundamentalistic aproach of a doctrine)...

Anyway, there was another new thing I wanted to try out once: sampling today is common practice. It's said that it's only the 'genius' of finding the right bit that makes the samplist an 'artist'... I've never heard a collage of samples culled from just one 'idiom', e.g. one band. And there is one band I used to be very fond of, a band that triggered my interest in 'the difference' (of pop music), a band that I learnt to know personally because I organised a gig with them in Neuchâtel, a band called Gentle Giant.
I was always fascinated by the sheer amount of details they included in their pieces, so I mused with old friend Heinz Vetsch to sample some and mount a collage-like 'solo' of Gentle Giant. Out came this weird 11/8 funk ("Sha Zoo").

In any event, the project took a very versatile shape, perfectly corresponding to my beloved playground: a vehicle to feature an abundance of instrumental craft and diversity, a fun enough patch of songs to ask the most gifted players to join in.
As the modern technology has it, that we can record today so to speak "over the phone", I took advantage of my network-casting (...) - knowing a lot of friends and good musicians spread all over the planet - and had Barbara Dennerlein playing Hammond at her home in Münich, Sylvain Gagnon play a bass in HongKong, Matt Weeks record a track in England, Raphael Zweifel do me the cello in Paris etc.
A technical new world music, sort of... but I'm very happy to still have recorded most of it "face to face" here in my atelier.

With all these different techniques - besides the already widespread roster of musicians and 'styles' - I didn't want to leave out a 'live-experience'. One day, I invited old friend Lars Hollmer to come play in the village where I live. Since I never actually played with Lasse, we ventured that this would be a good occasion to fill in that missing gap (since the 30 years we know each other!). So we played in a restaurant around the corner for an hour or so - just two accordions - and enjoyed our musical meeting. Having recorded the gig, I found an excerpt that perfectly matched for a cross-over of two pieces (between the long version of "Der mit dem Derwisch" and "Tierfehd City").

Setting up a running order of all these very different pieces was yet another extraordinary discovery: many pieces seemed almost to "belong together" naturally, so I 'tightened the belt' and blended them together with smooth cross-fades inbetween; tunes that otherwise have nothing to do together...

...always carefully watching that the alpine roots is a prevailing tenor.