New Media Society in collaboration with Noise Works presents
New Media Talk Series #33 | Andreas Specht
Memory in Circle
Artist talk with Andreas Specht
Wednesday, December 21, 2016 – 7pm
New Media Projects
Andreas Spechtl, born in Austria 1984, studied Media Science in Vienna and is currently living in Berlin.
Now and then he ́s also writing about music and literature for German and Austrian newspapers as well as online platforms like Spiegel, Falter or Fm4.
Over the years Andreas Spechtl was frequently invited by Cultural Institutes like Goethe Institute or DAAD to various countries like Italy, Ghana, Egypt, Sudan und Great Britain. In Alexandria he held a workshop at the Bibliotheca Alexandria with music students and developed some songs that were later performed in the Great Hall of the Bibliotheca. In Sudan ́s capital Khartoum he held a workshop at the University of Music Sudan and also one at an elementary school, recording some of his songs with children between the age of 7 to 10. In Birmingham’s Aston University he held a 2 weeks course on German and Austrian pop culture and discussed current political events in Germany and how they have influenced his work. He will be returning in Spring 2017. 2016 he spend several months in sicily ́s capital Palermo working with the artist Uwe Jäntsch on a soundtrack for his famous outdoor installa- tion Piazza Garrafello. Andreas Spechtl also frequently participates in panel discussions throughout Germany and Austria, regarding the topics music production, literature, poetry and politics.
With his Band Ja, Panik he recently published a book called FUTUR II, which was critically acclaimed throughout Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
His group Ja, Panik is traded as one of the most influential music groups in Germany of his generation. They have reached several billboard chart entries in Germany, Austria and Switzerland and released 5 full length albums in their ten years of existence.
Andreas Spechtl started to play the piano when he was 6 years old and changed to the electric guitar at the age of 10. He studied guitar until the age of 22 at Joseph Haydn Conservatory in Eisenstadt/Austria. Over the years he also taught himself to play the drums and the electric bass. In recent years he expanded his interests to sound production and electronic music. He arranged and produced two albums for the acclaimed german singer Christiane Rösinger and released his first Solo Album Sleep in 2015, which he recorded and played largely on his own. This album marked a turning point in his career as he moved away from his roots in classical songwriting towards an approach grounded in old dub techniques using the mixer and diverse effect devices as his main instrument. His album was described as a very genuine mixture of Ambient, Dub, Folklore and Italian Film Music of the 60ies.
He himself always states the importance of working in different layers. The first layer, and starting point, are mostly field recordings Spechtl habitually does when on the road with the band or traveling on his own. What he is most interested in is recording background noises, the humming of taxi motors or the summery nighttime chatter in front of a bar. These background noises of politics, machineries and everyday chatter are the actual starting point – the ambience which he’s recording and gradually turning into tracks. He somehow sees this recordings as the lyrical layer in his work, that has now turned mostly instrumental. What he once used to sing about, talks now for itself.