Ermes / Harms - Fingerhut (CD)

Release Date: 01/15/21

Ermes / Harms present the essence of 30 years of industrial, ambient and electronics on 2 CDs

It is difficult to reconstruct the exact founding date for this project. End of the 80s' is probably best. Hauke Harms and Axel Ermes got to know each other at GIRLS UNDER GLASS, the famous gothic/EBM project from Hamburg and began to experiment very irregularly but always extremely intensively with electronic sounds, analog synthesizers and unusual sounds, sometimes even recorded with a small recording device in the forests of Northern Germany. Intellectual and compositional role models are certainly Klaus Schulze, Cluster, Can and a few other protagonists of the 70s Krautrock, but more modern productions such as Autechre or Emptyset are now among their influences. In addition, it was composers like Steve Reich or John Cage who opened the ears and soul of the two Hamburg boys to unusual sound collages. In the 90s there were mostly endless sessions in various studios or rehearsal rooms in and around Hamburg, since the 2000s there have been more and more selected exotic locations (former waterworks in Billbrook, the (world cultural heritage) Rammelsberg mine in Goslar (Harz), about 500 m deep underground, or an empty grain silo in the Nordheide to name just a few of the most interesting places where the two sound tinkerers met to create their sound collages). The listener can expect an exciting journey through their meticulously implemented acoustic fantasies and, in some cases, random sound events such as feedback or electronic interference. When editing the recordings in the Harms studio, unwanted sounds were removed rather than new ones added. In total, there were more than 75 hours of audio material to view and listen to. The homogeneous essence of this can be heard on FINGERHUT.