A musical revisitation of Andrei Tarkovsky’s timeless and more than ever contemporary movie, asking questions about man's faith, psyche and trance in a post-industrial world...

Quotation from Lao Tse "Tao Te Ching“ (as featured in the film).

1. Janek Schaefer
2. Giuseppe Falivene
3. Insin
4. Shifted
5. Sam Kdc
6. Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe & Ariel Kalma
7. Malvern Brume
8. Warren Ellis
9. Lucrecia Dalt
10. Siavash Amini
11. Dadub
12. DJ Shadow, Chino Amobi, Dedekind Cut
13. Anna von Hausswolff
14. Clément Edouard
15. Ahmad
16. DYL, DB1
17. Land Trance
18. Katatonic Silentio
19. Pinkcourtesyphone

www.johneckhardt.de/basswald

Basswald #18: Stalker

dope hip hop all female MCs!!

1. Tommy Genesis
2. Dua Saleh & Bas
3. Leikeli47
4. Young M.A feat. Fivio Foreign
5. Femme It Forward & Rapsody
6. Tommy Genesis
7. Bbymutha
8. Dua Saleh
9. Chynna
10. Nadia Rose
11. Hoodcelebrityy
12. Lady Leshurr
13. Chynna & Junglepussy
14. Princess Nokia
15. Lady Leshurr
16. Leikeli47
17. FLOHIO
18. Nicki Minaj
19. Bbymutha
20. Junglepussy
21. Cardi B
22. City Girls
23. Princess Nokia
24. FLOHIO

Basswald #19: Nailz

fresh tracks that otherwise won’t fit too easily - carefully arranged into a one hour flowerbed of beats, bass and fuzz. urban gardening!

1. Lifted
2. Leila
3. Sibla
4. Meuko! Meuko!
5. Sectra
6. Fumu
7. Oyisse
8. Huxley Anne
9. Aya
10. Only Now
11. Makossiri feat Blaq Bandana
12. Henry Greenleaf
13. Kinlaw & Franco Franco
14. Trill
15. Nolife
16. Cristian Vogel
17. Gantz
18. Menzi
19. Slikback
20. LDWG
21. Scotch Rolex ft. MC Yallah

Basswald #20: Seedbomb

loads of newer jungle music around! but can you keep it real AND fresh unruly? nice up the sound!

Basswald #21: Advanced Forestry

Sun-scorched set of hallucinogenic, mostly ambient tracks!

1. Ahmad
2. Valentina Magaletti
3. Dedekind Cut
4. Siavash Amini
5. Helm
6. Shifted
7. Rhythm & Sound
8. Best Available Technology
9. Hoshina Anniversary
10. Eomac
11. Significant Other
12. Best Available Technology
13. Las
14. J. Albert
15. Taylor Slow
16. Only Now

Basswald #22: Mirage

John Eckhardt – Taffel, Tramp Orgel, Mbira, Alto Recorder, Harpeleik

The material, the musical instrument in front of me, represents all that is not me. It is my environment, and together we form a living organism. We rely on each other, and live and die together. Our behavior and responses to each other are existential and express a balance of power between us.

I wish to restore some of this mutuality with a collection of instruments that literally came to me over the years. I am looking for these instruments to play me as much as I play them. I would like them to explore me, tell me something about who and where I am in the moment of action. I invite them to have the same physical, cultural and magical powers over me as I have over them. 

Their varying, unchanged degrees of decay tell about their previous lives, and their cultures and applications ring through their material, build and sonic characteristics. The musical substance emerges from the elementary gestures countless others have performed before me - touch a key or string, breathe through a flute, make air flow from a bellows with my feet.

I work in three time zones simultaneously. Part real, part imaginary, they constantly overlap each other, and make up a fragile landscape that I explore. To be granted access to this wondrous landscape, I commit to being mortal, naked and ultimately edible as everything else in the world around me - a world that becomes invisible when I reach a certain degree of familiarisation and control that overwrite more archaic states of discovery.

The first of these time spans lies before agriculture, urban life and writing. Viewed from today, it represents a primal mindset that relies on sensory awareness, intuition and practical experience. Material, reasoning and actions seem simple, but are enmeshed in complex relations to the environment and to small, nomadically living groups.

