Sascha Stadlmeier - Weir

In this episode we meet Sascha Stadlmeier, a composer, musician, and label owner, from Augsburg, Germany, a city that happens to sit along the river Lech. For our project he worked on the segment of the river running through Landsberg. The recording captures the sounds of the historical centre, taken on a Sunday afternoon while sitting at a café. Then the bells of the church nearby started ringing. Little did I know they were going to sound for almost ten minutes, getting increasingly louder.

Here’s how Sascha described his approach for us, to hear more and listen to his work, check out the podcast episode!

I have been to Landsberg several times and am referring here to the place in the old town next to the weir. The piece represents the surroundings at this location with the constant sound of the river and people sitting in cafés and walking around, and imagines that you are in the river itself, drifting along.I only used the field recordings in different pitches, slowed down and sped up, like some parts of the original recordings. I made further edits and built up layers of the different sounds, creating a mixture of natural and alien sounds that interact with each other. The presence of the river and the weir dominates, or at least accompanies, life in this particular environment and influences people's perceptions both consciously and unconsciously.

Flow is a project by Martina Cecchetto, curated by Riccardo Fumagalli, with the scientific contribution of Florian Betz.

In collaboration with Cities & Memory, University of Padua (Italy), University of Würzburg (Germany).

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