It was new experience to me, traveling to Cairo and working together with 100Copies Music label. It was very inspiring to meet this (young) musicians working with minimal equipment and possibilities, but at the same time performing lots of shows, mainly at street parties or weddings. That gave a really different aspect to this collaboration. My work was impacted with the different views and the history of the city (Cairo).

The language was a bit a problem sometimes. So we could only talk about basic stuff, but for the music, the vocabulary was big enough, it spoke for itself; respectively it was important and good for the workflow, that I had some demos and ideas to try out with them. And Mahmoud Refat from 100Copies Music gave me some background information about the musicians, what was quiet important for me to know with whom I’m working and playing. It was very comfortable to operate in his studio rooms, in the first research phase in July and August 2017. I had enough time to record, arrange and mix the tracks in this period.

The collaboration with 100Copies was quiet intense, the communication not always easy, but in the end we recorded and produced 7 tracks, nearly an album. I had also time to finish these songs in the studio, so that we had a “product” in the end of this research trip.

Pro Helvetia mostly kept in the background, did the administrational stuff, and let us do the musical work, which was the right thing in this case. And sure, they were around when I had some questions or just want to meet them to discuss things or have a dinner together.

The songs we made in summer 2017, were prepared and performed fat D-CAF Festival (March 2018) to get some feedback from the audience.

Bit-Tuner – Research Trip (July-August 2017)

Photo Credit: Jennifer-Koenig