Earthed / Unearthed by Michael Brückner

(02) EARTHED / UNEARTHED (1994)

This, Ladies and Gentlemen, is my "real" debut album - and a concept album, too, at that! :-)

It was recorded throughout the bigger part of 1994 in Heidelberg, where I shared an appartment with a friend (who had to endure the heaviest wave of my then new-found musical enthusiasm, poor guy!). It was designed for the medium of the day, music-cassette, of which a "run" of (I think) eleven copies were produced and shared among my little circle of friends…

The concept was simple: Side one of the cassette (tracks 1 - 7) was reserved to "earth bound" themed music, side two to ethereal (or spacy) music. Hence the title (...however I didn't realise at that time that these words in English probably don't have the same figurative connotation as in German, "unearthed" even usually being used in a totally different meaning; anyway - the recording is old and very obscure, so perhaps the title now ironically fits even better that way…).

Back to the "concept" - actually, track 8 (the first track of the original B-side) is an attempt to make a transition from "earthbound" to "spacy", and "Turning of the Wheel" in a way switches the listener back to earth - the final "Hymn" being in some ways a musical counterpart to the album opener "Earthed".

These two tracks (first and last) actually were the most ambitious both musically and in terms of arrangement and production - unfortunately, with hindsight they turned out less convincing than most of the rest (...something that kinda haunts me from beginning: the best results come about when I'm playful; the more effort I put into something, often the results turn out disappointing in relation to that).

Still, Earthed / Unearthed turned out a good start, and I've always been fond of it. It also yielded the most satisfying reaction from a listener I ever received:

Shortly after finishing it, a friend came visiting called Ludger, a student at this point; when we both did our community service (instead of the army) two years earlier, we had shared a room.
This was before I started to dabble in music (but we always listenend to a lot of music together, and loud!) so he had not heard anything I had cobbled together before - just knowing about my new hobby from telephone conversations and letters.
So, after we had lunch that day (and I still see us in the kitchen of my grandmother's appartment in the house where I grew up) I asked him if he would like a listen, and switched on that portable cassette player.

Ludger started listening, smiling first, then looking more and more irritated, until he gave me a sign to stop the tape and after a second of silence during which he apparently was looking for words, he said, in a tone of disbelieve…

"But... But this is REAL music!"

I will always remember that moment...

Tracklist

1.	Earthed	5:07

2.	Jungle Flute	4:06

3.	Toccata	2:27

4.	Porcupines	3:26

5.	The River	5:11

6.	Storm	4:40

7.	Open Country	7:45

8.	Above And Below	4:04

9.	Leaving Ground	4:45

10.	Empty Orbits	3:49

11.	Centaury Bound	9:28

12.	Cotton Road	6:22

13.	Turning Of The Wheel	7:25

14.	Hymn	3:55

Credits

released February 2, 1994

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