MirrorWorldMusic

MirrorWorldMusic is a label, archive, and publishing imprint for diverse idiosyncratic music projects that are linked in some way by their protagonists. The diversity of the stylistic scope, spanning more than 30 years, is unified by an overarching experimental approach and a multi-minded spirit.

Latest Updates

ANGELICUS : Approach

LP / CD / DL released by Improved Sequence

Angelicus is Werner Zappi Diermaier (faust), Dirk Dresselhaus (Schneider TM), Ilpo Väisänen (Pan sonic) and John Duncan (LAFMS).

Angelicus formed remotely during the Covid pandemic, with a recording project Approach released on CD and LP by Improved Sequence.  Their first live performances used songs from the release to build entirely fresh, unique sets, surpassing the highest expectations from these masters of improvised electronic sound.

Werner Zappi Diermaier (drums and percussion) is the legendary founding member of Faust.

Dirk Dresselhaus (guitar and effects) performs solo as Schneider TM, as a duo with Ilpo Väisänen (die Angel), and in a number of one-off projects ranging from stage to radio to television with guests ranging from Hildur Guðnadóttir, Oren Ambarchi, Jochen Arbeit, and Damo Suzuki to Tomoko Nakasato, Lillevan, Reinhold Friedl, and a host of others, all stellar artists.

Ilpo Väisänen (electronics) is a founding member of Pan sonic and die Angel.  His visual artwork is seen on the cover of the Angelicus: Approach CD and LP release by Improved Sequence.

John Duncan (vocals, lyrics, shortwave) is a member of LAFMS, the Los Angeles Free Music Society. Duncan’s legacy ranges from performance and art installations to pirate radio and television, Japanese noise and beyond.  He has recorded and performed with AIRWAY, Oren Ambarchi, Chris&Cosey, Coro Arcanto, Cristiano Deison, faust, Carl Michael von Hausswolff, Hijokaidan, Eiko Ishibashi, Zbigniew Karkowski, Merzbow, Jim O’Rourke, Phew, Stefano Pilia and zeitkratzer, as well as many others living and otherwise.

LIVE BOOKING: booking@mirrorworldmusic.com

Hip Young Things

Now available at bandcamp as part of the ::: MirrorWorldMusic Archives ::: project :

Deflowered (1992)

Root’n Varies (1993)

With these two re-releases, which have never been audible on the Internet before, we are digging deep into the beginnings of the MWM cosmos:

Between 1988 and 1997, Hip Young Things became one of the most significant Indie Rock bands from Germany and toured extensively around Europe at the time, releasing four regular albums on Glitterhouse Records and sharing bills with the likes of Codeine, Gumball, The Ramones, Motorpsycho, Beck, The Cramps, Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Tuesday Weld, Speed Niggs, Rein Sanction, Daft Punk, and many others.

Not always critically acclaimed for their at times rather idiosyncratic, experimental, (deadpan) humorous, yet emotive artistic tendencies, which stood somewhat in contrast to their Anglo-American musical influences but underlined their personal take on contemporary alternative rock and pop music, John Peel, for example, outed himself as a fan of the song ‘Long Brown Eyes’ from an early demo cassette tape and gave it some airplay on the BBC. But maybe later, more on this in the future at MWM if the universe allows…

Hip Young Things at MWM

New SCHNEIDER TM album EREIGNISHORIZONT out on 26th of May as 2xLP / 2xCD / DL via KARLRECORDS

RELEASE CONCERT: 30th June 2023 – 20:00h Schneider TM + special guests: Crys Cole (live) / Jazzcats (DJs) – ausland, Berlin, Germany / TICKETS

Presented by Jungle World & amSTARt

“The event horizon gives the black hole its size; behind it hides the singularity. And the more extended it is, the more massive the black hole is. But the event horizon is also invisible; if matter or light passes through it, there is no turning back.“(Prof. Dr. Michael Kramer, Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie) 

EREIGNISHORIZONT is SCHNEIDER TM’s new and with a duration of over 80 minutes truly epic album: experimental guitar, technological innovations and excursions into musical territories beyond the usual.

Performed on (partly self-developed) electroacoustic guitars + effects through a stereo set of tube amps with sensibilities for the world of modular synthesis and a range of seemingly contrarian musical directions, the 8 tracks present transcendental micro- and macrotonal soundscapes and polyrhythms, a musical cosmology that appears to be located in a sort of idiosyncratic alternate or parallel universe where parameters are slightly shifted, which doesn’t necessarily mean something like ‘otherworldliness’ but certainly offer a view onto ‘reality‘ from a bunch of different angles.

