Cosmic runner
Cosmic Runner - The Secret Cosmic Music Of The East German Olympic Program 1972–83 is a Scottish - East German , fictional music project. Since 2013, four albums have been released on vinyl or digital distribution media.
history
Cosmic Runner is a music project by the Scottish musician Drew McFayden from Edinburgh . In order to give his own, strongly Krautrock- inspired music an authentic story, he invented his alter ego Martin R. Drawn , which is derived from his first name ("drew", English for "drew"). McFayden's elaborate legend was so convincing that some blogs fell for his fraud completely. In 2015 Drew McFayden performed live as the Cosmic Runner with Yann Tiersen .
The homepage of the music project, in contemporary orange and a pseudo-GDR layout, does not allow any conclusions to be drawn about the background of the project. The label name Unknown Capability Records is also fictitious and cannot be covered by a corresponding website on the Internet, only a YouTube channel is available. Drew McFayden stays completely in the background behind his project.
The fictional creation
Cosmic Runner was launched in 1972 in East Berlin as a one-man electronics project. The sound engineer Martin R. Drake worked for DEFA in the early 1970s and through his work developed into an expert in synthesizer technology . Night after night, Drawn listened to West German radio stations that in the early 1970s played music by Kraftwerk , Neu! , La Düsseldorf , Cluster , Moebius , Roedelius , Harmonia and many other actors of cosmic music played.
As a passionate runner, he noticed the basic rhythmic structure of the repetitive drumming of Neu! / La Düsseldorf drummer Klaus Dinger . His thought: The repetitive, hypnotic music could have a special effect on the performance of long-distance runners in training. So he recorded the electronic music from Germany and listened to the tapes during his running training with a prototype of the Walkman, the Stereobelt . He quickly discovered that his concentration and lap times were improving. The plan to use this music to improve the performance of the GDR Olympic team was born.
When Martin R. Drawe went public with his ideas, the party apparatus quickly became aware of him: two SED sports officials "kidnapped" Drake in their car and put him on the GDR's National Olympic Committee with immediate effect . In a cold East Berlin studio, he then recorded the three records that were to lead the GDR competitive sport to the top of the world.
Fictional Biography Martin R. Drew
- 1951 - Born in Pesterwitz near Dresden
- 1971 - Work as a sound engineer at the DEFA animation studio in Dresden
- 1972 - Work on Cosmic Runner begins
- 1973 - Studio musician for AMIGA , keyboardist for Dean Reed , the red Elvis
- 1976 - Composition of the music for the Olympic advertising film The Dream of the Golden Future
- 1983 - work for the television of the GDR
- 1984 - released, escaped from the GDR; the end of Cosmic Runner
- 2013 - Unknown Capability Records begins to publish the Drafts archive
- today - Martin R. Drake lives in Pankow and is still running
Music style and orientation
The four albums were enthusiastically celebrated by blogs and Krautrock fans. The blogger Tim Sommer described Cosmic Runner - Volume 3 as "one of the ten best Krautrock albums that have ever been released." The album is so good that the dizziness is largely irrelevant. According to Sommer Kosmischer Läufer, this should not be understood as an overall homage to Krautrock, but to some bands that have shaped the musical landscape in a particularly progressive and lasting manner.
The rhythm of the pieces is on the one hand characterized by the motor skills beat of Klaus Dingers (Neu !, La Düsseldorf) ( Zeit zum Laufen 164 ), on the other hand the automatic rhythms that the early Kraftwerk elicited from their converted Farfisa organs (“sand drum”). Melodically, Michael Rother and above all clusters with Dieter Moebius and Hans-Joachim Roedelius can be identified as role models . The flowing melodies, which stick strongly in the ear , especially on Volume 3 , are composed so typical of the time and authentically that even established music journalists found it difficult to prove that they were dizzy. Sometimes you can hear an early Karl Bartos , sometimes rock elements from Amon Düül II flow in , sometimes ethereal ambient sounds in the style of Brian Enos or Ashras . Especially the cluster album Zuckerzeit , Harmonias Deluxe and Neu! S Neu! '75 are represented with many bonds in the fictitious complete works of Martin R. Drawings.
Discography
- Cosmic Runner: The Secret Cosmic Music Of The East German Olympic Program 1972–83 - Volume 1 (2013)
- Cosmic Runner: The Secret Cosmic Music Of The East German Olympic Program 1972–83 - Volume 2 (2014)
- Cosmic Runner: The Secret Cosmic Music Of The East German Olympic Program 1972–83 - Volume 3 (2015)
- Cosmic Runner: The Music of Martin Drawn - Live In Graz (2017)
- Cosmic Runner: The Secret Cosmic Music Of The East German Olympic Program 1972–83 - Volume 4 (2018)
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ A different sort of Krautrock: The Secret Cosmic Music Of The East German Olympic Program 1972-83 . In: DangerousMinds . June 6, 2013 ( dangerousminds.net [accessed November 2, 2016]).
- ↑ Blog article , the author of which was initially caught up in the fraud, on thevinylfactory.com
- ↑ The Music Detective: Yann Tiersen - KOSMISCHER LAUFER piece (live). February 21, 2015, accessed November 2, 2016 .
- ↑ http://www.kosmischerlaufer.com/biography/
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/user/elfajio/about
- ↑ Biography | Cosmic Runner - Cosmic Runner. In: www.kosmischerlaufer.com. Retrieved November 2, 2016 .
- ↑ New teddy 2016: Towards the sun 01 Up and away. April 19, 2016, accessed November 2, 2016 .
- ↑ This Krautrock Olympics Soundtrack Will Blow Your Mind . In: Observer . August 18, 2016 ( observer.com [accessed November 2, 2016]).