For those who don’t know, Ludwig A.F. is a German producer from Frankfurt who creates otherworldly music, drawing upon a range of inspirations from electronic music folklore using his mystical pads, pizzicato strings and catchy rhythms. Perhaps most notorious for his mesmerising debut release “Velocity” via his very own Exo Recordings International, the German artist is also widely recognised for his unique DJ sets, exploring sounds of new and old music spanning a slew of genres.
Following a string of singles late last year, Ludwig A.F. returned to the soundsphere this autumn to deliver his very first full-length album project Air. Consisting of ten tracks inspired by a special location near his house in the Tanus region of Germany, Air delivers some of the most atmospheric electronic music to date. Digging deeper into the record, we asked the German-favourite for five things that inspired the album.
Silence
Silence is a feeling that I rarely find in modern music and especially in dance music. When I was alone on hikes, I felt a certain sensation from the overall silence around me and tried to hold on to that feeling until I got home to my studio.
Places
There were certain places in the forests around Frankfurt that inspired almost all of the music found on this retrospective. Sadly, in the last couple of years, some of these spots got completely eradicated by the impact of insects like the bark beetle. That’s why this project almost acts as an archive of the nature around me and as a bittersweet reminder of how ephemeral life is.
Colours
All of the music I like and all of the music by myself that I end up releasing creates images in my head. It’s mostly colours, textures, shapes and places. Over the years I started making use of the images and have been selecting the pieces for my records by the criteria that the colours of the songs have to match. I rarely tell people what colours I think my songs feel like because when I do it never makes sense to them.
Romplers
So called “Romplers“ were Synthesizers predominantly made between the late 80’s and 90’s. They made use of the new sampling possibilities and were being able to save those samples on their ROM storage, hence the nickname. Nowadays a lot of people would rather use them as doorstoppers (works great, I tried it) especially the ones who were forced to work with them back when there was nothing else to use. They can produce very nice sounds though and many of the presets are found on well known productions from that time. To take those sounds and bring them into my own universe has been inspiring me a lot.
B Sides
A lot of the early songs on this record were originally conceived as material for EP’s that I have never released. I have folders and folders full of music and some of my friends got to hear all of that music that I ended up not using. Running your own label also means you can constantly switch up your release plan which has its positive and negative sides. Funny enough I ended up staying attached to the songs that were originally intended to be B Sides. Then over the years I kept thinking of that “B-Sides“ project once in a while when I knew I had another song that would fit to the project.
