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Introduction

What to tell about a new artist today? The internet swarms with names of people who have detected the benefits of computer based home recording and mp3 as a convenient mode of spreading their music in the world wide web. With Frank Gingeleit it’s a bit different. Having started to make music beyond the age of fourty, there definitely was a „phase“ of home made amateurishness in his carreer when he bought a guitar shaped in natural alder to suite the dining situation in his living room... Next were a four track cassette recorder, a bass guitar and a simple drum computer (steady rockin’ and with breaks in every twelveth bar...). But this was history when he released his first CD „Nightmares & Escapades“ in the late July of 2002. Actually ment as an intelligent joke - a gift to say thank you to somebody who had sent him a avant-garde underground CD as a present - „Nightmares & Escapdes“ turned out to be acclaimed and estimated by quite a few conoisseurs of electronic and avant-garde music world wide. As everybody seems to be in the need of drawers to file in music the names most frequently associated with Frank Gingeleit’s music were Brian Eno, Fred Frith, Robert Fripp, Manuel Göttsching, Klaus Schulze, and a few more with his second release „Megalopolis“, and even more with his third one „Toy Island“ prolongating the list of names with Tangerine Dream, Kraftwerk, Neu!, Vangelis, Jean-Michel Jarre...

Believe me - and it’s me, Frank Gingeleit, who says this - that all these names are a bit of right on one hand and a bit of wrong on the other. The more I listen to the music of these great artists the more I admire their works at their time, and the more I dislike the comparisons of their music with mine. To give you an example: Almost everybody (beyond a certain age) associated my music on „Megalopolis“ with the mid period Tangerine Dream, namely their albums „Ricochet“, „Rubycon“ and „Stratosfear“. As I didn’t know these records when doing „Megalopolis“ (my knowledge of Tangerine Dream had ended with the „Journey Through a Burning Brain“) I went to a flea market to buy them. Neither „disappointed“ nor „upset“ is the right word to describe my listening experience - this music has simply nothing to do with mine neither sonically nor concerning the instrumentation nor the harmonic framework nor the compositional structures, even the synthesizer sequencing is used in a quite different way. But on the other hand: All these people who associated this music with mine can’t  be completely wrong - so it was my part to find a bit of an answer.

First of all, I’m quite sure that these people didn’t put one of the mentioned records on their record player again but judged from their memory. And this is the point where the comparison works: Not only Tangerine Dream but also most of the other musicians mentioned above had one common topic concerning their music: quest! It’s obvious that for most of their music it was not clear what would be on the records when entering the studio (or the stage in the case of live recordings). And - in most cases - there is a common composition principle: the associative method and the stream of conciousness as a guideline for music rather than writing down notes on a piece of paper. And to work like this was the method of „progressive music“ in the Seventies of the last century, not only restricted to electronica, but also in the fields of Jazz and Rock (and it was the time before music was divided into so many different categories). If I’m right with this hypothesis, it’s obvious why so many older listeners have an association with the Seventies electronica concerning my music  although this similarity vanishes immediately when listening to the old tunes again. And this might also explain why many younger listeners describe my music as something completely new and even unique within the framework of electronic music. Both are right, I think, and although the bridging of generations was not my first objective when deciding to publish my music, I’m quite proud of this... To come to an end of this introduction, Frank Gingeleit’s music is not intended as a follow up of the Seventies’ electronic music (especially not of the „Kosmische Music“ played in Berlin and elsewhere in Germany during this period), but it definitely tries to preserve the „spirit“ of musical openmindedness of that time, and to carry it on into the „new millenium“. As one reviewer put it: „Frank doesn’t try to sound like anyone else, creating his own unique music.“ - And this spirit - rather than the sonic material - is what Frank shares with his Seventies’ „ancestors“ mentioned by so many...

Biography

Frank Gingeleit, born in 1956, grown up in Mannheim, Germany, where he lives again since 1999 (for job reasons he now has a second residence in Schwerin, East Germany). Studies of general linguistics, cultural anthropology and journalism in Mainz, Germany. Research and teaching activities at several universities; from 1996 to the middel of 2004 journalist for public relations work. In 1998 spontaneous purchase of an electric guitar; briefly after this home recording as a systematically operated hobby, now and then private cassette and CD compilations - mainly Blues, Rock, Funk and Ambience - under the band alias "Living Room". Since this time occasional music-journalistic work with the emphasis on German Rock of the Seventies, predominantly for the US internet magazine "Aural Innovations". "Nightmares & Escapades" was his first CD under his own name and was initially seen by him in the tradition of the cassette underground of the Eighties and Nineties: music, noise and language recordings beyond commercial utilization intentions - experimental, avant-garde, unusual and sometimes a little strange. Having learnt that his music is esteemed by quite a few listners worldwide, he continued recording and publishing music, exploring different forms of expression within the genre of experimental electronic and semi-electronic music.

Click here to read a detailed interview with Frank Gingleit at the "Aural Innovations" e-zine that also covers most of his musical biography.