Mar 2019
Heavens what exciting times! First, I can’t thank the junge norddeutsche philharmonie enough for an extraordinary experience, first in Hamburg, then in Szczecin (whose hall is so golden), then in Berlin. This group of twenty-somethings are so good at playing music and so energetically up for it. It was my favourite experience ever of being, by some considerable way, both the worst and the laziest musician in the room. Ihr seid der Hammer. Here is a picture by Markus Werner of Berlin’s concert:
My homeboy Hannes Fritsch, who engineered the tour’s sound, is polishing up a recording, and I shall post it when it comes. Hire him and never worry about anything ever again. There are quite a few people whose energies made this project happen: conductor Christoph Altstaed’s inspiring energy drove it, orchestrator Simon Nathan fixed everything up so perfectly, and Konstantin Udert’s organisational chops brought us all together. I am still excited daily by the camaraderie-plus-mad-skills of my fellow quartet-ers Evi Filippou, Nina Guo, and Max Trieder. I can’t wait for all the awesome stuff we’re going to do next, you lot. Peep the wee video below for an unusual view of the last of our three performances together, which was at the Elbphilharmonie for literally all of Hamburg’s secondary school students.
Today Slip put out the first video from the new record Joyrobix. The track is called Grapefruit and is, as the working-out in real life of a long-held fantasy, very satisfying to watch. It’s moderately NSFW, but is basically SFW. Actually, your work colleagues will totally thank you for sharing. And so will I! Stay tuned for all our UK and European tour dates; we’re doing, like, 15 or something before the summer. Also another track here.
Finally, I stumbled over something on the Internet written by Sascha Thiele, which I didn’t know existed. It’s rare that you get to read somebody’s thing about your thing in which you discover somebody’s having heard all the things you hoped people would hear in your thing. Thanks, Sascha! Sascha, by the way, is an extremely fine guitar player who I saw play Jacob TV’s Grab It! a year-ish ago. Sascha’s playing & Jacob TV’s piece will totally improve your life.
joesna.pe 
