22/04/2022
Crima: Both Sides of the Ball Chair
One album. Two versions. Electro vs. Acoustic.
The Ball Chair Experience is handmade electronic music, composed and performed by Christian Maurer on legendary analog instruments. Based on club music from different styles and decades, integrating the melodic and improvisational approach of Jazz Music.
The Backside of the Ball Chair contains the same tunes, re-arranged and re-composed into a kind of minimalistic, tangofied, classic and/or jazzy chamber music. Beside the composer on piano, it’s featuring Olaf Schönborn on saxophones, Johannes Alisch on violoncello and Liv Solveig on violin.
„A Work of Art.“ Amandus
Available on Rodenstein Records (ROD 79): www.rodensteinrecords.com
Digital Edition on Castle Road Records: www.Castle Road Records.com
Info-Teaser: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fP5TuB0B-_c
BOTH SIDES OF THE BALL CHAIR (Liner Notes)
The Ball Chair Experience was produced between April 2019 and May 2021 and contains mainly a selection of instrumental tunes which I composed over the years. Most of the parts are handmade music, played on legendary analog electronic instruments like the Minimoog, Korg MS10, MS20 and miniKORG-700, Oberheim Matrix, electric pianos of Wurlitzer and Rhodes, Hohner Clavinet and electric guitar. But there are also acoustic instruments: drums, usual and strange percussions (like wooden tables), grand piano and carillon. They are partially processed with electronic effects to make them fit into the arrangements which are based on club music from different styles and decades, like Disco, Funk, Latin, Electro, House and Techno. But beside the stirring motion of Dancefloor Music and nostalgic synthesizer sounds, there’s another essential element, the melodic and improvisational approach of Jazz Music.
So the Ball Chair became a kind of time capsule, a voyage into different times and styles. But this was quite a solitary journey for me, performing every step in the production myself, and there were still many more musical influences resonating in my ears…
In July 2021 I fortunately got a grant from the Ministry of Science, Research and Arts for a new music project. This gave me the opportunity to collaborate with other musicians. I took the chance for an esthetic challenge by rethinking, re-arranging and re-composing The Ball Chair Experience.
The seed for the concept was implied in the third track From One to Another, a short interlude which was performed simply on an acoustic grand piano. So the idea was born, to recreate all other tracks reduced on a few acoustic instruments, keeping the melodies and the rhythmical drive of the originals. But without the use of any percussion instrument (to prevent us from a cheesy „unplugged“ experience where electronic instruments are simply replaced by their acoustic fellows). Henceforth I had to be focused on the rhythmical quality of „non-percussion“ instruments, that I remembered from my experience in Tango Argentino, Minimal Music, Jazz without drummer, but also in the European classical tradition (of course Bach and Beethoven are groovy, particulary in their „ostinato moments“).
And so The Backside of the Ball Chair became a kind of minimalistic, tangofied and/or jazzy chamber music for different combinations of piano, saxophone, violoncello and violin. The only new track, a short Prelude in 15/16, could be seen as the symbolic travel of a solitary pianist, escaping from the isolation of his Ball Chair, looking for the accompaniment of other instrumentalists which appear step by step, creating an increasing soundscape…
Crima, February 2022
