On the second day of Forward Festival I had A_NEW_DAY performance slash talk marked on my list right after number one of this day – Stefan Sagmeister (funny video from that coming soon). Artists of A_NEW_DAY project told, sung, drawn the story of the main creator Sascha Bém as he found himself in a life-changing situation after having a car accident. Sascha spent months in recovery and that made him think new about his own music. Until now, he worked as a rock drummer with many bands, and that work has been very structured and well planned. Suddenly, the music just came to him and needed to find a way out, so completely different as before, Sascha wrote the song, which he heard in his head. He just let it flow.
After the performance, I took a chance to talk to Sascha and asked him about the process of establishing an art/performance band like this. As you will soon find out, it’s very interesting for me and Quantiz at DM-KD, as we want to work more with György and body movement mapping.
I actually found out, that years have passed from the moment of writing the songs until Sascha met Clemens Handler and let him be inspired by the compositions. Clemens felt unknown urge to sing, although he was a bass player in these times. That’s how it all happened. They have entered uncharted territory, as they say. Sascha: “For the first time I didn’t plan anything, I just let it happen and fall into place”.
I asked, how to create our presence, how to find an audience? He said, we should just listen to ourselves, what the intuition tells us to do, not what others say we should be doing. If we like to rehearse, we should rehearse, if not, then not, then maybe we are studio artists and not performing artists. That definitely is a different point of view from what one can read in all “how to’s” for independent musicians. Somehow I believe it.
At the end, Sascha said, it takes a lot of time and work, and one needs to be very patient and persistent in order to achieve her goal. Lastly, he added “Be more radical. You have to be really radical about what you are doing because only then people will understand who you are.”
As A_NEW_DAY collaborate with many visual and multimedia artists, their performance changes and develops in time – they became famous for using 3D sound. They are now performing all over the world, played at SXSW this year, giving a show together with HOLOPLOT, who won an innovation award at the festival! Soon they will perform at EXPO Kazakhstan and DLD Tel Aviv Innovation Festival. Keep your eyes and ears opened.
