*2026 stock* Beißpony is much more than a band. Laura Theis and Stephanie Müller aka Rag*Treasure met at a Kimya Dawson concert at Kafe Kult in Munich in 2006. Experimental pop meets anti-folk, noise, sound art, queer feminist DIY punk spirit, performance, and video art. Despite their long-distance band relationship, the two remain in close contact. German-Turkish songwriter Laura Theis lives in Oxford (UK) and works there as a freelance writer. Steffi Müller's base is the Mediendienst Leistungshölle in Munich, a nomadic collaborative art and production space. From the beginning, the two opened their band to others. Since 2010, Klaus Erika Dietl has been part of the beißpony cosmos. The queer feminist filmmaker and media artist initially enriched beißpony with music videos. These were shown at festivals in Bilbao, Tokyo, and Vienna. Beißpony's first short music film "Lawnmower in E Minor" was nominated for the German Music Video Award at the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, a festival that qualifies for the Oscars. Klaus Erika Dietl now also contributes as a sound artist.
The first two albums "Brush Your Teeth" (ChicksOnSpeed Records) and "Beasts & Loners" (Rag Rec) thrive on the artists' raw experimental enthusiasm and their joy in collaborating with other sound enthusiasts. "The Small & The Many" picks up here and dares to go a few steps further. In 2015, the Alligator Gozaimasu collective formed around beißpony. On tour in Japan's underground scene, close friendships developed, which are regularly nurtured and revived through events such as the "Alligator:Go!" festival (2021) or "Intervall & Zufall" (2024). The participants see Alligator Gozaimasu as a fluid sound body, now comprising more than 60 participants from various places, cities, and countries, including Amman (Jordan), Bandung (Indonesia), Dakar (Senegal), and Ivano-Frankivsk (Ukraine).
The experience of collective music production with Alligator Gozaimasu has opened up new sound spaces for beißpony. Particularly the musical encounter with a sonified bee colony, maintained by beekeeper and experimental musician Pitchu, paved new ways of collaboration for Laura, Steffi, and Klaus Erika. Pitchu experiments with clarinet and saxophone at the intersection of folk music and sound art. Near a remote farm in Großhub, Upper Bavaria, he takes care of a a bee house. During the musical encounter with beißpony, Pitchu miked up a colony and equipped it with bioacoustic sensors. This allowed information from the beehive to be captured and translated into acoustic stimuli.
During the album production, the bee house became a recording studio. The beißpony musicians mingled with the many. Klaus Erika Dietl and Steffi Müller were directly on-site at the bee house. Laura joined online from Oxford. This way, the beißpony core team had the opportunity to learn from the complex "grammar" of the bees. The colony's rhythms and moods flow into the music. The beekeeper's tools, as well as the working sounds at the hive, are part of the instrumentation.
Recording was done with Aimée, a modular synthesizer environment. The machine also mingled with the many. During the recordings, it sent signals that influenced the sound and the musical process. The encounter with the bees, the immersion in non-human life forms, is not simply celebrated. The sound and artwork of the album also make the distance and alienation of humans from nature palpable. Where the wild swarms, it is also domesticated.
"The Small & The Many" continues beißpony's DIY charm and invites pop fans to abandon their listening habits. Pitchu's brass music allows the hectic activity of the bees and of beißpony's pop to breathe again and again. Together, they explore the harmony of the fragile. "Life Must Pause," Laura Theis interjects in the song "Shall We Look At Flowers." Then space can arise again for silence, for nearly overlooked and long-forgotten things. In the piece "Grip In No Grid," they reflect on which windows open when structures remain flexible and we begin to co-edit in small steps. "News For Hungry Iggy" is understood as a homage to all that is diverse and complex. Beißpony makes music "For All That Fall" and lets all who fall swarm a little further.
Moments of waiting and interruption that come with a long-distance band relationship are not finely polished in the production but re-coded. There are no studio recordings from Laura Theis, who is based in Oxford. Her contributions are made during small sessions in online rooms and come as voice messages via messenger. Stephanie Müller, who for the first time took the lead in sound design, mixing, and mastering on "The Small & The Many," was not deterred by weak network signals, latencies, and sound disturbances. On the contrary: she makes these splinters in the sound fabric sparkle.
