For those people that haven’t heard of you could you tell us a bit about yourself your story?
I am a musician, composer/ songwriter and producer from Stuttgart, South Germany. Studying classical piano as a child with my grandmother I grew up in a musical family that usually ends up jamming when they see each other. When I was 15 I stopped my piano lessons, bought myself an electric guitar and founded my first band. In my early 20s, I moved to London to study Jazz at University. As part of my MA thesis, I produced my debut album‚ Fire & Sleep’, which combined Brazilian styles with contemporary production techniques. Promoting the album I was touring London’s underground scene and England with my six-piece band and as a Jazz songwriter.
Nowadays I am based in Stuttgart free-lancing as a composer for film and media, but I have also been working as an arranger, choir conductor and singing teacher. Through my current work as a producer and arranger, I have become increasingly familiar with vocal and orchestral arrangements, which has also inspired me a lot when writing my new album.
‘The Flood’ was released on February 4th, 2022 via Oti-O Records and has been described as a fusion of Jazz, Electronica and Alternative. It features London musicians Adam Osmianski (drums/ percussion), Ferg Ireland (bass) and guitarist Jack Ellister, producers Stephan Bissart (Berlin) and Gabriel Ralls (London), and other talented musicians and producers from across London, Stuttgart and Berlin.
Who inspired you to get on stage?
I think the first songwriter who deeply inspired me was Kurt Cobain. When I listened to Nirvana for the first time in the 90s as a teenager I was totally hooked and started writing and performing my own songs shortly after. Then there was a period in my teens during which I listened to a lot of Hendrix, Blues, Soul and R‘n’B and after I had been to England for the first time, I got into Trip Hop, Drum and Bass, Electronic Rock…there was really just a lot of different music that inspired me before I discovered my interest for Jazz and World Music in my early twenties.
On ‘The Flood’, although it can’t be categorised as Jazz, I have still been inspired by Jazz harmony a lot. I have listened a lot to World Music artists like Avishai Cohen and have been influenced by Brazilian composers such as Carlos Jobim.
Moreover, I absolutely love the atmospheric arrangements and mixes of James Blake and the way his vocals feel so natural and warm yet ethereal. Over the past years, I have listened to his records a lot. However, I also enjoy Alternative Rock and I am a huge fan of PJ Harvey!
I have also taken inspiration from Bonobo, Feist, Bob Dylan, Chet Baker, Sophie Hunger, Joni Mitchell, Esbjörn Svensson, Astrud Gilberto, Massive Attack, Radiohead, Portishead, Bat for Lashes, Sade, Patti Smith…
Are there any artists or albums that have influenced your style and stuck with you?
I still get very emotional when listening to some of my favourite singers, one of which is Billie Holiday: the sound of and the emotional profoundness in her voice, her paraphrasing and of course her songs I just find really deep and inspiring.
It’s similar with John Lennon, I don’t think I will ever get tired of listening to him and The Beatles, I just think they are true geniuses and I love their intelligent, rich lyrics, they are so relevant.
Last but not least, and probably most importantly, I love the compositions of Björk. I adore her music and think she’s absolutely unique. I especially love her earlier work.
Do you have any songwriting rituals?
Sometimes, when you feel really strongly about something, you will write a song in half an hour. It’s those songs that literally seem to pour out of you. You sometimes write the lyrics and the melody in one go and it just feels right.
Then there are songs where you have to actually figure out what it is that you want to say and how you want to say it. In this case, most of the time, I brainstorm on the subject writing down words and short sentences. Next, I usually play around with different harmonies, improvising on the melody. I think this is my favourite part, as I love the way harmony is so powerful in terms of how you will perceive the lyrics.
On ‘The Flood’ my songwriting process was not always this straight forward though. I also worked with natural ambiences that are meant to add to the atmosphere. Sometimes they even became an instrument within the song or inspired the melody and harmony.
Could you tell us a bit about the writing/recording of your album “The Flood”?
My debut album ‘Fire & Sleep’ uses a lot of Jazz harmony and Brazilian influences and it actually happened in an academic context. At the time I was really used to writing music using the tools I had acquired at University and was also working like this in the early 2010s when I was writing mainly commissioned compositions. But before I had known I hit a really bad writer’s block. It felt like I had not paid enough attention to what I really wanted to say and I had to kind of regain my musical identity.
When I finally started writing again, the songs I wrote and that became the core of my new album pretty much sum up the battle I had with myself accepting this new person that I had become and saying goodbye to the old me. The album is almost like a wave of emotions washing all over you and blessing you with the realisation that authenticity is the only way to go on, musically and personally.
Hence I had to go back to quite an intuitive, open way of writing. For instance, I had the idea of tuning my guitar to a tuning I had not used much before so I had to find and study new voicings. Also, some of the songs I wrote ‘the wrong way round’, starting with the outro etc. Several arrangements are based on ambiences that I had recorded onto my phone and that inspired me to find sounds and melodies.
