We are delighted to announce the next part of our actual album and sheet book Notation 2.
The East Berlin-born, polyinstrumental composer and curator duo Brueder Selke (CEEYS) – brothers Sebastian and Daniel Selke, known for their electronic chamber music – is excited to present their album and music book NOTATION.
The book is based on fragments of well-known pieces by the brothers, recorded here in writing for the first time, offering a rare insight into their creative process. From these fragments, complex yet recognisable wholes emerge through the brothers’ interplaying action and reaction, through listening to each other play. The art and music book also contains numerous inspirational elements such as famous musical quotes, the remaining photographs from their BETONFELDER series, as well as exquisite artwork by the Irish singer Brigid Mae Power.
The Selke brothers have been regularly performing the selected pieces for many years in many different variations and what brings each arrangement to life is their close listening to the other, and how they interact with each other throughout, from experimentation to composition. At its core, this follows the personal life story of the brothers, who took their first joint steps shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall, overcoming with flexibility and creativity the unprecedented, daily challenges of an East Germany shaped by 40 years of socialism, in the lead up to and immediately following the historical Wendepunkt of 1989.
Whereas elsewhere improvisation is often mistakenly interpreted as a sign of disorganisation, in eastern Germany today it is still considered a special quality. The ability to respond to life’s demands with humour and resourcefulness is for the brothers an essential part of their collaborative creative process. It is also central to their performances, and so the book NOTATION brings new, broader, musical insights into the unity and oppositions within the seemingly intractable conflicts of our daily lives.
This publication is also planned as a duology. Book 1 and Book 2 will be released consecutively, each with an accompanying digital album, with Sebastian playing his Klingenthal cello alongside Daniel on his piano.
The album features extended, matured versions of the pieces based on the essential, reduced notations in the book. Together, the book and album invite like-minded persons to create their own works that sound out the potential of the pieces in their own way and thereby raise them to a whole new level. As always, the brothers aim to promote the exchange of ideas to allow the emergence of new, complex, independent, yet recognisable pieces.
These creatively intertwining conceptual aspects follow Brueder Selke’s guiding principle, to which they remain deeply committed: the search for harmony between the musical profession and human existence – through a constant weighing of the specific elements of their work. Their reductive, at times minimalist approach is applied to a contemporary aesthetic that relates back to their personal experiences and the ever-present restrictions in daily life in the former socialist East Germany.
As CEEYS, Sebastian and Daniel Selke have released six albums – three duologies – that recount episodes from their childhood in the former GDR. Together with the acoustic HAUSMUSIK and the accompanying rework album MUSIKHAUS, they offer context, structure and perspective for their work today.
For the brothers, who grew up in the “real existing Socialism” of the GDR, the current project is therefore more than just the simple notation of their music; it is also a call for more communication with their audience, an offer of insight and guidance.
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, encounter and exchange with like-minded people and musicians have become the fundamental motivation for Brueder Selke. And so the album and notation attempts once more to address the theme of social upheaval, especially in this current time of contradictions, confrontations and warmongering.
After the release of their bridging duology THE GRUNEWALD CHURCH SESSION as CEEYS in early 2022 and MARIENBORN as Brueder Selke at the end of that year, there followed the completion of their first duology as Brueder Selke with the One Instrument concept album GO EAST in 2023, which in its instrumentation and production process can be seen as a turning point in the duo’s work. This minimalist album was followed by a second duology comprising two expansive albums and their accompanying concert films BELKA & STRELKA and STIMMEN IN PRAGUE. Now the two long-standing musical partners present for the first time a music book and album – marking the first part of a third duology – once again under their real names.
In their own words: “The completion of our third duology underscores our deeply internalised and playful search for our own origins and identities in relation to each other in a concert setting – always in partnership with our audience.”
NOTATION is the brothers’ first ever project in which their work is captured in writing and as audio recording, with the aim of entering into a truly personal exchange with the audience. The title can be understood identically in at least two languages.
The recordings were entrusted to Edward Sikorski, and mixed at his Studio B in Dresden. Grammy Award winner Antonio Pulli sensitively finalised both albums in his studio “EL Rincón”.