Sesamsamen by F.S.BLUMM

This album is about approaching a musical idea from various sides. There are mainly two pieces on this album:
one is ‘coop comp’ (which stands for cooperative composition)
the other is ‘leben läuft’.

During the last seven years I made a couple of solo-releases under the name of f.s.blumm wherein I always invited a small number of single musicians to play their wonderful instruments for me. One day I noticed that all these people never really met each other on my records and so I had the idea of making a big party, by inviting all of them at once to create something like ‘a symphony of friends’ .

As a basis I took my guitar and wrote a composition inspired by ethiopian-rhythms. I did a ‘general-midi’-version of it, which I burned on CD and then I gave both (the CD and the score) to my friends, telling them: “You can do whatever you want: stick to the notes, do a field-recording, freak out… but the closer you stay with the example the better everything will be combineable, I guess.”

In the end I received 10 beautiful contributions, reaching from one minute to one hour, from sparse melodies to rich arrangements. Semuin and I combined all these pieces in countless ways; I added some lines here and there. We didn’t suceed in doing the big symphony, but we did a lot of overtures. So the 'coop comp' deals with different individual aproaches to a musical theme, working on various statements on a statement, phrasing thoughts.

On this album I invited two more artists, artists with whom I always wanted to work with, because I felt deeply connected to their specific speech in my musical ways: one is Björn Kuhligk, the other is Yumiko Matsui:
Björn Kuhligk wrote three texts combined under the name ‘leben läuft’, which inspired me to write some music which is heard here in three different versions. The task was to heighten the two disciplines by giving each other space to unfold (appreciating). Listening. Answering. Projection surfaces. Association surfaces.
In the end Yumiko Matsui did all the wonderful artwork.

F.S.Blumm

„The man makes some damn charming music.“
(pitchfork)