Pondskater: Way Out Ouest
in cooperation with Toplap Düsseldorf
Since 2019, Düsseldorf musician Pondskater has been busying himself with live coding – a technique that concentrates on the writing of source code and the use of interactive programming in improvised form. His second album “Way Out Ouest” documents this development. Pondskater’s preference for downbeat electronica in a dark habit shows more than ever before on six IDm influenced tracks.
Now, he presents the album, created in cooperation with Düsseldorf photographer Katja Stuke (cover art, films), with an audiovisual performance at the FFT. Support: DJ Edelescort.
Ever since Pondskater has been working within live coding environment Tidal Cycles, his productions have increasingly become permutating one-pattern pieces. Sometimes, odd metre time signatures break in conflict while flowing in easy grooves at other points. Without touching the dance floor, overlapping patterns of acoustic percussion and deep bass become entangled in the branches of erratic voices telling us of worlds they do not explain. The emitters remain undetected.
cast
Participants: Pondskater (Music, live) Katja Stuke (Cover art and films, preproduced) DJ Edelescort (DJ, live).
Musician Axel Ganz was born in Gelsenkirchen in 1965. He has been active in various musical projects and bands since the 1980s, among them Brüllklee, Kabbahri, Spalanzanis Töchter, Pam Pam Club, and the Dativ Boys. He produced scores for short and experimental films and worked in theatre (Düsseldorf Schauspielhaus, Theater Oberhausen, HAU Berlin, Theaterhaus Gessnerallee Zurich). He has been experimenting with techniques for algorithmic music production since 2009, releasing experimental electronic music under the alias of Pondskater. He founded “Toplap Düsseldorf” with Markus van Well in 2018, a network, initially acting locally, for generative art, algorithmic music and sound art in the digital realm, connecting musicians and organising concerts and workshops. Axel Ganz lives in Düsseldorf and in Telavi, Georgia.
credits
Supported by an artist stipend as part of the North Rhine-Westphalian Corona Support. In cooperation with: Toplap Düsseldorf