Heiko Maile

Demo Tapes 1984-86 by Heiko Maile includes a selection from his beginnings of electronic music and the bizarre sonic worlds he inhabited. Most of the tracks on this album were recorded with a basic stereo (2-track) cassette recorder. The studio set-up looked more or less like this: a drum computer (no Midi) and a sequencer were connected to each other and synchronized rhythmically. I crafted melodic sequences and rhythms and usually transposed them to the desired pitch manually, using the keyboards. Other live instruments were played over the top. Then everything, the sum of all the sound sources, was put together in a kind of "live recording" with the aid of a mixing desk. Just a single mistake would mean having to start all over again. Reconfiguring many of the sounds once the controls had already been adjuste was a painstaking process. I ended up with heaps of cassettes, often featuring seemingly endless versions and variations of the same track.