EREIGNISHORIZONT sounds and feels like a soundtrack for a yet-to-be-made sci-fi movie and exposes the essence of Dresselhaus’ artistic approaches, crafted here with a more pared-down set-up, an awareness of advanced musical techniques, the physicality of sound, and an improvisational spirit that is based on the experience that things are strongest when they happen first.

The main tools on EREIGNISHORIZONT are two customized electroacoustic guitars:
# The “FireSchneiderTM“ has sound chambers featuring removable bakelite lids and piezo mics, that can be used as percussion tools, vocal mics, or filled with interesting sounding materials like screws, etc.
# The next step in the long-term collaboration between Schneider TM and Deimel Guitarworks is the “SPARK“: In addition to conventional magnetic and piezo pickups the guitar also has playable reverb springs, one of which is attached to the tremolo construction and can be tensioned. The different sound sources can be combined via a global selector switch and sent to an integrated electronic LesLee, which oscillates back and forth between the signals and is connected to CV In & Out sockets for integrating e.g. modular synthesizers via control voltage. The “SPARK” can not only be played acoustically, electrically and electronically, but as an electro-acoustic sound object it also offers possibilities for playing techniques that are not typical for guitars.

The sci-fi feel of EREIGNISHORIZONT is complemented by the artwork by SEBASTIAN MAYER who, just a few weeks before Dresselhaus contacted him, got the opportunity to work as a beta- tester with some of the first available AI based image generators (for which Mayer himself prefers the name „neural network image generator“ because there’s no „intelligence“ – yet – in these networks).

Dirk sent Sebastian some tracks of the new album with the note that he was thinking about this particular image when recording them. Mayer listened to his recordings and understood what inspired SCHNEIDER TM about these more-or-less artificial artworks: “there’s a crude weirdness to the image, it’s funny but at the same time a bit frightening, by topic and by style. It’s like an omen of what’s ahead of us in regards to AI – and not only about image generation but in a wider sense. AI will impact our society in ways we can not yet comprehend, and this image is a coarse yet deceptive harbinger for things that are yet to come – for better or worse.”

The Sound Projector: ” “Ereignishorizont” (the album) really does come across as a soundtrack for an ambitious and epic sci-fi film or television series; at nearly 90 minutes it’s more or less complete in itself as a background music work and all that’s needed is a script of equal if not more ambition in its plotting and vision of a future complex urban society with the technology to match. The man behind Schneider TM (Dirk Dresselhaus) can be proud of the work he has done here. “

Wanted: sci-fi film script with the ambition and complex vision of a futuristic dystopis to match “Ereignishorizont”

Extensive interview at Chain D.L.K.:

Schneider TM
Schneider TM at MWM / www.schneidertm.net
LIVE BOOKING: booking@mirrorworldmusic.com: SCHNEIDER TM : EREIGNISHORIZONT

faust : “Daumenbruch”

New faust album “Daumenbruch” available as LP / CD / DL via EROTOTOX DECODINGS

RELEASE CONCERT: 13TH April 2023 – 20:00h

faust + Sunroof (Daniel Miller & Gareth Jones) + Chandra Shukla

Sonic Morgue @Betonhalle, Silent Green, Berlin, Germany / TICKETS

There are many “Fausts” in this world, twice as many as there are people in most cases. Yet with the intention of equaled strength is Zappi Diermaier and friendsʼ take on Faust, merely as faust. The lowercase spelling is an emphasis on the original concept of the faust that was truly a collective, free of ʻcapitalizedʼ superiority with a minimalistic intent by making sounds and music with endless improvisation and an unspoken trust in the development of carrying the sound to create something unique, extraordinary and visionary. The traditional approach was not just to make sounds with conventional instruments, but to also include the post-modern sounds of the industrial revolution. Instead of the signature cement mixer and power tools faust is famous for, this version includes many who are engaged in adding varied degrees of other ʻindustrialʼ motifs as ingredients. This time the cast of characters returns to eight members, one more than the original lineup was previously in the days of Wümme. Those members are Zappi W. Diermaier (Faust)  himself on drums, Elke Drapatz (monobeat original)  on drum effects, Gunther Wüsthoff (Faust)  on spieluhr (music box), Dirk Dresselhaus (Schneider TM)  on bass and guitar, Andrew Unruh (Einstürzende Neubauten)  on metal percussion, Uwe Bastiansen (Stadtfisch Flex)  on guitar and samples, Jochen Arbeit (Einstürzende Neubauten)  on guitar and loops and Sonja Kosche  on self-made instruments, harp and ventilator. Every ʻvoiceʼ heard by each artist contributing to this incarnation of faust is heard clearly. Instead of an amassing miasmic gurgle as of previous, each artist comes through with distinct individual voices that allow the listener to distinguish what each Musician is sonically responsible for in an unintended symphonic fashion. Recording for ,,Daumenbruchʼʼ was done according to the fact that it wasn’t possible to play and record together live in the same room because of the pandemic situation, most of the overdubs were committed ‘blindly’ on top of previously recorded rough mixes of drums & bass which implemented the method of ‘chance’. Itʼs where primal instinct can transform into tasteful, calculated chemistry woven from absence, silence and negative space through unspoken means of communication.

