Departure. Here is what it takes. Headphones. A travelcard for your local transport authority. And a Walkman, preferably a digital one. Now, go to the railway station and look for suburban railway services. Choose an old, rusty train.
They normally depart from the one and only platform that hasn't been redecorated yet. Take a seat by the window. As the train slowly leaves the station, press start. Watch the sun go down. The next station is Staedtizism. II. Suspects. 'Nonsense', you mumble to yourself, as the train leaves behind the shiny inner city. 'Staedtizism...what the hell does that mean?' You'll soon begin to understand. As a matter of fact, you suddenly realize that what you hear fits what you see. As the train rumbles towards suburbia, you see powerplants, scrapyards, old, run down factories and spooky housing projects. Meanwhile, you listen to stories on your walkman which mysteriously circle around the same things. With Staedtizism, Scape, the Berlin-based outlet for dub-influenced electronic music, famous for its already issued records by Kit Clayton and Burnt Friedmann & The Nu Dub Players, presents a soundtrack for an urban state of mind. Artists as diverse as Gramm (one of the disguises of Berlin resident Jan Jelinek aka Farben), Finland's Vladislav Delay (famous for his work on Mille Plateaux, Chain Reaction and Force Trax), electronic legends Thomas Fehlmann and Sun Electric, Cologne's Modernist, Trash Aesthetic and To Rococo Rot, join forces with Scape's very own Pole, Clayton and Friedman and let you witness their vision of Staedtizism, a recently developed metaphor in the Scape laboratories, derived from the German term for Stadt - City. Staedtizism is a result of research. A piece of sonic evidence of what happens when musicians try to re-think and to re-design all they ever knew about reverb, delay, deepness, distance, width, melody, melancholy and successfully set to music their lifes in cities. III. Enhancement. These cities, however, do not necessarily have to be big. They don1t even have to be real. Scape's Staedtizism compilation is an example that a 'Stadt' can also be a metaphor for a network of like-minded people who share a set of ideas and dreams and who all envision a future which is anything but monochrome. On the bus, by the sea, in bed, during the day or at night...Staedtizism will function perfectly in any chosen environment. Just try and spend a day in our Stadt. IV. Arrival. Back on the train, you're approaching suburbia. You1re the only remaining passenger. The last service back into town will depart very soon. You wait on the windy platform, feed your walkman with fresh batteries and press rewind. Again, sit by the window. And do not forget to watch the sun go down_ file under: electronica/urban dub.