7. The Shadow RingHold Onto I.D.
I’m a total music maniac. In the 90s I started to buy records a lot – too many. My collection is like 20,000 records or something like that. I haven’t heard them all, but I think because they are around me, maybe some spirits or feelings will rain on me and I will get inspiration just being around these masterpieces, or bad music or whatever. Nowadays, because I’m older, it’s very difficult to realise what happened: why did I do this, why did I buy all this music?
I started going to this German heavy metal festival called Keep It True. I realised that the reason I couldn’t find inspirational things from music was me – I’m the guilty one. It’s not the music’s fault. So, then I started to find very normal sounding music. It was a funny and interesting trip – I was really into like, yacht rock and soft rock and AOR. It all sounded very new to my ears because I used to hate that kind of music. But then I realised I’m the guilty one – I should be more open minded. And now I’m back in experimental music, finally.
Is The Shadow Ring one of those favourites that you’ve come back to?
Yeah. I bought a lot of Siltbreeze, Drunken Fish, Amphetamine Reptile – hundreds of them. I always got a very inspirational feeling from The Shadow Ring, there’s just lo-fi recordings, maybe a floor tom or something, a wrongly-tuned guitar and some poetry. But the feeling and atmosphere was very inspirational.
