As everyone knows, beginning of October is just the perfect time for some fancy camping in Iceland: The first snow is covering most of the country, you easily reach some minus temperatures in the night and the roads are in poor condition. Four of us took the opportunity and headed to the Westfjords with a ridicolously big, automatic Ford 4 wheel drive. Our contribution to climate change in numbers: 13 litres/100 km. As we had limited time, our 3-day holiday was the classic road trip in perfection: driving up and down approximately 50 fjords every day, we listened to the same CDs some 20 times, eating fast food and drinking coffee from time to time. As if driving snowcovered roads through snowcovered, glacially shaped volcanic layers in the most remote part of Iceland wouldn’t be enough, we actually had some touristic highlights planned. 1) bathing in a natural hot pot for at least for hours in Drangsnes, an almost abandoned town in the eastern westfjords. 2) bathing in a natural hot pot for at least for hours in Bránslaekur (where, btw, Iceland’s oldest fossils were found – you should be amazed! 2g4u). 3) Visit the westernmost part of Europe, Látrabjarg and do some kite flying there. We managed part 1) almost too successfully, so that a huge cat sat in my brain the next day trying to disembowel my brain. Part 2) was cancelled due to too cold water in the pool (less than 40 degrees is inacceptable.) The third mission was more or less accomplished again, even though the kite was freeing himself after 1/10s because of the little snowstorm which took place (Video will follow!). On our way home, we felt that we should listen to our CDs a couple of times more and made a detour to Surtshellir, the biggest lava caves in Iceland, located in an ancient lava flow (2km long, 700m deep).

See some pictures of the Westfjords, decorated with (more or less) fitting Icelandic music:

In front of this church on the way to Holmavík, Slash would most probably have had a great time playing guitar. The dramatic October Snow feeling could optionally be enhanced by the flickering motel light of the curch’s cross. This band would rather play on the graveyard in the neighbourhood: http://www.myspace.com/foraminorreflection

On the way to the hot pot: Picturesque roads plus frozen waterfalls and lava-burnt and -covered wood. www.myspace.com/mugison

The place to be: (almost) natural hot pots in Drangsnes. Some Icelandic raggae with it, for the true chillout experience? www.myspace.com/hjalmarmusic

Our pimp-car (icelandic hoes are in the moment sleeping in the trunk): http://www.myspace.com/mightyjukebox

The valley of Thingeyri – By taking these pictures I almost lost my fingers because of the clanking cold.

The westernmost part of Europe covered in snow. Maybe Creed would be a good choice, but this one also has rock-shot qualities: www.myspace.com/dikta

On the way back: Some good big band funk music too lift up the mood again! www.myspace.com/samminammi

Surtshellir with ice stalagmites – amazing and slippery. www.myspace.com/olafurarnalds

Back in Reykjavík, it was the Októberfest – finally back in “civilization”! Actually, they did a pretty good job pretending to be the real Wiesn. Maybe a little bit too good for my feeling. I played there a stunning gig with Lúðrasveit verkalýðsins, which is basically a communistic Musikverein (we played many of my favourite marches: Halt’s euch zamm, die fidelen Trompeter etc.) But this communist musikverein also plays other stuff: http://www.vimeo.com/3566584

In this sense: Hoch die Tassen! Hope you are all doing fine. Cheerio!

Yeah, Iceland is kind of remote. But still, people live there – and where the human race settles down, alcohol won’t be missing. Manuscripts reveal: 15th-century-Icelanders fancied beer – with pretty well-known, somehow modern consequences:

Thinking of this tradition, it’s hard to understand why there had been a 74-year long prohibition of beer (yeah, just of beer) in the 20th century which ended not longer than 20 years ago! The reasoning indeed was crude: Because beer is cheap, people would get alcoholics immediately when it was legal. But Icelanders were too smart for prohibition: Barkeepers started to mix vodka with light beer to create some kind of “normal” beer. The heads of state appraised the situation right and legalized beer on March 1st, 1989. Since then, this day is celebrated every year as bjórdagurinn, the “beerday”. May well be that being in Reykjavík on that day, you feel like in a 15th century manuscript.

Yes, mates!

Thinking of Iceland in these days, one imagines people standing on the street, staring on any wall, silently shaking their head from time to time – the agony of the financial crash which captured the vulnerable Icelander’s soul and made every single day a slow-motion-fight against the empty and senseless life. Well, it’s not quite like that. Last Wednesday, the breaking news on TV was that Olafur “The Pig” Grimsson, Iceland’s Prime Minister, had been fallen of a horseback. Now that’s agony at its best.

