On Pebbles by Michael Brückner

So, "On Pebbles" - my 29th album...

Or more precisely, the one with the 'catalogue number' 029, but actually it's quite a mixed bag of tracks which were recorded between as early as 1997 and as late as 2005 (the bulk of the material though is from a period between 1999 and 2001).
These (mostly) originally single tracks are unified though by a common theme - all of them are excursions into the territory of: ROCK!
(Instrumental rock, I should add...)

Most of my listeners probably think of me as an ambient artist, and / or Klaus Schulze copycat; however - and especially the latter - were things I indulged in only rather late into my "career".

During those obscure early and middle years I had a strong wish to (also) make rock music, in the vein of bands that I always had admired (which would include most of the "classic" progressive or hardrock bands of the 70s, for example Deep Purple, Pink Floyd, King Crimson, Yes etc. but also some - in 1999 - more contemporary outfits like Ozric Tentacles, Lazuli, Tiamat and others - plus MANY more...).

For a number of reasons this turned out to be a difficult exercise for me, being an isolated synth nerd with crappy equipment, cobbling together tracks on my own in the ivory tower of my small bedroom "studio" whenever I found some time to.

So, at some point around 1999 I basically dropped the idea to emulate a "real" rock sound - however, from time to time (usually, when I got a new piece of equipment, like some guitar simulation soft synth etc.) I couldn't resist to return to it just for fun (which accounts for most of the "rock" tracks I produced in the new milennium...).

Let's take a closer look at the stuff stuffed into this album:

"On Pebbles" was assembled (more or less) in the form of this re-release in 2006, for my big promo CD box "No Single Single". And while I said above that most of the tracks on it were originally recorded without the context of a specific album, there is still a "core" of five tracks (tracks 2 - 6) which I recorded in close succession and always regarded as the embryo of a possible album; these are from 1999.

The opener, "Dupe" is from 1998 and - strangely - the studio counterpart of a fake live version which was recorded earlier (see below)

"Space Rock" was recorded in (late) 1999 (...the first track I ever used a software tool called "Loudness Maximizer" on, btw.) and "Porcupine" in 2000, after attending a concert by Trance Groove at the Open Ohr Festival in Mainz (which impressed me a lot).

"Get Your Feedback..." and "Thirrwisch" however were produced much later, in 2004 and 2005. They still seemed to fit in well into the overall concept.

So, the actual album "ends" after track 11, with 11 more "Bonus Tracks" to follow - mostly because many of these are a little less "progressive", but more in a traditional hard rock, blues rock - or even "stadium rock" vein.
I think they are good fun, anyway...

As You can see from the playlist, there are (Ho-HOO!) two groups of bonus tracks: the original ones, and then four new ones which I just added on occasion of this re-release.

Which, by the way, gave me the opportunity to finally include also the "live" version of "Dupe" - the very first track which I had produced in 1997, after switching from 4-track tape to harddisc recording.
In 2007 I had decided to skip it, due to restrictions of the CD running time - but there's no reason to omit it in a download format. It also gives the whole package a nice finish, now it's a closing circle...

And to be completely accurate: compared to the version included in "No Single Single", one of the original bonus tracks (called "Lasagna Blues") is missing; actually it is missing literally: when I wanted to upload it, I couldn't find it anymore - it's vanished from my archives...

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So, above I said that in 1999 I dropped the idea to produce rock music as a solo musician; however, a couple of the tracks which now form this album - in the shape of a mixtape which I gave to keyboarder and singer Reinhold Krämer in 1999 - led to his invitation to form a new band project with together, which also would include guitar players Wolfgang "Wolle" Bechtluft and (initially also) Gerd Weyhing - the largely obscure artrock trio B4 SUNRISE! So, I still was involved in rock music until 2010 - and more recently I am once more, with another trio called P'FAUN. However, in a different constellation, probably much more "real".

So in 2007, it seemed very appropriate to close the original version of this album with a track I recorded with Wolfgang Bechtluft at some point in 2001 (I think). Wolle an me used to meet regularily back then and recorded many a session, tracks, or sound experiments - some of which found their way on B4 SUNRISE albums, others on our one duo album together, and still others, like this one, ended up as bonus tracks. It's not the worst, though, not at all...

P.S. ...can anyone guess where the title comes from? ;-)

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Tracklist

1.	Dupe	3:54

2.	Cross Reference	2:32

3.	Satellite Blues	5:11

4.	A Quarter To Five	7:06

5.	Semantic Problems	4:50

6.	A Fast Ride	0:58

7.	Space Rock	4:28

8.	Seclusions	1:49

9.	Get Your Feedback (To The Ground)	5:01

10.	Thirrwisch	3:32

11.	Porcupine	5:33

12.	Another Pink In The Floyd - Parts 1 & 2 (Bonus Track)	7:45

13.	Pig Organ Rock (Bonus Track)	1:46

14.	Outhouse (Bonus Track)	4:22

15.	Uncle Shuncle (Bonus Track)	2:06

16.	Barefoot (Bonus Track)	2:07

17.	Don't Try To Be Funky - Jam Session (Bonus Track)	7:25

18.	Doll Man Brotherz feat. Wolle Bechtluft (Bonus Track)	3:26

19.	Three Chords (2018 Extra Bonus Track)	4:40

20.	Right Under (2018 Extra Bonus Track)	2:51

21.	Left Over (2018 Extra Bonus Track)	4:33

22.	Dupe - Live (2018 Extra Bonus Track)	6:23

Credits

released February 20, 2000

Michael Brückner: keyboards, synthesizer, programming

Special Guest on "Doll Man Brotherz":
Wolfgang Bechtluft: guitar

License