Schaltkreis Wassermann - PSYCHOTRON
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Next Gig:

Konzerthalle Schaltzentrale
November 15th 2008, 22.00h
Balsthal, Switzerland
Hope to see you in this great location!



Video of the Schaltkreis Wassermann Live Performance



Special thanks to Pascal Müller (visuals for Zeitkapsel and video live operating), Sean Wassermann (audio live operating), Jan Greub, Asti Hagenbach, Susanna Hediger, Michel Huber, Patrick Hofer, Joey Schwyter.




Free mp3 download of the "Zeitkapsel" Live Performance
Click here for the free mp3 download of the track "Zeitkapsel Live"
(Click and hold with right mouse button or control/click on the Mac.)



Get PSYCHOTRON at iTunes.





Successful premiere of the new Schaltkreis multimedia live performance in Zurich!

On Friday August 29th 08, Zurich saw the premiere of the new Schaltkreis Wassermann multimedia live performance at
Informatica08 and Tweakgrill. Stella & PJ have created one hour of new music and visuals. PJ played the Roland VG-99 guitar synthesizer and Stella sang and treated the Korg Kaossillator. Two additional operators for audio and visuals took care of the technical side and the projection on a 3x5 meters LED screen. It was very intense, cosmic and trippy...

Hier klicken für deutschen Text.

We enjoyed the gig and and love to do more. So if you want us to play at your club, festival, party or whatsoever please get in touch with us!


















Fotos by Asti Hagenbach.














Beppe Loda, the godfatherDJ of the Italian Cosmic/Afro scene, and Schaltkreis Wassermann

Beppe Loda has contacted us through myspace. Here you find some excerpts of the correspondence between Beppe and Schaltkreis Wassermann:


WHEN I PLAYED YOUR RECORDS IN TYPHOON DISCO (ITALY) PEOPLE WERE GOING CRAZY AND A LOT OF THEM ASKED ME WHICH TRACK IT WAS. ALSO TODAY SOME PEOPLE AROUND ITALY WRITE ME ABOUT YOUR TRACKS AND I SEND THEM YOUR WEB SITE.


Great! Which of our tracks do you or did you play?

3 TRACKS BUT "LUX" WAS ONE OF MY GREAT HITS AS A DJ. I USUALLY MIXED IT AFTER A VERY GOOD TRACK OF “DOM UM ROMAO - AMOR AND JACUMA“. MIXING TWO COMPLETELY DIFFERENT TRACKS IN THE 80'S WAS SUCH AN INTERESTING SOUND.


We didn't know about the Italian Cosmic and Afro scene until only a couple of years ago when DJ Alex Gloor (Basl/NYC) told us about it.

IN THE 80'S THERE WAS ONLY THE “AFRO MOVEMENT“ AND ONLY TODAY OUTSIDE OF ITALY PEOPLE CALL IT "COSMIC" OR "AFRO/COSMIC".


Why is it called "Afro"? It's not really African, I think.

ACTUALLY THAT MOVEMENT REVOLVES AROUND AFRICAN , BRAZILIAN , FUNK , SOUL , FUSION , JAZZ, ETHNIC MUSIC, LOTS OF SOLO PERCUSSIONS ETC.. ETC...

ALL THIS MUSIC HAS ITS ROOTS IN AFRICAN MUSIC (DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY).

BUT IN TYPHOON I PLAYED ALSO A LOT OF ELECTRONIC, INDUSTRIAL , NEW WAVE , POP , EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC, BUT ONLY THE FIRST HOUR OF MY DJ SET.

SOMETIMES I TRIED TO MIX SOME DIFFERENT KINDS OF MUSIC INCLUDING SOME TRACKS OF ELECTRONIC E INDUSTRIAL MUSIC.
BECAUSE AS YOU KNOW MANY SEQUENCER OF ELECTRONIC MUSIC SEEM LIKE A TRIBAL RHYTHM OF AFRICA.

IT'S CLEAR THAT INDUSTRIAL MUSIC IS THE TRIBALISM OF CAPITALISTIC SOCIETY.

IN THE 80'S IN ITALY EVERYWHERE IN THE RADIO OR IN COMMERCIAL DISCOS YOU COULD ONLY LISTEN TO ITALO DISCO AND NEW ROMANTIC (FROM ENGLAND) AND WE WERE COMPLETELY DIFFERENT.

ONLY TWO DJ'S IN ITALY HAD REALLY PLAYED ELECTRONIC , INDUSTRIAL ECC... BUT ONLY ONE WAS ABLE TO DO LIVE THAT VERY STRANGE MIXING.
BEPPE LODA AT TYPHOON!!!

IN THAT AGE IT WAS A VERY GOOD NEW IDEA, THIS DRASTIC SWAP OF BPM IN THE TRACK (as Schaltkreis Wassermann did with "GOGOGO") BUT AFTER YOU IN THE FOLLOWING YEARS LOTS OF MUSICIANS USED THAT GREAT IDEA.
I'M JUST NOW WRITING THIS TO TELL YOU HOW MUCH YOU WERE INTO THE FUTURE.

