Heiko Maile Demo Tapes 1984-86 HHV Exclusive Red Vinyl Edition

Limited edition of 100 copies on red vinyl. Exclusively at HHV.

"The beginnings of "Camouflage" stand for me as the start of a journey of discovery in many respects. Ideas, composition, arrangement, sound and last but not least the question of the technical implementation of the recording - all this was absolutely new territory for me. To try your hand at songwriting and sound engineering at the same time without any training or professional guidance requires a great deal of trial and error and, above all, a lot of time. This I spent in every free minute with our synthesizers and recording equipment. Every demo, every attempt to imitate the sound of his favorite record or a new piece of equipment, entailed a constant "learning by doing". Equipment that can't be stored (please don't touch it!!!), constant humming because of cheap cables (soldering has to be learned!), bad sounding cassettes (of course recorded over several times), a healthy overestimation of oneself (I can do that even without "Fairlight Cmi") or the often unpredictable characteristics of analog technology with a home studio budget - there were numerous lessons. Most of the tracks selected for this album are recordings made with a simple stereo (2-track) cassette recorder. The situation in the studio then looked something like this: Drum machine (without midi) and sequencer were connected, thus running rhythmically in sync. The sequences of notes and rhythms set in it were then mostly transposed manually to the respective desired pitch with the help of the keyboards. Often other instruments were played live during this process. With the help of a mixing console, the sum of all sound sources for the recording was mixed together in a kind of "live recording". Since one always had to start again from the beginning in case of a mistake, and many of the sounds could only be restored with a lot of meticulousness after adjusting the controls, many cassettes accumulated over time, often with endlessly long and different versions of the same title. From today's point of view, this was very fortunate, because it allowed me to combine different recording takes in addition to just editing the tracks together. The latest studio technology and algorithms for audio restoration helped me to make these tracks listenable again. Searching the archives and encountering one's long-forgotten song ideas, can quickly create a backward-looking mood. In this case, however, I definitely felt differently! Was what I was hearing "naive" or "radical"? Does it sound like someone just starting out or is it already consistent implementation of a concept? Whatever - I had my fun with it and now hope that the selection of tracks makes the fresh listener want to hear the beginnings of my electronic music and strange sound worlds."
Heiko Maile, December 2020