The second lies in the near future. We have all the tools and knowledge we have ever dreamed of, but our quest for individual and economical progress has led us full circle back into our caves. The overpowering natural forces outside seem very similar to those we have tried so hard to overcome during the last 10.000 years. Labour and innovation are taken over by machines we created, while we are forced to accept our evolutional heritage, potential, limits and obligations. We are challenged to restore degenerated hunter-gatherer sensibilities: to understand and connect with whatever it is that we find before us or in our environment - people, animals, spirits, things such as musical instruments - and the fateful nature of our connections to them.

The third point in time lies anywhere within the 40 milliseconds between a sensual perception and the onset of its intellectual processing. Hearing serves as one of the most direct gateways into this zone in which instinct precedes rationality. It is full of evolutionary dispositions shared over millions of years, and particularly vital whenever we encounter the unknown. Mostly subconscious circuits, such as curiosity, desire or fear, are both universal and individual, as their distribution characterizes personality and also culture.

Rather than improvisations or compositions, my musical activities are audio-manual strategies that allow or even require me to inhabit these zones. I am looking for specific feedback loops between what I hear and what my next move is. Ideally, the succession and interweaving of listening and action are so dense that they turn into a constant stream that starts to form a larger organism, leading a life of its own.

The findings I bring from the zone are fed into the echo chamber - a mixing desk of culture, memory and imagination. Through repeated deep listening and experimentation with overdubs, structures and stories are allowed to emerge and coagulate around each instrument. In the end, I feel more like a witness to how works come into existence from ephemeral, unexpected synergies.

05 Harpeleik Kraut

03 Mbira Bow

01 Taffel Prolog

Agile, meditative, with a stunning ear for space and details - the underground half time drum’n bass sound as first championed some 10 years ago by labels such as osiris, samurai or later UVB-76 (I threw in a few classics). Like leaves on a tree, it keeps evolving under the radar into ever new permutations that never stopped to excite me!

1. Entire & Istota
2. DB1
3. Sciama
4. Entire
5. DYL & DB1
6. Forest Drive West
7. DYL
8. Blood Trust
9. Pessimist
10. Ruffhouse
11. Mark Kloud
12. Itti
13. Torn
14. Overlook
15. Theme

Basswald #23: Avatar

One hour of lowered heart rates and minimized metabolism!

1. Mønic
2. Pinkcourtesyphone
3. Giuseppe Falivene
4. Anna von Hausswolff
5. Leila Bordreuil
6. Thomas Köner
7. Kevin Richard Martin
8. Robert Takahashi Crouch
9. Laura Cannell
10. Shifted
11. Yann Novak
12. Eric Holm
13. Christof Kurzmann / Burkhard Stangl
14. Giorgio Netti / Marcus Weiss

Basswald #25: Hybernate

spring time spring reverb! centered around a few iconic tracks from the UK around 1978-85, this is a super-rare venture into a curious twilight zone between punk, dub, industrial and wave.

1. African Head Charge
2. Clive Field Marshall
3. Blackbeard
4. A Certain Ratio
5. Lifetones
6. Killing Joke
7. Dome
8. The Flying Lizards
9. African Head Charge
10. Owiny Sigoma Band
11. Hanna Mekonnen
12. Family Fodder
13. The Raincoats
14. New Age Steppers
15. The Pop Group
16. Anika
17. HTRK
18. George T & Johnny Aux
19. Angkorwat
20. Disjecta
21. Gil.Barte
22. Dome
23. Jonnine

Basswald #26: Rites of Springs

trippy new ruffidge from africa!

1. Rian Treanor & Ocen James
2. Ennanga Vision
3. Metal Preyers
4. Rian Treanor & Ocen James
5. Metal Preyers
6. Ecko Bazz
7. Nakibembe Embaire Group with Gabber Modus Operandi & Wahono
8. Po
9. Toya Delazy
10. Ennanga Vision
11. Authentically Plastic
12. Mc Yallah feat Ratigan Era
13. Afrorack
14. Lila Tirando a Violeta & Sueuga Kamau
15. Dj Skothan
16 Phelimuncasi (Prod by DJ Scoturn)
17. MaRiiO
18. Makossiri
19. Toya Delazy
20. Makossiri
21. Authentically Plastic
22. Nakibembe Embaire Group with Gabber Modus Operandi & Wahono
23. Slikback
24. Ecko Bazz, Biga Yut (Ekhe Rework)
25. Slikback

Basswald #27: Afrodelic

after a series of more specifically themed editions, the time is right for a mix of what we like the most: a journey into basswald-style subs, gritty beats and washed-out soundscapes.