People don’t seem to be too destroyed by this sick life: the SUVs are still cruising down Laugavegur, noble restaurants are packed, monumental, patriotic fireworks are celebrated during last Saturday’s culture night, and yes: they are laughing!

Ok, I don’t want to put lipstick on the pig:  there are very many construction sites where two or three people are pretending to work, just because it would be too expensive to stop the project. For example the ambitious project of a national music hall at the harbour, made of glass (thinking of Sydney?) and serving 5000 people. Extrapolating the current working velocity, it will be finished in 2200.

But in fact, I don’t sense a deep uncertainty or despair in Reykjavík. It’s just as it was when I was here in 2006.  Apart from the fact that everything costs the half.

If the financial crisis made you believe that this capitalist world is just crap, it’s maybe time to do a little walk in Icelandic nature. This is what I did (regardless of economy): a 6-day-walk from Skógar at the southern coast to Landmannalaugar, a geothermal spot with colourful rhyolite hills and 40°C hot rivers. The first three days were seulement terrible (in a positive sense), as the french people I was travelling with used to say most of the time. Ash desert, surrounded by glaciers, “forests” at the edge of huge glacial rivers, lava flow plains, more ash desert, moss-green mountains, elve lakes. Yes, terrible. But the next two days unfortunately didn’t bring as much pleasure. Strong winds coming from North counterparted our trip to the North, accompanied by a nice, steady rain which defeaned one’s face. I found it funny in a peculiar way. After one hour, I ceased finding it funny and started insulting the wind in a Bushido-like manner. It helped, indeed, and after 4 hours of hating, we arrived at the rescuing hut. Comments of the warden there: “Yes, it’s bad weather, but it’s not very bad weather”; “Haw, haw, haw, this is no storm, otherwise we wouldn’t let tourist walk the track!”. Well, ok, I never want to experience a real storm in the Icelandic Highlands!

Yes, hello my friends!

It’s summer in Germany, but in Iceland, the leaves of the “trees” are turning brown. The nights get longer. The rain pours down in a snowy way. Soon, the first ice bears will come back on some icebergs, returning from their summer sleep in Greenland. The sharks stop fermenting. The schnapps gets harder. Coffee stronger. Kronur weaker. World Trade Center boom.

Well, all in all, summer is most probably over in Iceland. Perfect moment for me to head to Reykjavík to get the best out of the Icelandic wintertime! At the University, okay, but who cares, rock n roll, botninn up! If you care about my progress in studying geology or my adventures in grài katurinn, this is the right place to check by from time to time! I will write, oh yes.

Cya!

Yo. It is only some money. Some money to convert trouble into some sparkling drinks right under the sunset of a midsummer day. Midsummer day? Music. Yes Yes Yes. While being sure vodka is poured in an ice-filled glas. Yes.

Trouble is a mere interpretation and yes, some interpretations turn out to be more shared than others – is Facebook an constructivistic medium? This is were the trouble begins. In fiction and fact. Cheers!

Yes. We considered it.  For a very long time. We talked. We created. We deconstructed. We enhanced. And then, finally, we just did it! And so, here it is:

The Herra Héri Orchestra – Squirrelish Intonations EP

Yeah, my friends! This very CD is the delicious fruit of more than two years of exploring the world of Herra Héri. Sometimes this world is pulsing orange, sometimes it is an explosion of light;  sometimes it is capricious and silent. Sometimes a flash of hope, sometimes stroboscopic – by any means, the world of Herra Héri finds it musical expression in the unity of bass, guitar, trombone and voice. In this sense, the Squirrelish Intonations EP captures the spirit of the many nights we spend together recording, drinking and flattering ourselves.

What I want to say with all these pathetic words is: The Squirrelish Intonations EP is one mighty piece of music! And if that wasn’t enough, the music is rolled up in a dazzling package of words, pictures and collages  (some people would call it “booklet”).

So, if you are interested in this marvellous piece of work created by the Herra Héri Orchestra, just contact me and open up for the amazing colourstreams!

It happens to everybody. Even the great Odysseus (some of you maybe remember his famous quest through the labyrinth (unnecessary to mention his fight with the evil and notorious Cyclop here)): Sometimes it is hard to maintain grip on live, to stay warm and nice with yourself having chats in front of the chimney with a nice Earl Grey and the friendly glowing warmth of coal.

