Ever since the day in 2004, when the label schraum was founded, there has been an idea to invite a handfull of musicians to Berlin-each to play a solo concert, to be recorded for a live cd. It has finally come true: In June 2007, Schraum invited seven musicians to perform solosets in the wonderful atelier of Fine Kwiatkowski and Willehard Grafenhorst, called „Cri du coeur”, in Berlin Wedding, on two subsequent evenings, before a very interested audience.

Dave Bennett (ogrephonique/Berlin), Lars Scherzberg (alto saxophon/Hamburg), Axel Haller (electric bass/Berlin), Paul Hubweber (trombone/Cologne), Ute Völker (akkordeon/Wuppertal), Sabine Vogel (bassflute, electronics and tape/Potsdam) and Christian Marien (drums/Berlin) present seven different ways of creating a ten minute solo.

The audience experienced a broad variety of performance practice and extended technique: some instruments primarily acoustic in nature (Marien, Völcker, Hubweber and Scherzberg), some electronically amplified, processed and mutated (Haller, Vogel), and some interestingly diverse objects used in an ogrephonique way (Bennett). The intimate atmosphere in the Atelier was enjoyed by schraum and the musicians and allowed for everybody to get to know each other and exchange ideas and talk about music and art. On both nights, the group ate and drank together in the performance space, which brought a sense of coming together and a defining of the space for themselves, both collectively and singularly. This aspect of the project can be heard in every piece, if you listen closely enough.

For the musicians as well as for the audience, these two evenings were very exciting because everything heard during the performances was to be forever engraved in stone, and these fortunate souls would have the chance to meet that sound again on some fine sunny day. Case in fact, it didn´t take so very long for schraum and their sound engineer to mix, master and release the brand spanking new album called „sieben mal solo” (seven times solo) – it´s ready to be enjoyed as of now, and it´s worth listening to again and again and again and….