As a part of the launch of the Passed Recordings Label, we decided to do a short interview with each of our artists. This time we have a short chat with Christian Schwöbel, an Ambient & Drone/Experimental artist from Berlin.
Christian Schwöbel’s new album “Dystopian Pulse” will be out on 27th May on Passed Recordings, including a limited physical release on Cassette Tape.
What inspired you to start making music?
I have been playing classical guitar since my childhood, but it took a while until I found my ways to be creative with it. I started off with recording guitar loops and at some point I felt that strictly loop-based arrangements were far too limiting to my creative output, so I started a more production oriented approach using more and more synthetic sounds and samples. My inspiration comes from both the joy of just playing around and my attempt to tell a story without the use of words.
How do you make your music?
It starts either with a concept of a story that I want to tell or simply with a single loop or a sound aesthetic I want to dive into. It’s a very chaotic process, I keep on zooming in and out, paying attention to little details and then again adapting the whole grand scheme and scrapping old ideas or letting it rest for a while. It could happen that I end up at a totally different place than what I had envisioned in the beginning. For me patience is key to finishing tracks. Hours are no measure for me, it might take me years to finish a track.
How would you describe the kind of music you make?
I take a theme and I translate it into sound aesthetics. On my upcoming album it’s a pulsating breathing machine that I have brought to life. Unpolished and dirty, but artificial. It was inspired by the incredible and irreversible damage we inflict on our own habitat. It is both impressive and frightening that we can destroy the planet with its own resources.
How would you like your music to affect others?
Even if it is not their cup of tea, I want my music to affect people. Someone saying “It makes me uncomfortable”, would actually still be a great success to me! But if, someday, a stranger came to me with a compliment for my music… well, that would be an even greater blessing to me.
