Two Unknown Guys · 2009
Swirl Planet EP
- Project
- Two Unknown Guys
- Release
- Ornithopter Records · OR 005
- Format
- MP3 · 320 kbps · stereo · 44.1 kHz
- Audio
- 55:35 · eight tracks
Story
From Wiesbaden to Leipzig
After meeting Ilya and Christoph Schindling during the techhouse.ee days, we began seeing each other regularly in person, in Leipzig and around Frankfurt. The online conversations turned into friendships, visits, and a lot of music.
One summer, Ilya and I visited Chris in Wiesbaden. We spent the time making music together and having fun, without much of a plan beyond that. Ilya and I produced our tracks for the original EP afterwards in Leipzig. I still have a pile of unreleased tracks and loops from that period.
One detail I always remember about “Swirl Planet”: the sound that keeps appearing throughout the track is a sample of Darth Vader’s breathing. Yes, really.
The player below also includes four previously unreleased tracks that I was lucky to find on an old backup. Ilya and I produced “All Night Long”, “Cold Frog”, and “Love Diffuser” in August 2008; “Medium Surf” is a track the three of us made together during our visit to Chris.
Ornithopter Records
Three friends, a label, and a studio
Chris had the idea of starting a techdub-oriented label with digital distribution. He knew people who could help him with the financial side, and we worked out a division of labour: Chris would handle organisation, promotion, and distribution; Ilya would make the artwork; I would do the mastering.
Ilya was studying physics when we met, but he was also a gifted painter and spent a lot of time making digital illustrations and art for games as well as digital art and web design. I like to think I helped encourage him to move to Germany and study painting. He did, at the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig (HGB). These days his own business takes up most of his time, and sadly he makes less art and music than he used to. You can check out some of his art on Instagram.
I was studying electroacoustic music in Leipzig and had almost unlimited access to the studio. There were analogue EQs, compressors, and channel strips to experiment with, and I spent a lot of time learning by listening. Trying to master tracks myself felt like a natural next step. Friends—and my professor—liked the results, and gradually more people started asking me to work on their music.
For about two years, Ilya and I did our part largely for free and for fun. From my side, the difficult part came when distribution revenues and payments became unclear. Artists were asking when they would be paid, and for a long stretch we also lost contact with Chris. The label gradually became inactive. I do not know everything that was happening on his side, but eventually we moved on: Ilya towards painting, and me towards my doctorate.
What remains for me is also the good part: the friendships, the studio experiments, and those summer days spent making music together. Swirl Planet is a little piece of that time.
Mastering credits from Ornithopter and beyond · The Rubber Duck Massacre EP and the beginnings of Two Unknown Guys