World tour review: Munich, Freiburg, Essen

Nothing new, it's cheap to travel within Europe, thanks to the competition of the bus and airline companies.

Even though the cheapest bus company megabus was eaten by another monster - flixbus, prices are still good and it was one of the reasons I decided to go down to Southern Germany. It's a long way to Munich from Den Haag, so I stopped on the way in Cologne (thanks to the lovely people for hosting me!) and the next day I took a postbus, Cologne - Munich for 5eu, which is around 8 hours drive. Good, yeah?

29.09 Munich, Klang buro 

This show I booked in the winter time, so during the spring and summer was adjusting the route and other shows around that date. 

Came to the city right on the Oktoberfest period, so first what I saw in the bus station was some drunk people dressed in those particular costumes (see this years fashion below). Klang buro - is the place in, as I understood, the area of different art venues. It looks a bit like warehouse or workshop room, so this should be a good place to do some art in sound too. I'm the only one at the bill, which is always not so fun, but also the organizer Norbert Stammberger said that we could do a short duo piece after. Ok. 

So, what can I say. Now I don't remember that well this performance, but it was definitely not the best one... and one guy from the audience hated it so much that it was felt strongly even if I don't understand German. as was discussing with Sascha about it. After the show when I was standing near the outdoor, this guy had to go through me, so he basically ran like a rocket, so he wouldn't meet in eyes I guess ;) ... well... I'm ok if someone hates or loves, better be that way than apathy. 

So after my solo, we did a short duo with Norbert, it was quite thing, lot's of short sounds that sometimes we couldn't recognize whose they are, but so the audience, which was no more than 10 people, got some extra minutes for listening and maybe was more happy about their time and energy investment.

30.09 Freiburg, Susi cafe

Here comes the intuition that was telling me that Freiburg will be a good experience. But before that I had to take another 7 hours by bus full of young kids drinking beer and talking loudly. This was the moment that I regret I didn't have headphones, but it also made me try to work with attention. Just simply move attention to other things and so to avoid the disturbance.

Upon arrival guys from Groba Bodock, the band that also plays this night, met me and we went straight to the venue. The venue is nice, kind of social space, and Lovis, the main man, works here for more than twenty years. With a warm meeting and good food we have started to prepare for the show, which is always free donation. People throw money to the huge plastic vase. 

So the first, Groba Bodock started with punky drums and noisy synths and sometimes funny vocals. This was a bit of a mess, but kind of fun, I accepted. The second part of the show sounded better as the drummer switched to making some feedback by pedals and one snare drum, if I recall well. So they finished in quite atmospheric note and prepared a good soil for my show.
I did quite a good show, there were some intense moments that I wanna repeat now, but I can't somehow, but in that moment some turbo energy was activated which surprised myself. Also there was some fun too. All in all only positive impressions. 

After the show we went to sleep to the drummers house. The next day I had an early bus to Essen, so I put alarm on my phone... but I didn't save it. Suddenly woke up and saw that it's only 45 minutes left till the bus.  oh shit! In a few minutes I was running crazy to take a tram to the bus station. Such a stress! But I managed to make it, even had time to buy tea and food, cause the trip to Essen was long, around 9 hours... and again with noisy kids..but this time was more happier, just because I made it ;)

01.10 Essen, Kabinet Adapter

This show was organized by Florian Walter, the sax player that visited Vilnius earlier this year (and probably will come back in the summer 2017). Here is the video of this show. So, was glad to meet him again. Even though facebook event looked sad: just a few people attending, but again my intuition was telling that it won't be so sad. And it wasn't! The venue was the beautiful, white, almost all made from glass space in the middle of a dark autumn park. A dozen of 60 or 70+ years old people came to my surprise and I got confused if I should really play my intense and quite loud stuff. But the organizer and venue people calmed me down to make what I usually make. 

Before me there was another audiovisual project of Peter Eisold & a women which name i'm sorry I don't remember (initially the had to be another person instead of her, but this person was sick that day). Peter had a lot of different percussion, which he played together with a playback. Some gentle drumming followed by groovy tracks from the laptop. It sounded very musical and made me enjoy it. The women was walking with a kind of old lamp projector and playing with the light and space. This also gave some performative aspect to the show and I can't say anything bad about it.
My show was ok. I've conquered the fear to be not understood. Did some new actions which I use now for other shows. After the performance some old guys came and said a good word, some didn't, the way it should be, but in general I felt good, though later I felt a bit like I'm both tired and full of adrenaline. That was strange feeling, which I didn't like. I understood that I should do no more than 2 shows in a row, to feel good and to recover well. Although I know that will be different and at times there could be 4 or even 5 shows in a row, but the please forgive me if I play a bit more reserved. I wanna live a bit more even if i'm ready to die on stage.
By the way here are photos.

That's all for Europe now. Time to write about Brazil as I had here 5 shows already. So, hopefully this week...and the next week I return to Europe, playing my very first show in France - Paris on 26th, and in NXNW festival in Cologne on 29th. See ya!