1. Toshimaru Nakamura
2.Yugen Disciple
3. Ausschuss
4. Gil.Barte
5. Dadub (ENA Version)
6. Arkhad & Undveld
7. OKO DJ
8. PAN SONIC
9. Mønic
10. Kevin Richard Martin
11. Inner8
12. Lemna
13. Atsushi Izumi
14. Dis Fig, Ruhail Qaisar
15. Shapednoise
16. Lemna

Basswald #28: Stellar Periphery

Back with a slower, slightly darker and poetic brand of hip hop tracks that grew on me over the past couple of years!

1. Billy Woods x Messiah Musik
2. Conway The Machine ftt Goose, Jae Skeese, Shots, 7xvethegenius, & SK
3. Westside Gunn feat. Benny The Butcher & Conway The Machine
4. Armani Caesar
5. Mach-Hommy
6. Death at the Derby
7. Fly Anakin feat. Nickelus F
8. Death at the Derby
9. Evidence
10. Che Noir
11. Conway The Machine
12. Fat Ray
13. Westside Gunn feat. Wale & Joyce Wrice
14. Teller Bank$
15. Casual & DEAD PERRY
16. Bisk
17. Milc & goldenbeets
18. Armand Hammer

Basswald #29: Concrete Muse

exquisite matriarchal experimentalism! our best way out is more feminist men, so get it together guys.

1. Ann Eysermans
2. Mariam Rezaei
3. Jenny Hval
4. Amy Cutler
5. Klein
6. Ziúr
7. Hannah Silva
8. Jenny Hval
9. Aviva Endean
10. Azu Tiwaline
11. Laura Cannell
12. Dis Fig
13. Lemna
14. Anna Homler
15. Amy Cutler
16. Moor Mother
17. Mariam Rezaei
18. Aisha Devi
19. Martina Bertoni

Basswald #30: Femmes Fractales

john eckhardt - solo double bass




recording: ocnm archive 2011

brian ferneyhough "trittico per g.s." for solo double bass- live @ ostrava days for new music

First edition of John Eckhardt's Basswald DJ podcast series, presenting a diverse spectrum of bass music. "Expedition" comes with an hour of fuzzy power ambient!

www.johneckhardt.de/basswald

1. Nimbes (Eric Holm 10 50 mix)- James Ginzburg, Yair Elizar Glotman
2. Absence - Emptyset
3. Murmur - Oren Ambarchi
4. Wire - Emptyset
5. Core Value - Suum Cuique
6. 5 Wheels - Untold
7. Ion - Untold
8. HTH020 (The Haxan Cloakas Cloud Of Witness)-Akkord
9. Live Room - Tim Hecker
10. Gravure/Continuum (Fis Hayfield To New Mills version)- Akkord
11. Approach & Identify (Demdike Stare Cross Border Incursion remix)- Source Direct
12. Excavation (Part 2) - The Haxan Cloak
13. Her Rituals - Rafael Anton Irisarri
14. Kal - FIS
15. Her Third Eye (Drum Rain) - Fis

Basswald Podcast #1 - Expedition

Next installment of the Basswald mix series - this time with some recent, strictly heavy weight Dubstep.

www.johneckhardt.de/basswald

Basswald Podcast #4 - Underwood

Excerpts from Forresta's album "Bass, space & time", due fall 2016.

John Eckhardt - bass guitar & live-fx

100 pieces of collector's marble green 180g double vinyl with cover of your choice from 100 of john eckhardt's close up forest photographs - please contact me for more info pre-order!

www.johneckhardt.de/forresta

Forresta - Subflora (excerpt)

Forresta - Soil (excerpt)

live recording, june 20th  2015, premier performance of sven-ingo koch's double bass concerto "rinde" with john eckhardt (double bass), peter rundel (cond.) & musikfabrik NRW.

