Album of the Week #50-2020 – “Reiseziel Mond” by Michael Brückner & Detlev Everling


Click here for the whole album

The music on this album is based on a concert, Detlev Everling and Michael Brückner performed in July 2019 on the roof of the observatory of Rodewisch, a small town in Saxony, Eastern Germany (near Dresden), as part of the additional attractions of “Mondkino”, an open-air cinema event organized by young filmmaker Matthias Ditscherlein, who planned to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing by showing the biopic “First Man” about Neil Armstrong. Only a few days before the event, the American distributor of the movie demanded that a special projection system had to be used to screen it, which turned out to be too expensive for the organizers to rent – thus they had to change to a different movie (also moon landing themed). The musical program however could not be changed anymore, and still featured the main theme of “First Man” and (the famous) audio samples of the moon landing…

Detlev Everling was offered this opportunity because Armstrong listened to Theremin music in space, and Detlev is – besides being a professional classical French Horn player and an electronic music composer in general – a Theremin player (so this instrument was the focus of the presentation). Detlev in turn invited Michael Brückner to do that gig together as a duo. Both composed new music, specifically for the event…

The original plan had been to just record the concert and release it as a live album in 2019.
However, technical flaws occurred in the recording, especially the Theremin was in many places distorted and/or seemed not as integrated with the rest of the sound as it had been the case at the actual event.
This, plus the fact that it didn’t own the rights for two-three pieces played live (and which had to be replaced by compositions of their own) led them to the decision to re-record the material, which – due to various reasons, including the COVID-19 crisis – took them another year.

Musically you can expect a nice and balanced mix of melodic EM (sometimes with a Berlin School touch), ambient, and more contemporary chill-out, with some cinematic/neoclassical moments here and some experimental excursions there (much in the vein of their first album “Sparrows” released in 2014, but then again a bit different, too…).

Being a studio album in the first place, still, a few live recordings from the concert and the main rehearsal on the day before were included…

The album and the song titles are all in German – and most of them are borrowed from titles of Science Fiction movies or novels from the former GDR, as a nod to that rather little known part of East German culture…

FYI, this were the compositions Michael and Detlev played in the concert and had to replace for this album:

“First Man Theme” by Justin Hurwitz (also originally using Theremin)
“The Divine Image” by Ralph Vaughn Williams (arranged for Theremin by Detlev Everling)
“Spiegel im Spiegel” by Arvo Pärt (arranged for synth and Theremin by Detlev Everling)
credits
released December 6, 2020

DETLEV EVERLING: synthesizer, keyboards, piano, french horn, Theremin, Cacophonator*

MICHAEL BRÜCKNER: synthesizer, keyboards, electronics, piano

* on “Sternendroge Tyrsolen”

* * *

All music composed, improvised, performed, recorded, mixed and mastered by Detlev Everling & Michael Brückner,2019 & 2020,
except the organ passage on ”Die Zusammenkunft”, which is based on a minuet by Jean Francois Dandrieu (1684-1740)