No. Even Odysseus did not always welcome himself warmly to accomodate between his eyes. Sometimes (and very likely even often) he was probably also keen on giving himself a good discussion between his lobes (not to speak of the difficult situation concerning his language centres, which would then be obliged to mediate between speaking and understanding respectively).

Thinking of this, it might be good to know , that the labyrinth issue was finally solved by red wool. Something which has really nothing in common with any person but is (and surely was) produced by machines. Red Wool! Red Wool gives orientation in the windy paths of the labyrinth. You can imagine how happy O. was.

He opened the door and slipped in. Slowly. Yes – it was a damp evening in december and temperature just dropped vastly. It was cold. Very cold. He opened the door and slipped in. Slowly. Carefully. Yes – the sun was already gone, as was dawn. It was dark. Very dark. He opened the door and slipped in. Slowly. Carefully.Anxious. Yes – the air smelt of animal, the disgusting stench of fur and carnivoral transpiration. It was dangerous. Very dangerous. He opened the door and slipped in. Slowly. Carefully. Anxious but ambitous. The room was dark. It was cold. In the back of the room a cat was mournfully meouwing.  He could notice he was trapped – one moment before his rationality dissolved.

First of all: Obviously raining and laughing respectively not laughing are two things that are not necessarily connected. Sometimes even raining is the cause for tremendous outbursts of laughter, for example if it rains heavily and people just did their traditional rain dance before. What a joy that has to be can hardly be imagined by someone who never did rain dancing before (yes – I have to admit – this includes me).

However, it is also a fact that raining (drops of water crashing down on the ground) and laughing are two different things. In this respect the thesis claiming the above (namely that raining is not equal to laughing) holds – even though in quite superficial semantic way.

In other respects, I hereby mean something in a more contextual sense, raining may be a perfect symbol for not laughing. I mean: Imagine relaxing but feeling somehow unable to laugh (yes, these things happen) it may be a good thing if it rains outside. Consequently: Raining is not laughing. But: This conclusion raises another point for further discussion: Would consequently be sunshine laughing? And: How moody is the whether? What does mood do to the climate and: What does every individuals weather look like? Hm.

Yes, dear friends!

Cold, grey, boring: this is autumn.  But in every dark hour there’s a small but strong light that’s digging its way up to the surface. Just like [braingnash] a good sip of whiskey spreading out in an undercooled, starving body. In the case of this autumn, this paradoxically means the anticipation of winter. To cut a long, disturbing story short:

Tübingen’s own, world famous HipHop band Lingua Loca is on tour from December 26th to January 10th, 2009! They will be kickin it madly in a whole bunch of places and teach you what headbanging means in its best sense. Check it out:

Don’t miss out this crazy hell of a party – even Hamlet would go there and forget his existential sorrows for a while by nodding his head just for the sake of living.

So, tell your friends and be there!

Just one word ahead for this web-feeling-detection machine to bring some confusion to its surely-finely-adjusted mechanical emotion detection system [coughs] Well [some paper is touched] [coughs], I [pause] feel today like I just talked to my shoe the whole night and day long [pause] well [sigh] you might consider that weird [desperate silence] but if you just had a night of plain shoe complaint you possibly would think different about that [pause] [small cough] weirdness.

Of course, from time to time I [emotion robot: follow] I FEEL (!!!) that a shoe life might be not one of the finest experiences. Getting worn out and yes [subtle silence] [gulp] then you fade away.

Well, yes. The mountains are high and valleys are deep. Shoes have to be tied. Il le faut, as some French people would have put it. However, I prefer to take the plums after my shoe-ish conversation. They are so fresh and so delicious. Even in April. I feel it.

What would you do if you knew that the four horsemen of the Apocalypse will come down with their sabers and their flamethrowers and their black holes to bring terminal fate to our world? In the next three months? Well, in fact you can do pretty cool things: The first thing that came to my mind was getting some bricks, go into town and have maybe a new TV or fancy clothes. Who would care? You could also pack your stuff (plus enough Red Bull) and start walking to wherever it takes you. Maybe you manage to play with some wisents in the Cech Republic when the black hole comes to eat us. Do drugs. Build a spacecraft. Pray. Just fuck around. Write an e-mail to Barack Obama to stop this whole mess. Watch football. Get a wife or two. Try to learn the language of the universe and change the code of the earth in negating a thing like “end of the world”. Read Heidegger. Take EPO. Burn books. Destroy all internet floppys. Wath the river flowing. Reach Nirvana and hope for the best. Or maybe just get your batteries loaded to take a spectacular video of the end.