When I was producing the songs in the studio it was very liberating to understand that I had just reinvented myself and that I was absolutely free to do whatever I wanted. I was not sure I would release those tracks so that took out a lot of pressure and it got me experimenting, swapping parts, playing around with noise and ambience samples. Having started to work like this on my debut album, I think I might have taken these principles to another level with my new album.
In 2017 I recorded drums and bass with Adam Osmianski (Samba Azul, Joy Ellis Trio) and Ferg Ireland (Kansas Smitty’s) in London and also went to see my good producer friend Gabriel Ralls (Koto Kill, Plastique) and Psychedelic Rock guitarist and songwriter Jack Ellister to discuss possible collaborations. A few months later I travelled to Berlin to record Simon Horn on double bass (he also recorded the bass on ‘My Secret’) together with Stephan Bissart who wrote the original instrumental of ‘Through the Forest’. Our actual collaboration for this song happened several years before but I felt it would fit in nicely with my other songs and Stephan was happy for me to release it on the ‘The Flood’.
In 2018 my friend Jörg Kersting from Listen Komposition & Ton! finally recorded strings for me at their recording studios in Stuttgart. Here, I am also renting my little studio, my favourite place to work, where I recorded pretty much everything else you can hear on the album. Listen! supported me a lot with this project – Wolfgang Simm co-produced and mixed with me the entire album – I really can’t thank them enough!
What do you think attracts artists like yourself to writing about the sea?
I have always been drawn to extreme landscapes and the sea really seems to be like a magnet for me. I suppose you could use words like ‘majestic’ or ‘mysterious’ – and you could argue that it’s the fascination with the sublime in general. Nevertheless, at least for me personally, there seems to be more to it than that.
On my debut album, I wrote a song called ‘I Can See the Sea’ that is about that moment when you see the ocean appear in the distance after a long drive and you get this particular feeling in your stomach. It is very hard to pin down – I am sure for some people of my generation, who lived far from the sea when they were little it also became a place of longing. I was often sitting in the back of a VW van for an entire day to finally get to see a beach, so probably the sea is also a special place for me where everyone finally relaxes and rests.
At the same time I kind of feel at home by the sea. A lot of my relatives from my mother’s side are actually from the Adriatic Coast so maybe I have it in my DNA, who knows.
Some songs on ‘The Flood’ I wrote after I had been spending much time on my favourite island in the Atlantic Ocean, reflecting on some experiences from the past that had really hit me hard. It was like the sea helped me listen to myself as if it magnified and clarified my emotions, made them more tangible. I have always been inspired by the arrangement and beauty of natural shapes and the aesthetics of disorder, and, when writing ‚The Flood’, part of the process of realising what being authentic meant for me at the time was to allow for chaos to exist.
Quite possibly, being by the sea and identifying with its unpredictable dynamics encouraged me to let my compositions become more unpredictable and irreversible – it was so liberating when I let go of old familiar structures within my music.
Here at Artistic Echoes, we are always on the lookout for new artists do you have anyone to recommend?
I can totally recommend the musicians I collaborated with on my new album and in the past and the other artists that have released music on Oti-O.
Adam Osmianski is a fantastic percussionist and drummer and is also playing on Joy Ellis’ beautiful new album ‚Peaceful Place’ which will come out at the end of this month.
Pedro Velasco will be releasing a very inspiring new album that also experiments with combining Electronica and Jazz with the title‚ Scribbling’ in collaboration with Harry Christelis at the end of March.
Moreover, my long-term collaborator Gabriel Ralls will bring out a new release with his project Koto Kill in the near future that you really shouldn’t miss. On Koto Kill’s debut album ‚Fight Us All’ (Dystopian Disco, 2018) I collaborated with Gabriel on ‚Fire Down’ and I also worked with him on one track of his upcoming album.
Finally, I can highly recommend Jack Ellister’s new album ‚Lichtpyramide II’ (Tonzonen Records).
What plans do you have for the rest of the year?
First of all, I am planning to take a few weeks off from social media and to get back to the sea.
Then, I really want to try and get together with the band that I formed in 2019 and that premiered ‘The Flood’ live at the time. It would be incredible to get back into playing live on a regular basis after this very long, introspective phase. I am really eager to go to gigs and to perform my original music live again after there were no concerts for so long during the pandemic.
Lastly, it would be wonderful to seriously start working on a new album. I’ve already started experimenting with some ideas and can’t wait to get back into the studio to record and produce.
Find out more:
Bandcamp: https://judithhaustein.bandcamp.com/
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/1wDgZDxIbynDHvPEC9FRbb
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Juwiththeredshoe
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/judithhaustein
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/judith_
