German DJ and producer Sepalot and songwriter and poet Angela Aux join forces on the new music project TIKHET. The duo release their debut single ‘Smoke Rings’, out everywhere now.
‘Smoke Rings’ is an exemplary introduction of the project's DNA: a sluggish drum groove meets a rolling bassline, then taking off with a paradoxically catchy Woodstock hook: "Take me on a trip upon the smoke rings of your mind". Dreamy echoes from the 90s reverberate through your consciousness: think early Gorillaz, Beck and Madlib, perhaps Kruder & Dorfmeister and Chemical Brothers. The flute is played by a third travelling man: legend Wolfi Schlick (ex-Poets of Rhythm, Embryo).
Seapalot says, “First there was always a drum groove or a skeletal beat sketch from me, then Angela played a bassline. While I enriched the production with sometimes confusingly arranged synth tracks, piano chords, scratches or string parts, Angela immersed himself in text fragments and played guitar.
Perhaps that was the key to our remarkable production speed and the laid-back vibe that "mixtape suite" now conveys: The two of us hardly ever got in each other's way artistically and rarely had to look for compromises - simply because neither of us would have asked for them, because everything was allowed anyway.“
A good song is like a ticket through the universe. Destinations being actual real locations, some form of utopia, even imaginary planets or a dusty chamber of your brain, it can be a different era or anything in between. TIKHET have a whole album's worth of such travel tickets at the ready. Or, even better: TIKHET is music-turned-ticket to an imaginary dream world: near, far, with a surreal twist, colourful, vintage-esque and futuristic.
TIKHET is an obvious name for these short, voluptuous trips. The excursions by producer Sepalot and songwriter Angela Aux are based on psychedelic grooves. From there, they drift through genres and decades: Nu jazz, folk, krautrock and as expected with a great sense of atmosphere and collage.
Sepalot was part of the Blumentopf collective that shaped the German hip-hop landscape. As a solo artist, he has released several beat albums, contributed soundscapes to series and films, tailor made music to exhibitions and played countless DJ sets all over the globe. Creative machine Angela is a globetrotter himself and has performed on hundreds of stages from Berlin to Paris in both solo and band contexts. He is the singer and bassist of the indie rock band Aloa Input, a poet and is responsible for the scope music for various films and theatre plays.
However, Sepalot and Angela have more in common than the 'worldliness' factor or their regular presence on international radio programmes. Both have their roots in the Munich scene, both run their own label and were musically raised in a similar way - albeit at different times -they share their admiration for The Poets of Rhythm, The Notwist, Krautrock, Giorgio Moroder and DJ Hell.
Their new music project TIKHET sounds unplanned and anarchic, with a raw core and some well rounded patina on the outside. Their debut album is set for release in early 2025, watch this space.
Hello TIKHET! Can you introduce yourself and tell us about your musical journey
If you grew up in southern Germany in the 70s and 80s, there were only a few record stores and radio programs that helped you escape the dreariness. You sat with the cassette recorder and listened to radio programs, pressing record whenever an exciting song came on. If you had money, you bought the records that were available in the two or three record stores. This hunter and collector mentality is the basis of TIKHET, always looking for exciting tunes, records and projects. And this search is channelled into our joint project, in which we basically do exactly what we always do solo, just together. The music is a mixture of hip hop producing and folk/kraut songwriting, with many references to decades that we liked: trippy 60s, souly 70s, dancy 80s and so on.
Music News wanted to find out more...
How would you describe your music? The band name Tikhet comes directly from our music: the way we take little kaleidoscopic trips through music history, through genres and decades. Compositionally, the journey comes from our backgrounds: hip-hop producing and indie songwriting, as well as our enthusiasm for electronic music, Krautrock and film music. At best, you take the music with you on a journey, listening to it while looking out at the landscape from the train, while cycling or jogging or while you have time to let your mind wander.
Can you tell us about your single ‘Smoke Rings’?When Smokerings was created, we didn't know that we would have a new project together. We were actually working on feature tracks for Sepalot's new album. When we finished a track, we jammed a bit over one of Sepalot's drum sketches with no major goals in mind. Then one thing led to another and somehow it was a track with its own special signature. So it was more or less the starting point of the project, interestingly also an organic continuation of Munich's music cultures from our previous projects, labels like Compost and bands like Embryo and The Poets of Rhythm. Wolfi Schlick from the Poets / Embryo on the flute was the perfect missing piece of the puzzle.
What are your plans for the rest of the year?There are more tracks coming with this kind of mix, including excursions into house, big beat and instrumental hip hop. It remains slightly trippy, quirky with a hippie vibe and lots of references for diggers and lovers.
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