Well, watch this and prepare for your revenge tour: Satan has a name: Cern

To put it in the words of the great Jon Bon Jovi: Have a nice day!

Just yesterday I happened to read an interview in some magazine whose name I cannot remember. In fact, the person interviewed, some cognitivistic linguistic claimed that he painted the brain in many colours. Colours for joy, love, happiness, drunkeness etc. etc.

Well, a colourful brain is not very stunning. In deed a small image query on any search engine on the web will find you a coloured brain. Surprisingly enough, the linguistic also told the journalist that deduction as we know it from detective fiction is a way of structural influence of the brain to the real world, meaning that the strict logical form of deduction shapes the world by its terms.

Consequently, Sherlock Holmes is creating criminals and criminal cases by his strict use of his deductive faculty. And Watson? Maybe his role is somehow the deductive trigger or a quite paradox paranoid projection of a facette of Sherlocks identy. Who knows. Undoubted.

2000 Metres, up in rock
un petit pie
A small road winding up to mental desaster
to smash thoughts with pain

working like a machine up to the montain crown
carved alps in feet and sweat
centimeter per centimetre, up up

Don’t think, just be, glowing sun in the neck
breathing hot air
just steps, tok tok tok tok
Smile in the sun

Yellow. Red. Colours that occur quite often in cactus valley close to the most western point of the European Continent. You name it: Cabo da Roca. Most people still are not aware of the large and yet green cactus forrest close to rocks and ocean.

And yet – particularly people liking football should spend some minutes to reflect on the forrest of cactus plants. Just imagine: Figo and Zidane playing a little match in this environment: Let’s suppose they don’t play foul, so their bodies will be unaffected by stitchy cactus-plants. But most important, the ball is lost as soon as it hits one of the green air-releasing plants.

Yes. They are nice and green but also mean and not very fond of football. Think of this the next time goalkeepers complain about the properties of a ball. It could be worse and balls have a soul.

Yes, Yes, Yes,
it’s summer in orange
nothing but l’orage dans le ciel

tell me about it, to roam
about stations, ports and beers
to find something beyond mere coleur des voilles

down cutted, uprisen, dream
so away, where sand is becoming
brain, finger and colour of delicious
ways. Wandering down the riverside.

Yes. I considered it.
considered it, to be good, to be full of sparkling
thought of glowing ice during the day
and singing happy tunes at night.

Yes. Whatever it ist.
Anywhere. I dared to think of it as miracle
friendly and exciting but never to hurtful
shanty at clouds pouring concrete

Nevermind rain drops in colour.
Yes. But care for the changes they imply.
Run for inspiration that is not only covered
by mere sonnets and skilful pentameters

Yes. Coffee is steaming, while green is dampling in it
the window is open
singing sweeps away the murmuring rain.
What remains is colour.

Plug in. Imagine yourself in a tiny little room. Not to small – there will be enough space for a few instruments, some people and something to drink. And a drumkit. It might be a little loud if a band played in the room. But for now there will be no band playing. There will be nothing more than reading. Calm reading. Slowly turning the pages following the story of Nabokov’s Lolita or maybe even the adventures of Oedipa Maas in Pynchon’s Crying of Lot 49. Nothing but calm reading. AHHHH.

Plug out. Turn on. How did those people manage to enter the room. Yes! It’s the ill-famed Herra Héri Orchestra, packed with instruments, playing as if they dared to give noise a new definition. But somehow you like it. Vibe. And suddenly, a squirrel comes out of a bottle of vodka and whispers into your ear: Eat a tune, and follow it carefully. Starlight and forrest multiplied by peas with six electrons on their premium gas atoms. Watch for the sun. Care for positron and Gauss with his equations. Never mind the harmony. Silence. You leave the room – enter the wood – a coocoo is blowing his tune. You take out your wallet and shake it. Fortune.