I'M SO CURIOUS TO LISTEN TO YOUR NEW TRACKS! AND I WOULD LIKE TO HAVE YOUR ALBUM ON VINYL AND YOUR MAXI AGAIN. IS IT POSSIBLE ?


You will get these as a gift from us.
WITH YOUR SIGNATURE AS WELL ?
I WILL KEEP THOSE AS MUCH AS MY CHILDREN !
SUCH A PLEASURE! THANKS A LOTS.




Two new Schaltkreis tracks on Beatport
There are two new Schaltkreis tracks that we produced together with electroking DJ Tony White. You can download "Red Alert" and "Zeitkapsel" at beatport.com.
Download of RED ALERT and ZEITKAPSEL





PSYCHOTRON

PSYCHOTRON, the vinyl cult album from the early 80ies, is available again - this time as a CD. Schaltkreis Wassermann was the psychedelic electronic music project of Stella and PJ Wassermann in the eighties. The album 'Psychotron' reached the top ten of the English synthesizer charts.
Style: cosmic / minimal / electro / synth pop.

A nice compliment: in 2007 the London based underground label Piccadilly Records released a bootleg vinyl of the Schaltkreis track LUX.

Get PSYCHOTRON at cdbaby.

Get PSYCHOTRON at iTunes.


More info about today's activities of Stella & PJ Wassermann at www.hypermusic.ch

mail to PJ Wassermann:





click here for secure online shoppingat our Kagi shop.


Background
Schaltkreis Wassermann was a pioneer group of electronic music. Founded in 1979 by Stella & PJ Wassermann (who still work together with several projects) Schaltkreis Wassermann featured a minimalistic approach that was dictated by the available means:
* 1 ARP 2600 Syntheseizer,
* 1 ARP Avatar guitar synthesizer
* 1 Roland 100M modular synthesizer
* and 1 Sequential Circuits Prophet V synthesizer, all kept together by the Roland MicroComposer MC4 that was capable of playing four simultaneous monophonic synths. Tape recording was done with a TEAC 4track and later with an Otari 8track tape machine.

It was a great and very psychedelic time. Stella & PJ spent days, weeks and months in their studio exploring sound and consciousness resulting in PSYCHOTRON a ground breaking album in 1981 showcasing a lot of what was to become mainstream in electronic music and then some. PSYCHOTRON was sold all over the world as a vinyl album and made it to numer 7 of the British synthesizer charts in "Melody Maker".

More info about today's activities of Stella & PJ Wassermann at www.hypermusic.ch


The Psychotron CD contains all the original tracks of the vinyl LP plus four bonus tracks, among them "Excursion", an previously unreleased collage of recordings from an LSD-Session of 1980.

The album is packaged as a Digipak inclusive an 12-page booklet with lots of original material from the 80ies - a true collector's item!
buy PSYCHOTRON at cdbaby.com
Get PSYCHOTRON at iTunes.
Feedback

Finally the long lost Swiss synth-pop / minimal classic Psychotron by Schaltkreis Wassermann has been released on CD including bonus tracks. Psychotron is beside the album by Nachtraum the most sought after LP from this genre. (Robert Pally)


Ich bin vor ein paar Tagen von der Tour zurückgekehrt ... ich wollte dir nur mitteilen, dass ich nach einem Konzert in Belgrad einen Fan von dir getroffen habe, sie hatte sogar die alte Psychotron Platte von euch. Weil wir aus der Schweiz kommen hat sie uns grad als erstes gefragt, ob wir das kennen, allerdings hat sie nicht gewusst, dass du immer noch Musik machst, Matterhorn sagte ihr auch nichts.
Papiro, elektronischer Musiker,
www.atreeinafieldrecords.com


Ich verwende dieses Wort sonst nie, aber Euer Sound ist soooooooo GEIL.....
Vor allem "Destiny" (von PJ's Solo-Album "
Triple E"), aber auch "Excursion" (bin halt auch Fan der berliner Schule).
Michael Buehler-Zeller


If I'm not mistaken, it was the early 80's...a friend of mine gave me a cassette simply labled "psychotron"...it was a very good copy from vinyl, recorded with very good audio equipment on a very good tape...it had all the wonderful dynamics of the original vinyl....it immediately became one of my favorites, and got mislaid in a move 15 years later...7 years after that, it re-surfaced....by this time I've got 2 kids about 20 yrs. old, who love music and became fond of this recording....after lots of research, I found that it was you and Stella (my mom's name) who recorded it, I saw a photo of the album cover for the first time, found it was out of print, and read
rumors of a re-release...after checking 5 or 6 times a year, I ran into this Kagi place, and the rest is history.

I can't thank you enough for writing, and expressing an interest in my history with this album.

Ric Desiena

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