Unlive Musick

untitled (Alles Unverstandene Muss Wiederholt Werden)

At the end of August I played at the opening of Kathrin Jobczyk's exhibition Alles Unverstandene Muss Wiederholt Werden, sadly I forgot to press record. I played a mixer with no inputs and no feedback — just its noise, a crash cymbal made from porcelain and my voice — humming into a contact mic with a Velcro choker around my neck. Everything went into a Pure Data patch with a versatile delay line, an autotune effect, a frequency shifter, a multitrack recorder (🙄), and a few more things. Shaping the mixer's noise into sounds of sea and wind, I tried to catch harmonies and earworms.
This episode is an edited recording of one of my practice runs at home in my bedroom. It's also available on a cassette with other performances via bootlegtapes@posteo.de

Releasedate: 20251120

untitled (sukzessive)

This episode is an edited recording of a performance I played at the opening of the exhibition sukzessive at the Frommann Garden in Jena.
Sitting in the grass I played with the amplified sounds of a sheet of wood, through touching, scraping and burning it; with amplified sounds of the location and through shaping and deforming the feedback paths of these raw and no-tech sources through a system of a Pure Data patch and a granular synth app on an iPad. Sometimes I responded to the birds, the acoustically most present non-human inhabitants of the city, through chirping with them, and becoming a little less human for a moment.
Afterwards I mixed the multitrack recording of the difference sound sources and a microphone recording with all the environmental sounds, the people, the birds, and the trees to make this version which resembles more closely what I experienced in the moment than what my Zoom Recorder captured.
This episode is also available on a cassette with other performances via bootlegtapes@posteo.de

Releasedate: 20250921

guna 8000

This episode is a live recording I did on a Tuesday around midnight in February 2024. I played with a xylophone and an iPad app and a few minutes in I can hear myself humming for a bit. It's the whole uncut recording but with some effects added.
Good Night 🌑

Releasedate: 20250228

rike fka rgkies aka grgr - unlive 24 (exo)

This year I tried to sing a lot. Some years I go I read of Autotune as an Exoskeleton for a breaking voice, so here is mine, meowing purring and wading through noise, feedback, and glitches.
In other parts there are holey songs I don't recognize any more, protesting farmers, whistling children and experiments I did for a performance with my friend Bocu at her exhibition in Augsburg.

Releasedate: 20241230

Roger G. Kies - Practice Mix 5

Since january 2022 a special version of Practice Mix 5 can be found on a station of the pirate radio script for monome norns and its clones. It's made from recordings from 2021 some of which are outtakes or longer parts of sounds used on my album 👻 from 2021. Practice Mix 5 is so far the newest release of the series.

Releasedate: 20241201

Roger G. Kies - Practice Mix 4

Practice Mix 4 was first released as the 18th episode of Metamorphosen in 2021. There, Lorenz Liebig described it as an experimental flight simulator in which sounds are interwoven, only to be picked apart again in the next moment in analytical self-observation. So take part in this glider journey through soft clouds and exquisite glitches. No seatbelts required, smoking is permitted.

Releasedate: 20240903

Roger G. Kies - Practice Mix 3

Practice Mix Vol.3 is a mix of recordings i did in 2019 and has a clearer and less muddy Hip Hop sound than the first two mixes.
The voices are clearer and less haunted here, the bass goes even deeper and on top there are fake scratches from a 2000s dj-toy, hectic hi-hats and sloppy sample chops.
Practice Mix Vol.3 was first released as a split tape with PumPuiBeatz on grvty.2020 from Leipzig. I also did a live-remix presentation on the WebTV site hitness.club, which I sadly forgot to record, where I resampled the tape, adding effects and mixtape drops.

Releasedate: 20240804

Roger G. Kies - Practice Mix 2

About 1 year after Practice Mix Vol. 1 I compiled Vol. 2, and it became a series. The plan stayed the same: I picked through my recordings of the year before and chose tracks and parts, moments and experiments I liked.
Pop songs falling apart, something crashing, glitching out. Slowdowns, speed-ups, air horns and an uncanny computer voice saying my name or nothing at all.

Releasedate: 20240706

Special Guest: Andere - live @ 2a4u

This episode is a recording of a live set my friend Andere played at the last evening of 2a4u. In 4 parts, Andere is taking us on a woozy walk through Lidl, out into the digital dirt and down through the pipes into a big cellar next to a secret club, where last night's duppy chords are still dripping from the ceiling. A motorik rhythm picks us up out of these real spaces to carry us into memories of euphoria.
Andere's live set was recorded directly to cassette, copies of the original recording with a reversed B-side are also available at bootlegtapes@posteo.de.

Releasedate: 20240606

Special Guest: Bocu - Notes from within

This episode is a cut up my friend Bocu assembled for Unlive Musick. It's made up of material recorded and found in her phone: daily life, talking, crispy noises, music sessions and holding onto moments. Next to and on top of that: tracks and sketches surfaced from the depths of private chats. Moving around betwixt places and spaces and figuring things out her way. A composition of 3 years of caught expressions.

In her own words:
Music sound and noises are showing me what I'm longing for and what's already there, like a sensor of my impulses,
a sound diary, the noises of life inspiring a direction.
What remains is circulation, is communication, the stroke of a bow
mysterious power
and plans with friends.

Releasedate: 20240508

Roger G. Kies - Practice Mix 1

Practice Mix Vol. 1 was first streamed 2555 days or almost exactly 7 years ago on 141.41.19.7, an audiostream/webradio I organized with friends. It's a collection of recorded improvisations from mid 2016 to April 2017. There are lots of noisy sounds, slowed down breakbeats and voices emerging from radio static floating around over a soft bed of 808 basses. Practice Mix Vol. 1 is the first of a series I will re-release here in the following months.

Releasedate: 20240408

Die hunderterste Stunde

Die hunderterste Stunde is a liveset I played in the 101st hour of a squatting of an art school studio building in Brunswick in an autumn night of 2017. It's a shy improvisation mostly filled by droning ravy synthesizer sounds, slow rhythms and ghostly voices fading in and out.

Releasedate: 20240310

rike fka rgkies aka grgr - unlive 23 (brand new)

unlive 23 (brand new) is a mix of recorded impovisations from 2023. Some prepared, practiced and in front of an audience, some alone at night in the comfort of my bed. I hit cymbals, drumpads, samples and wrong notes while humming into a tiny microphone, summoning a swarm of bees.

Releasedate: 20240209