back in 2009, i happened to come across an ems vcs-3 mk. 1 "the putney" which was for sale in a place not too far away from where i was living. the ems had been on my personal wish list for ages, not only for its jean michel jarre connotations but primarily because of the influence this funny little box used to have on tangerine dream's early work, not to mention eno and pink floyd, of course.

i subsequently used it on a variety of albums, most notably my own "cambrium" live recording (which was, in fact, the first recording i ever made using the ems) and "lament" with markus reuter, as well as ['ramp]'s "return" and "astral disaster" albums. on these albums, i used the ems for creating textural backdrops and abstract-sounding dronescapes on which i would build the musical narrative.

for ['ramp]'s "wilmersdorf" album from 2018 i created several hours of textural drone work with the ems which were mainly self-generative patches and feedback occuring within the instrument. when listening to these recordings, i figured they were compositions in their own right and should be moved to the foreground a little more. i subsequently took the recordings -- which were done either as one-take live improvisations, edited in protools, or multi-track recordings with sound layered on top of yet another layer of sound -- and assembled this album from roughly three hours worth of material.

crucial to the entire creative process was the fact that i did not use any digital reverb or delay units but, instead, i relied on various tape delays and spring reverbs. in addition to that, i made use of tape loops rather than my trusty old lexicon jamman or echoplex loopers -- the only dedicated looper i used was the electro harmonix 16-second digital delay because of its sound-mangling qualities. everything was recorded to either analogue two-track stereo tape, four- or eight-track multi-tracks, and mixed down to stereo tape. the type of tape i used for the biggest part was basf sm 900 and sm 911, with a bit of agfa pem 468 used sparingly here and there. using tape for sound manipulation rather than digital sampling systems gave the textural work a totally different and more tactile and physical quality due to the character the tape used would impart on the final result.

the final album was assembled in protools to produce one seamless track of 74 minutes, divided into eleven parts.

enjoy.