Rappelkiste - IRMIN SCHMIDT looks back on his life's work in the form of the box "Electro Violet

The composer and keyboarder Irmin Schmidt, who lives in southern France, is one of the most influential musical personalities Germany has produced in the twentieth century. First and foremost, his name is associated with the Cologne band CAN, but he has also created numerous solo albums, soundtracks and even an opera. One year before his eightieth birthday, a box entitled "Electro Violet" with the retrospective of his complete works appeared. With a not insignificant limitation.

eclipsed: Irmin, why this retrospective now?

Irmin Schmidt: A lot has accumulated over the years. One day you just want to see all his work. Much of it was no longer on the market. Instead of dripping the CDs one by one, all are now available at once. Later you can certainly also buy them individually, but a complete edition is also a pleasant thing for everyone.

eclipsed: But it's not all your work. An important part is missing.

Schmidt: The other part is CAN, but the box already exists. And recently the unreleased recordings have been released. Now there's practically everything I'm involved in, and that's a very pleasant feeling.

eclipsed: Have you made any edits for this issue?

Schmidt: No, not at all. I think it's a bad habit to always try to modernize the sound. We made that mistake once when the first CDs of CAN came out. We were populating on the sound, but the recordings didn't get any better, they got worse. With CAN we therefore had to go back to the original sound during remastering. I didn't have to do that with my own albums. I left everything the way it was taken. The technology with which it was made at that time belongs to the music. We played the way we sounded. If you edit this sound today, something is wrong, because you didn't play with this sound at all. A piece of music like that tells something about my story. In the context of the endless theme of art and truth, I am in favour of not changing anything about these things anymore.

Lesen Sie mehr im eclipsed Nr. 180 (Mai 2016).