Pocket Symphonies (LP)

Label: Martin Hossbach
Price at HKW: € 15,00
Price at Kompakt Vertrieb: € 15,90

Available at the shop of the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, mail order buying/postal shopping via Kompakt Vertrieb Köln

Componists: John Kameel Farah, Ana Maria Rodriguez, Zeitblom, Alex Paulick, Eliav Brand, Guido Möbius, Juliana Hodkinson, Ari Benjamin Meyers, Adi Gelbart und Patric Catani.

There used to be a time when ring tones were important. You were easily recognizable as one of the few people actually owning one of these cool new gadgets called mobile phone. In May 2014 the Festival Doofe Musik (Stupid Music – Songs for Dreaming, Sedation and Forgetting) took place at Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW). As part of the Anthropocene Project the festival focussed on escapism and the special function of music when retreating from reality. Detlef Diederichsen, curator at HKW, and Holger Schulze, Head of Sound-Studies-Lab Berlin, decided to not only focus on music which music lovers usually hate, e.g. “Schlager”, German folk music, Light Jazz, but also on ring tones.

The audio logo of Deutsche Telekom has been part of Germany’s mobile phone culture from the very beginning and therefore acted as a starting point to question the usual concepts for ring tones. Using Christian Kellersmann’s idea of the “Pocket Symphony” ten artists were invited to come up with adaptations of Telekom’s audio logo. The results were performed for the first time during Stupid Music and once again in October of the same year when most of the recordings you can find on the album were made.

The short motif, as simple and unforgettable as it is, is ideal musical material. Everyone knows it, everyone has some sort of connection to it and these ten different versions, open up varied possibilities for associations.

As one of the most reduced and widely available musical forms the ring tone contains an unrealised potential.