Yes, rain sucks. Is life sucking as much as rain? The answer is no. Plenty of great stuff is happening in the moment: Drinking raki with Greek people who don’t understand a word at half ten in the morning; having baths in the chilly Mediterrean Sea; paying seven freaking euros for 0,5 litres of wack Heineken beer in a pub in Athens; stopping to sleep; tagging loads of fresh stones with herra héri-lines; playing theatre and getting drunk at the same time (people were actually paying money to see these memorable scenes)… And yes, believe it or not: The ridiculously genious Herra Héri Orchestra had a promising rehearsal last weekend. Chia! Who knows, if the transcendent beavergod Eyvindur is sympathetic with our enterprise, the world will see a joint of generations, an event that will blast everything that has ever been into crying pieces: a HHO-Gig. Four tracks, well that sounds like 12 minutes you will never forget.

Speaking of four tracks: Despite the fact that our new wicked tune Reality? Where did you get that from? is actually not yet perfectly finished, I think today’s a good day to share this pearl with you. So, take the risk and dip into the marvellous world of herra madness:

Reality? Where did you get that from?!

Well, I will let you go into the gleaming night with some nice herra impressions.

Bless!

Undisputed. It is not the mere shape of a deer’s head as some might write in lengthy articles in scientific magazins. No. Not just the mere shape of the head but something more profound. A deep, numeric glow in the spirit, in the very soul of the proud animal.

If you take a closer look it is quite easy to recognise. As it were, Matthieu le Cage has discovered this natural phenomon and wrote some scientific articles about it as well as a – more or less – scientific book.

The only question, and this may be the main reason for me to post here, remains open: Why do deers (and also their hunters) fail to account for the irrational character of Pi? The open-mindedness and eternity of circular structure? Because life ends? Because flesh is eaten? Or is it just a pragmatic decision of Ms. Le Cage – because his writing may become unreadable if inifite? I don’t know. Elephant

Democracy is great.  And because of its mere greatness a lot of people want to take part in it. As it is necessary to have a political stance to take part in the great game of democracy, of course, people take different political viewpoints, discuss, talk, tell stories and form strategic allience for (in a way) similar political perspectives. These alliance are summoned in lists – lists that contain people in strategic alliance which sometimes are called parties by some people.

As democracy is great and it is full of promising honour and power to take part in its game, it is not difficult to imagine that theses lists may become huge. Especially when voters are allowed to vote 80 votes per list. Alors, for example the list for the Munich City Counsil contained more than 500 names on various lists: The purple list did not fit in the cabin, people vote in. Yes. Yes.Yes. It has a width of aprox. 80cm and a height of ca. 50cm: This is voting in its purest form – Amazing.

Just imagine. What would a fusion of Russia and the United States in the 1960s look like? Communism and Fordism, Dry Martinis and 100g glasses of crystal clear wodka next to russian fur hats and cheesburgers. Maybe it would also look like a novel by a Russian who lived in America.

Or think of Germany in the 1980s mixed up with Brasilian carnival: Masks, party accompanied by the depressed sound of emerging techno and cruel hairstyles. Maybe Andreas Bader would have turned out to be a real turntabelist. Maybe Gudrun Ensslin also would have liked to spin the wheels of steel. Perhaps beneath a feather-boaed 80s style dressed Brasilian football pro called Pele.

In terms of music think of Mozart using the rap-skills of Jay Z. What a vibe. Very likely the Salzburg ballrooms wouldn’t look the same: nice debutant-dancers dressed up like Beyoncé….how would Shakespeare comment on this scene?

There are dangers in the world, some people don’t even know off. Just recently for example, famous British Scientist Dr. Tyron Tire found out, that riding a bicycle more than four and a half hours a day might turn your bicycle into a human and yourself into a bike.

Dr. Tire’s findings are grounded in the new but very complex theory of post-structural atomic diffusion in cognition-relevant environments. According to the theory, the mutation happens if (1) you are riding your bike a certain time t each day and (2) you want to become a bike – that wish may be subconscious. If these two conditions meet, atomic diffusion will take part and molecules of the bike will become part of body structure and vice versa.

However, Dr.S. Eichhorn of the University of Tübingen refuses Tire’s thesis. “Although atomic fusion exists, it would take millions of years of biking until atoms of closed structures exchange.” But one is for sure: Being a bike is maybe not that bad – except you have a flat tire and King Kong uses you to get an icecream for his jungle princess.

hey there. Yes. The days between the years are a time to reflect, to think about things in the past and to figure out why and what and so on and so forth. Maybe the Herra Héri Orchestra should be wondering how their song “Hostage” came on the BL-Bilder Sampler 2007

.

But yeah – maybe they will, maybe they won’t. In the end, we are all as sharp as atoms and as dull as a bottle of Amontillado. Good Think!°