German Shepherd

203 (Sunrise Acoustics, 04.2010)

For: Brian Eno, Stars of the Lid, Boards of Canada

We haven't heard too much from German Shepherd this year. In fact, this is the first musical output by the prolific Wisconsin-ite in 2010. 2009 was dominated by German Shepherd's warped, basement guitar sounds. Starting with the 4-way split with Brian Grainger, MOTH, and Millipede, and culminating with the top-10 appearance making Alpine Melodies, German Shepherd's simple, honest drones were a staple in a year marked by relentlessly good music. German Shepherd's first foray into 2010 finds him back-pedaling a bit, not in terms of ridiculously high standards of ambient music, but in terms of the conceptual impetus. During the summer of 2008 German Shepherd found himself in a cast which severely impeded his ability to play the solo from "Freebird". This limitation led to an experiment of minimalist proportions... how can I play the guitar without really playing the guitar? He described it thusly,

"The one upside to having a bone in your wrist start dying is that when you barely play the guitar like a normal person anyway, what's the big deal? I got the idea to keep recording when I was watching a friend's apartment. He had a pedal steel that I started plucking on. The goal was to see what I could accomplish without my wrist."

With 203, German Shepherd returns to the idea of creativity coming out of limitations, but this time the limitations are self-imposed. 203 was recorded using only his left hand. I can barely scrawl out my name with my left hand... I couldn't begin to imagine recording an entire album with that dangling claw. The resulting album is a gentle, contemplative, synth-based blanket of warm tones and 5-note piano lines. Divided into three sections, the 16-minute "A" track features simple ascending/descending melodious piano-note clusters that weave in and out of sustained synth tones, wading deep into Music For Airports and Avec Laudenum territory with occasional flashes of Vangelis. "B" and "C", while much shorter, tackle darker tones, showcasing some of the haunted, underwater keyboard lines that make Boards of Canada so compelling. If this is your first introduction to German Shepherd, I highly suggest you hop over to Sunrise Acoustics and download this as well as his back catalogue. While relying heavily on glacially-paced synth lines as opposed to his characteristic cracked guitar sounds, 203 is a highly regarded foray into warmer tones set at the mercy of self-prescribed limitations. The result is another gem in the roster of you-must-hear-now German Shepherd records.

Ryan H.

203 Sunrise Acoustics Page (Download Here)

German Shepherd

Alpine Melodies (09.09, Sunrise Acoustics)

For: Amplifier Machine, Jasper TX, Machinefabriek

Byline: Eponomania! Beautiful guitar drones from perennial TOME fav.

Some people don't believe in auetuers. I do. I really like works of art that call as much attention to how they are made as to why. There is a great scene in Ingmar Bergman's late film Persona where the classic close up shot is reversed. Instead of the audience seeing the camera close in on the actress Liz Ullman's face, we are treated to Ullman's point of view as Bergman (himself) comes in for the shot. Likewise, German Shepherd's output has been an admittedly personal exploration between personal output and public consumption. Preferring buried tones, warped sounds, and a recording aesthetic that spills slowly out of his subconscious onto analog tape, letting the listening audience into a deeply personal space. There is no holding the audience at arms length by polished recording equipment or bombastic noise bursts. You are keenly aware of the manufactured aspect of what you are listening to. That is a really exciting thing, it is almost a personal invitation to see how German Shepherd thinks, how he is creating what you are listening to. The aspect of recording seems like an afterthought. Well, at least that's what I think

You know how everything sounds muffled after an extremely loud show or when you are pumping up your bike tire to 120 psi and it pops? His Looping guitar drones are buried at such a fidelity that everything sounds far away and distant. It is both beautiful and eerie, as if stumbling onto a band practice in the middle of an abandoned warehouse. Unlike Times New Viking's sham promise of "25% better fidelity", German Shepherds promise of "less hiss, more cicada" actually holds it's weight. Gone is the omnipresent buzz (which I really liked) and replaced is a shimmering glow of a "new" 8 track recorder. Always favoring decaying and warped studio equipment and instruments, the addition of some minimal synth lines on the centerpiece "Ryan Hall (and his Norwegian Anorak)" are a welcome addition. "Green Pine" features a repeated atonal piano line similar to Lamonte Young before its tone and pitch are completely mutated by slowing it way down before its eventual demise. A move similar to William Basinski's "Disintegration Loops" where tones and notes take on a totally different character before they literally disintegrate. "Lagom" is in familiar territory of previous albums "Beehive" and "Two", explorative guitar lines are propped up by beautiful drones and guitar loops while natural field recordings are sampled intermittently.

The work of most ambient/drone musicians change on the tiniest hinges. When an artist this arena takes a step, no matter how minute, in an exciting new direction, it pays to take note. Noise is an unconquerable domain, so we should pay attention when an artist finds new ways of channeling it and processing it. Alpine Melodies is a beautiful peek into the act of creation, pre-thought out ideas of melody and tone met with improvisation and experimentation. Probably the best experimental album of the year. Pick this one up. Only 100 copies made. Super handmade and awesome.

Ryan H.

Sunrise Acoustics page

German Shepherd

Beehive: Symbol of Cooperation and Industry (Fall.07)

Byline: Symbol of Cooperation and Industry. Isn't Life just a crazy, crazy dream?

For: Jasper TX, The Fun Years, Belong

The symbol of the beehive has a special meaning that is largely forgotten in Salt Lake City. Once a symbol used by the settlers of this great valley to remind them of the necessity of cooperation, communal empathy, and fortiteous industry to survive in this far flung desert, the power of the beehive's influence in the political, communal, and personal thinking of the day has largely been lost in Utah. I'm not sure when this idea of communal living was usurped by slit-throat capitalism, or when Utah became a bastian for third-world wage slavery, but needless to say our state symbol is a piece of woven cloth ephemera waving above our state capitol. If you are interested check out this site for a bold look forward in incorporating Utah's long lost ideals. I know I have alienated about 90% of the people reading, but seriously, look it up, the Beehive is a powerful symbol. Victor Erice even made a movie about it. The music of Beehive is just as warped as our state symbol, but in a much, much better way.

German Shepherd, the musician who burst into my psyche on the 4 way Traveling split, is a musician from Great State of Wisconsin playing warped basement guitar drones that sound at once intimate and distant, as if gurgling up through some creaky midwestern wooden floorboards into straight into your subconscious. My mom, in her infinite kindness, gave me one of the best birthday presents a few years ago, a pair of super nice headphones. The kind with noise cancellation, a feature that makes up for the fidelity lost in processing mp3's. It has made my listening much more gratifying auditory experience. With German Shepherd, however, I leave all supplemental hearing contraptions off, and listen to it the way I think he meant it. Looping guitar tracks and droning synths buried underneath the surface of iced over lake of lo-fi analog recording noise. This recording technique has been applied by Grouper, Belong, and Inca Ore with the same effect. Beehive is an album to get lost in, to completely sink beneath the waves of cracked guitar sounds, cheap amps, and droning effect pedals. Virtuoso guitar playing is not a pre-requisite to being a floor-core guitar strangler, but on "Crane Spreads it's Wings" one gets the sense that German Shepherd has a classical sense of how the guitar works, before he goes about dismantling it. I am in love with the twinkling guitar line at the end of the song that is somehow eerily reminiscent of "Today" by the Smashing Pumpkins. One thing I really appreciate about German Shepherd is that each song sound like proper songs. Not one sounds alike, which is a Million Dollar Man type feat in the world of basement ambient drone types. Mr. Summers sent me a generous portion of his back catalog, I am looking forward to having similar experiences with each.

German Shepherd Homepage.