faust at EROTOTOX
LIVE BOOKING: booking@mirrorworldmusic.com

Now available at bandcamp as part of the ::: MirrorWorldMusic Archives ::: project :

This is a live improvisation of the drone & noise duo ANGEL (Ilpo Väisänen / Dirk Dresselhaus) together with the (later) Multi-Award winning Icelandic cellist Hildur Guðnadóttir (Oscar, Grammy etc. for the original scores of Joker, Chernobyl etc.), which was performed in 2005 at CTM in Berlin a couple of months before they recorded their groundbreaking collaboration album KALMUKIA (Editions Mego 2007). It was originally released as CD by ORAL Records in 2006.

Now available at bandcamp as part of the ::: MirrorWorldMusic Archives ::: project :

This is the first Angel album, which was recorded in Berlin in 2000 at their second ever live appearance, curated by Ran Huber (amSTARt) as an audio-visual performance in conjunction with video works by Videogeist, and was originally released as a CD by BiP_HOp in 2002. It features improvisations by Ilpo Väisänen on typewriter, effects, and CD player and Dirk Dresselhaus on electric guitar, effects, and tube amp.

die ANGEL : Live In Austin

die Angel (previously ‘Angel’) began in 1999 sometime after a tour with Pan Sonic and Schneider TM but consists only of Ilpo Väisänen (Pan Sonic, I-LP-O In Dub, I-LP-ON, Liima, Piiri ) and Dirk Dresselhaus (Schneider TM, Locust Fudge, ASS). With Schneider residing in Berlin, Germany and Ilpo in Kuopio, Finland, the duo has managed to be around for some 22 years. They celebrated their 20th anniversary of being together as a group with a concert at Berlin’s Ballhaus OST with friends performing alongside of them including BJ Nilsen, Lucio Capece, Oren Ambarchi and Anthea Caddy (in place of Hildur Guðnadóttir who could not attend). With Ilpo on electronics (both modular and desktop as well as found objects and other sounds) and Dirk on guitar (not your usual guitar but a very experimental guitar of his own design plus a unique pedigree of effects), the two have toured the globe including a 2019 summer tour with Xambuca of North America plus many amazing bills with others. More or less frequently other die Angel collaborators include the dancer, performance artist and costume designer Tomoko Nakasato and Zappi of Faust. Their live performances are a spectacle that involves the use of visuals and live video in addition to it being one continuous performance without breaks or individual tracks but based on elements of improvisation and more often than not, non-verbal communication but absolutely and totally embedded with its sensibility in the subconscious and the elevated mind.

The new Schneider TM album The 8 Of Space is out now as LP / CD / Digital on Editions Mego.

Schneider TM is the multidimensional music project of Dirk Dresselhaus which has been operating since the mid 90’s. His latest opus is also his first for release for Editions Mego.

With an extensive catalogue under his belt, one may wonder where this one takes us? The 8 of Space orbits the realm of “pop” more overtly than the project has done for 14 years, residing in the line of works that temporarily ended with “Sko- da Mluvit“ from 2006. In the age of scattered streaming listening habits The 8 Of Space champions the classic album format with connected tracks that act like chapters adding up to what could be framed as an ‘audio-movie’. The ‘plot’ revolves around a post-dystopian landscape which posits the make up of reality in the future. Read more…

Schneider TM at MWM / www.schneidertm.net
LIVE BOOKING: booking@mirrorworldmusic.com

Long version: Schneider TM feat. Lillevan – live @ Kesselhaus I berta.berlin
“iBot (With A Soul)” video clip by Edward Paul Quist / embryoroom
“Light & Grace” video clip by Niklas Goldbach
“Spiral” video clip by Olaf Boqwist
“Oh Life” video clip by Arved Schultze

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Schneider TM – Bingo Merch – Online Store

“The 8 Of Space” album, shirts & hoodies (dark silver on black) are available here now next to some selected items from the Schneider TM back catalogue…by buying here you support the beautiful (freelance-) people at Bingo Merch & the artists directly!

LIVE BOOKING: booking@mirrorworldmusic.com

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