The festival under the record sky
Created: 11/27/2022, 2:44 p.m
By: Susanne Greiner
A record heaven of the "Hausmusik" covers hovers over the heads of the audience at the first part of the "machen" festival in the Stadttheater Landsberg.
© Greiner
Landsberg – Half-baked saying, this “Who dares wins”.
But often true.
For example at the cross-genre festival “machen”, which the in-house music makers Wolfgang Petters and Marion Epp dared to do together with the Stadttheater's “music programmer” Edmund Epple.
The first part "machen 1 - back to the future" went on and over the stages of the Stadttheater at the weekend.
Music, art, film, literature, with space for discussions and dancing have shown that a festival doesn't need to be “faster, higher, stronger”.
Small and fine means quality.
And creates atmosphere: the Stadttheater building is no longer just a shell for events.
It took on one of the main roles.
Premiere for the "machen" festival in Landsberg
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The foyer is adorned with a record sky: the covers come from the “Hausmusik” label, founded by Wolfgang Petters in Landsberg (KREISBOTE reported) and visible again this evening with two new albums.
In addition, there are works by Marion Epp, alias Jimmy Draht, on the walls and exposed concrete, comics and posters, from dried flowers to photography, drawings, collages – everything is there.
In between, reminiscences of the past: the “Hausmusik” logo in linocut;
“house music” as a beacon;
the backstage area with the red velvet carpet that gave the "Fred Stocker Quartet" its name.
And in front of it a diorama of the first rehearsal room, built by Epp for the 15th anniversary of the label, with a guitar case, drums, recording device and – of course – the red Fred Stocker velvet carpet in miniature.
Le Millipede
The rest of the program: on the first day, an album presentation concert with "Le Millipede", followed by the "Hausmusik" film by Ricardo Molina (as reported by KREISBOTE);
on the second day a reading, then "A Million Mercies" and then on with the DJ and dancing - thanks to a few tireless people until one o'clock in the morning.
The concept works: the theater is not overcrowded, but well filled.
The voices are buzzing, the mood: relaxed, expectant, good.
'Millipede' head Mathias Götz has just returned from Japan, including a music boat tour through brightly lit Osaka.
In the cozy city theater, he and his bandmates present a few pieces - or rather "legs" - from "Legs and Birds", published cooperatively by Dhyana Records, Gutfeeling and Hausmusik: ten titles, from the 1st leg to the 10th leg, on the second disc Bird voices.
Accordingly, Götz starts with a trombone solo to the tree pieper sound, whose likeness is shown in the background.
Projections also accompany the music in the rest of the concert.
Including older titles including the Götz hit "Mutabor", it is multi-faceted, calm, cool and heart-rending, the basic note is melancholy with optimistic flares.
A title pushes itself between minimalistic sounds,
whose contrary rhythms in the violin part unexpectedly make sense, the trumpet improvises in a rich sound, grounded in meditation.
Music that is 'unfinished' in the best sense: flexible, in the moment, a kind of storytelling.
Eventually a 'plop' – and you bathe in it.
A Million Mercies
Wolfgang Petter's original solo project grows into an eleven-person band with "machen 1", including Katja Huber as the reader of Petter's texts, Huber standing in for Franz Dobler, who was unable to perform at short notice.
The album "Electrictric" is a total work of art, a dream-concept-concert, sometimes bizarre texts introduce the titles, enriched with projections that seem like visions: "Because I dream, I'm not crazy." The musical style would flood every drawer : 70s sound, singer-songwriter-like, vocal trios, massive Latin American rhythms next to waltzes, pop-tinged and country - like at the beginning, announced by a Johnny Cash dream text.
An optical-acoustic experience until the "End of the Night";
a night in which rods and cones visualized images for the brain – just an electrical trick.
After the concert, Edmund Epple is still completely immersed in the Million Mercies concert, the co-organizer draws a first balance: "Great." Good prerequisites for the continuation of the "small and fine" festival series according to Epple in April 2023 with "machen 2 - analogue and digital”: planned in the foyer, “club atmosphere”, promises Epple.
And of course guests who are somehow connected to Landsberg.