AudioZine #3 – Valerie Kuehne

“I never had heard any other music of Valerie Kuehne, but she has a new follower!” says Johan Nederpel in Yeah, I know it sucks.

“She performs with great style,” says Frans De Waard in Vital Weekly #1032

“Sehr hoher Unterhaltungswert,” says DJ TDK aka Thomas Neumann in Hörerlebnis, Ausgabe 97

The second edition is now available at  staalplaat or my shop. The price is €6.00 plus shipping. Made in an edition of tewnty copies. Once this edition is sold out, a new one will be made. But don’t ask me when.

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Audiozine #3 - Valerie Kuehne ---- side A, Side B

Audiozine #3 – Valerie Kuehne —- side A, Side B

Valerie Kuehne plays cello. She sings too. Everything fits into a song structure. And here the problem starts. It is not about lalala, though you will find lalala-moments in them. There is a lot you can find and hear in these songs. Go and have a listen here, if you want to find out more right away. Songs can end in songs and that’s it. You can perform songs in front of a live audience. At such moments Valerie does something between hosting, entertaining and performing; in fact she turns her handbag inside out, the contents fall on the floor, and the audience happens to be a part of it.

I am not going to reveal a lot about the contents of this tape. There are 8 pieces on it. It is a 30 minute tape of chrome quality. I made a fourtrack master for each side and copied them from a Yamaha MT100II onto a Marantz CP430. You will get good quality. The names of the songs are in the little booklet that comes with the tape. I will not publish those titles here. It had to be a surprise; it had to be a big surprise.

I would like to explain why this tape is an audiozine about Valerie and not an album by her. Imagine the mansion that was used in Gone with the Wind. It is a bit in a bad state now, but just imagine it with a roof and ready for use. The mansion won’t look like it did in the movies. It is just, you know, woaw, this is the Gone with the Wind mansion and all the rooms are empty. There is a truck load of Valerie’s stuff in one of the bigger rooms. Now, she, Valerie, is there with her friends; they all have their rooms, and I arrive, say, to stay a while. Alright, she says, do as you like, take a room, and use what you need to make yourself feel comfortable and the next day she and her friends leave for a giant forty days tour.

There I am with an empty room and a truck load of her stuff. I look at those things, pick them up, see how they connect to a personal life, or to an urban life; I see glimpses of New York, a bit of Americana, souvenirs from Berlin. I see things that I don’t understand, but still like. And slowly my room takes form. In the end it feels comfortable. It looks like my room, but the things that make it feel like mine are hers. Strange effect.

This is why. When compiling the tape, I treated the material in the same way as I do when I compose my work. In this case I had to make eight very important decisions that would define the character of this tape. The first song had to nail the listener to its seat right from the beginning; the second one had to make him or her shake in awe and excitement. If I could reach this effect, and I did thanks to the extreme overwhelming quality of both songs, a storyline would open as by wonder. Each of you listeners will discover their own story. If you are not a fan yet, you will become one soon.

The tape is available for 6.00€ ex-shipping. ( This link brings you to the shop)

 

Valerie Tape