KATALOG | CD

'Eight Miles High' is perhaps the most beautiful song by the American country/rock band the Byrds: In 1966 the legendary bass, crazy sound ideas and the guitar inspired by John Coltrane defined the way of life of a generation between beat and psychedelic. Nothing could be taken for granted anymore, everything seemed to be changing. However, the prevalent talk about free love, flower power and mind-expanding drugs did not exactly sharpen one's senses: although 'Eight Miles High' describes the band's first flight to Britain, many journalists interpreted the lyrics as a hidden drug allegory. The hippie hype was more powerful than their interest in a unique song. Techno was likewise long regarded by many people as a mere collection of clichés: as strictly functional, fun terrorism, concerned solely about effectiveness. The individual musician/producer had to disappear in the DJ's mix just out of principle, dissolve in the collective 'us' frenzy. Yet, after all, samplers and computers are nothing else than the contemporary equivalent of guitars. Of course one can create pumping tracks and bizarre soundscapes with them, hack songs into tiny pieces until no beat sounds like the next. But that needn't be. 'Eight Miles High' catapulted the Byrds into the whirl of the upcoming flower-power hype. In contrast, Frankfurt-based producer Roman Flügel's Eight Miles High project profits from the fact that electronic music is no longer inevitably regarded as a collection of dehumanised tracks. This creates room for his own personal approach, one could almost call it songwriting. The project name Eight Miles High is little more than the vague memory of a piece of pop history. Ironically shattered by the fact that Roman first heard Roxy Music's wistful version of the song. So it was not a collective emergence into the summer of love, but a retreat into a new from of individuality. Sometimes Katalog seems like 'Looking for the perfect sound'. Inquisitive experimenting, a mellow conquest of an aural world. Nonetheless, Roman Flügel does not suppress the subjective and emotional aspect of his music. Sporadic melodies seem like a tender reminder of the fact that there's more to life than the constant abstract search for something you've never heard before. The attraction of Eight Miles High often lies in the combination of different sources of sound. These include self-played piano passages or the sound of a plectrum scraping on guitar strings. For Roman, who at some point even studied musicology, it also has something to do with becoming older. First see the person and his art - then the context in which he works. Every sound.