An Absurd Weekend

25 years ago, a guitarist from Cologne called Michael Frank started a band called The Absurd. Their mixture of rock (often including odd meters and political lyrics), jazz, and free improvisation was always open-minded and full of crazy ideas, experiments, and fun. Many musicians (including myself) were members of The Absurd for a while.

After 25 years, today's incarnation of this band is still alive and kicking. We met for a hot July weekend in Berlin to record in the Andere Baustelle studio that belongs to a member of Berlin's most famous experimental band, Einstürzende Neubauten.

We were 16 musicians this time, some from Berlin, some from Cologne - a real big band, with several guitarists, several drummers (one at a time) and percussionists, several bass players (two at once at times), lots of singers and brass players, plus keyboards and vibraphone. When all these people were all in full flight, the sound was mindblowing. I was reminded of jazz orchestras like Centipede at times.

Travelling to Berlin by train was already fun :)

We were very happy with the studio personnel and gear (although it was so hot in there at times that the air conditioners had a hard time to cope).


My workstation was an ancient Marshall tower. I played the Turkish Cümbüs during the piece "Zukkaattakk" and my little Höfner Shorty guitar (with an inbuilt speaker!) into my modified Ibanez UE400 multieffect - so I was mostly using real vintage gear this time.

Studio work is exhausting ...


A wonderful weekend, big fun with good friends. I haven't heard the studio recordings yet, and I don't know how much of it will end up on the silver jubilee vinyl that is planned. I think there was lots of incredible energy, I hope it got caught on tape.

On Sunday night, we did a "video concert" in the studio. We played all pieces while being filmed by several cameras. For some reason the realtime video podcast didn't work but we have the video material. Here's Sercan Özökten's video cut of "ZukkaAttakk" (play it VERY LOUD to get an idea of the energy that was in the room) and a behind-the-scenes video that includes some music from a piece about the flying Robert.