Sven-Ingo Koch "Rinde" for double bass & large ensemble

http://www.johneckhardt.de/solo

excerpts from john eckhardt's PSI records album.

XYLOBIONT - ear to the wood

Among biologists, the term “Xylobiont” means “living with / by / through wood” and hints at the organic qualities of this music, which is neither strict composition nor free improvisation. In part, it builds upon Eckhardt’s personal instrumental technique, which is informed by his frequent encounters with the music of composers such as Feldman, Ligeti or Xenakis, as well as by his long lasting practice of improvisation. His approach is however not an end in itself: he developed organic systems, whose focused observation, careful influencing and sensuous development form the substance of his contemplative music - an expedition into sounding forests and woodlands unknown.

Matthew Wuethrich, Dusted Magazine:
"John Eckhardt mobilizes technique along with imagination to create pieces that are neither compositions nor improvisations; they are organic systems capable of taking on a mind of their own. (…) He explores that space where sound and its organization show themselves to be a natural phenomenon, and taps into a whole world of moods beyond the one of human emotion."

This music was first released in 2008 as CD on Evan Parker’s imprint PSI records - as recorded, with no edits, electronics, preparations or further processing.

It has since grown into one of John Eckhardt’s most prominent and widely performed recital programs (with over 20 performances e.g. in Prague, Zürich, Helsinki, Berlin, Edinburgh, New York City). Faithful to the nature of this approach, it is under constant development.

http://www.johneckhardt.de/solo

xylobiont: bäck (PSI rec.)

from the debut album of the same title.

www.fel-x.ch

felix profos forcemajuere: lingua mortuorum

Freestylish halftime wickedness between footwork, jungle and breaks.

Basswald #8: Bigfoot

dubby ambient soundscape as deep, wide and wondrous as it gets.

the kind of stuff i have been listening to in my countless hours in the forest - taking photos, picking berries, getting lost in time, space and shapes... enjoyable in the city, along the river, on monotonous drives or in you favorite armchair as well!

www.johneckhardt.de/basswald

1. Burial
2. Sophia Loizou
3. House ov Leaves
4. Emra Grid
5. ØjeRum
6. Sarah Davachi
7. Demdike Stare
8. Sophia Loizou
9. DB1
10. RQ
11. Autechre
12. Rhythm & Sound
13. Fennesz
14. Dedekind Cut
15. Porter Ricks
16. Bethan Kellough
17. Gavia Arctica by Sten Wahlström

Basswald #14: Northern Poetries

Female pressure only!!!

1. Bayaka Women
2. Klein
3. Hannah Silva
4. Meuko! Meuko!
5. Aisha Devi
6. Debbie Friday
7. Villaelvin
8. Debmaster & MC Yallah
9. OKZharp & Manthe Ribane
10. Lucrecia Dalt
11. Kara-Lis Coverdale
12. Mhysa
13. God Colony feat. Flohio
14. Moor Mother
15. Leikeli47
16. Stereotyp & Lady Saw
17. Lady Leshurr
18. WaqWaq Kingdom
19. Rapsody
20. Little Simz
21. Chiwoniso

Basswald #15: Femitope

https://johneckhardt.bandcamp.com/album/fatwires-the-wicked-path

www.johneckhardt.de

FATWIRES Strings Of Dread

CEDRI: a gate to the sound world of FORESTS, this piece extensively probes the physics and spectrum of the lowest, open bass string.

first excerpt from FORESTS, a new 113 minute album of music for four double basses, recorded as played by john eckhardt. 

(100% acoustic, no electronics, amplification or other preparations used.)

COMING SOON ON NEW LABEL!

www.johneckhardt.de

forests: cedri (excerpt) OUT NOW: www.johneckhardt.de/forests

XYLOTOPE stochastic voodoo.

second excerpt from FORESTS, a new 113 minute album of music for four double basses, recorded as played by john eckhardt.

every physical copy will be handcrafted with care and absolutely unique - stay tuned for details!

(100% acoustic, no electronics, amplification or other preparations used.)

COMING SOON ON NEW LABEL!

www.johneckhardt.de

forests: xylotope (excerpt) OUT NOW: www.johneckhardt.de/forests

In a highly location specific approach, John Eckhardt probes the architecture of the vast, gothic church space of St. Jacobi, Stendal, with a bass guitar & live-electronics and powerful P.A. systems, bringing the room’s very own acoustic fingerprint to the center of the stage. This excerpt is taken from a larger ambient composition which is an integral part of an immersive sound & light in installation created in collaboration with analog light projection artist Katrin Bethge.

During several days of preparations, the setup custom-tailored by John Eckhardt is fine-tuned on location to a point where minute finger movements on the string-instrument can ignite immense physical vibration in the space. In this way, the spatial resonances of the two subdivisions of St. Jakobi Stendal are carefully located and mapped into a limited reservoir of extremely low pitches. John Eckhardt then plays live with these pitches only, and records and arranges them into two diverging loops playing from two different P.A.s in the respective church partitions, the nave and the choir.

Distributed through the space by sets of bass speakers, the sound engages in emergent synergies with the surrounding architecture. It unfolds with a both subtle and powerful impact - omni-directional, felt on the skin and in the bodies of the wandering listeners, rather than merely heard. As in the nature of these so called room-modes / room-resonances, these pitches precisely overlay with their own reflections and lead to typical standing sound waves in their respective space: unusual vibrational shapes of air, clearly distinguishable from other pitches for the human ear. This effect becomes all the more palpable as these frequencies are not  not merely calculated and triggered, but played and flirted with from a musical perspective.

Feedbacks are flying about above this soil of oozing sub-bass, thus involving another technique relying on the air afloat between the instrument and the speakers, on the properties of the room itself and on the musician’s presence in it. Due to the acoustic permeability of the two adjacent spaces, each half of the two-room installation is, less directly, audible in the other. The result is a shifting, primal sonic landscape, sensitive to when and where you as a listener are entering it, as the room is telling its own story through the ears and hands of the bass musician.

This installation was part of Stendaler Lichttage, October 2020, and attended by a total of 3000 visitors.

www.johneckhardt.de

Tales of Stonedale

www.johneckhardt.de

Whether performing today’s most challenging double bass repertoire, developing his own music, or working sound systems with his bass guitar or a set of turntables - John Eckhardt is testing the limits of being a bassist on planet earth in the 21st century, working towards a broader vision of what bass always was and can become in the future.

Seeking to combine scope with depth, John Eckhardt is constantly involved in the creation of new music and has both collaborated with a wide spectrum of artists and created his personal brand of solo projects. He worked with composers ranging from Helmut Lachenmann and Pierre Boulez, top new music groups from Ensemble Modern, Klangforum Vienna and musikfabrik, improvisors from Evan Parker, Elliott Sharp and Peter Evans, to today’s new blood in a wide field of today’s music.

John Eckhardt has performed on over 40 recordings, among them five internationally acclaimed solo releases. These share an interest in low frequency and spectral immersion, spatial depth, and themes of repetition and evolutional process. 

The Evan Parker produced “Xylobiont” (Psi Rec. 2008) turned into a work in progress with 40 solo double bass recitals all over the world up to today. “Forests” (Depth of Field Music, 2014) expanded these themes into a set of branching, overdubbed bass string quartets. Along with high resolution audio and 200 photographs, they were released on a wooden USB memory stick in a transparent box containing actual forest material - nearly selling out an edition of 250 within one year. 

As Forresta, John Eckhardt performs on bass guitar and live electronics, and released “Bass, Space & Time” (Depth of Field Music, 2016) in a special edition of 100 moss-green, marbled double-vinyl records in a hand made, embroidered carton box. Each contains a foto print as front cover chosen by the listener from 100 images of John Eckhardt’s corresponding photographic project. This music is also the musical foundation of visual bassic, his long standing collaboration with analog light projection artist Katrin Bethge.

Driven by curiosity and passion for different styles, cultures and artistic means, John Eckhardt keeps drawing new connections and expands a bass cosmos of unusual dimensions. The latest addition is his Basswald DJ project that presents a diverse spectrum of bass music with a special ear for sound system culture. It is accompanied by a steady flow of downloadable podcasts.

John lives within earshot of the Hamburg harbor.

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