hallusions

the band tonrand, which was already fetured in this randform post with their song “not me” has now a website on last.fm, where they published their latest song: hallusions (lyrics, vocals, music: Cat Caspari, music, arrangement: Niko Lai).

addition 26.02.13: The tonrand profile on last.fm had been erased. The music is no more available.

22 Responses to “hallusions”

  1. Tino Says:

    when will there be some more music?

  2. nad Says:

    @tino

    oh you are the one last-FM-listed listener for the above song!
    it is not clear when there will be more music, Cat Caspari has currently a nine-to-nine job in a shopping mall.

  3. nad Says:

    she definitely doesn’t like it if people take lousy images….:)

    braidedhair450.JPG

  4. timh Says:

    …so while there are tracks in the making, Lai will have to wait for her quitting her job (or agreeing on some late night recording sessions…)

  5. Zoey Zanetti Says:

    You have this public music video on youtube. Do you think it’s save to put videos also on the non-public mode on youtube?

  6. nad Says:

    Zoey Zanetti wrote:
    “You have this public music video on youtube. Do you think it’s save to put videos also on the non-public mode on youtube?”

    I am not sure by what you mean with “it’s save”. Do you think someone breaks into your non-public account on youtube? And/or do you think the Google company who owns youtube would look at your videos and archive them even if you delete them in your account?

    In principle it is probably possible that someone hacks your account, but unless you are not some prominent figure why should someone be interested in making such an effort? But I dont know may be there exist machines which scan for specific content. In general one should be aware that everything, which is on the web may eventually become public like if the corresponding host has security issues on its servers.

    Concerning Google, alone by their search engine and things like google mail or their health archive this company can scan your life with incredible detail, however I like to think that they dont do this. I mean finally Google is not the STASI, aren’t they?

  7. nad Says:

    @tino

    Cat was happy when I told her about your response. Since Nico Lai has currently no time for music she decided to do a song of her own.
    You should know beforehand that the song is her first experience with a synthesizer and composing. She used the inbuilt microphone in her mac together with garageband, so the sound quality could be -hmm– improved.

    The song tries to reflect a real personal experience. I think she invited her neighbours to sing the choir part.

    —>preciouslover (music, lyrics,vocals: Cat Caspari)

  8. Max V. S. Tsetse Says:

    >>she definitely doesn’t like it if people take lousy images….:)

    Although the colors are a bit inspid I like the image – it has some atmosphere, the atmossphere is however not due to the symmetry.

    Apart from this I took a brief look into your html-source and saw that you called the image braided.jpg or braid.jpg (i forgot) – THIS IS A NO GO! I am a professional fotographer and I can tell you right away that you won’t get anywhere with this way of marshalling your images. You should categorize them in some way and maybe furnish them with a date.

  9. nad Says:

    @Max

    yes you are right some of the symmetries like lets say that of the braid are not important, however i think the overall orientation and symmetry of the image is important in particular the fact that there is one object in the center of the image, gives it a nice kind of rotational symmetry, like in a vortex. The strange atmosphere may also be due to the fact that she is looked upon as if she is going to be shot in her back (from a first person shooter perspective).

    I am not so sure wether my marshalling of images is a no go. I am still trying out, but I will keep your advice in mind.

  10. Tino Says:

    addition 26.02.13: The tonrand profile on last.fm had been erased. The music is no more available.

    why that?

  11. nad Says:

    As you may have heard off there had been quite some big lay-offs often due to bankruptsies in the retail sector here in Germany, like at Schlecker, likewise in this context the status of Karstadt is unclear and so on. As you may know online retail is gaining popularity. So Cat looks at the moment wether she could find at least some income source in the music/entertainment business. Recently she and Niko Lai had already some gigs at golden weddings and birthday parties for the elderly (the last gig was at a seventies birthday). Cat currently thinks about wether to professionalize this a bit more, so their online presentation would need to be redesigned.

  12. poisong Says:

    …is cat stil busy working in shiopping malls? what about the music business?

  13. nad Says:

    cat gave up on trying to professionalize music making. In fact she stopped
    music making.

  14. posisong Says:

    cat gave up on trying to professionalize music making. In fact she stopped
    music making.

    sorry to hear – but then not everybody needs to do music and dance themselves, as long as there is such great singing and dance like in Despacito – by the way also in your country.

  15. Keine beschisne Musik Says:

    posisong:

    “sorry to hear – but then not everybody needs to do music and dance themselves, as long as there is such great singing and dance like in Despacito – by the way also in your country.”

    my english is bad. please googletranslate:

    Ich denke, dass selbstgespielte und -getanzte Musik auch noch andere Funktionen haben kann als nur schön zu klingen. Und schliesslich -finden schlimmstenfalls zumindest die Walrösser daran Gefallen ;)

    https://mobile.twitter.com/sovietvisuals/status/1176633220772896768

  16. nad Says:

    posisong wrote:

    sorry to hear – but then not everybody needs to do music and dance themselves, as long as there is such great singing and dance like in Despacito – by the way also in your country.

    Keine beschisne Musik wrote:

    Ich denke, dass selbstgespielte und -getanzte Musik auch noch andere Funktionen haben kann als nur schön zu klingen.

    translation:

    I think that music that is performed and danced in a selfmade style can have more functions besides sounding nicely.

    If you want to make music just for the fun of it you need to have enough ressources. But Cat found that she couldn’t afford making music without getting money for it at some point.

    So here some more info about what happened: As written above Cat and Nico Lai performed at some birthdays, actually even on a bigger 50’s birthday with over 100 people. Cat actually learned to play the guitar for those performances. They had an about 50min program with selfmade songs. At the big party drums were partially played via a floorboard but also via a sequencer like other sounds. Nico Lai changed between e-bass, e-guitar and cajon while Cat used the floorboard and the e-guitar. Although the use of a computer allowed for nice electronic sounds this set-up was rather strenous, as the life coordination with computer sequencer etc. gives strong constraints. So at some point the program was downsized in instrumentation to a full acoustic version in order to be able to play for example in Salons and to be able to scale up without the need for a sequencer. Neither Nico Lai nor Cat intended to be fully professional musicians but rather to have a semi-professional gig here and there.

    So here a recording from a living room rehearsal of the song “time” (see also ) around 2015/2016:

    https://soundcloud.com/cat-caspari/timesnippetste-001

    As you can hear Cat still struggles quite a bit with the guitar chords and you can also hear how much more effort it would have taken to get that to sound a bit more professional. Anyways in 2015 Cat decided to work in a “real” job that provided a real money income. The job was however so demanding that eventually she not only didn’t proceed much with the music project but in fact couldn’t even keep up rehearsing and then at some point quit making music altogether so that in particular by now she has forgotten all the chords.

    Since Posisong talked about Helene Fischer and Luis Fonsi’s performance of despacito: Helene Fischer has not only a nice voice and manages to move smoothly with that superhigh highheels, but she also looks great. Cat is now almost sixty and even for well-aging professional musicians with a big fan base things get not so easy at that age, especially not for females. Without going too much into detail, Cat is not really well-aged, nor does she have a fan base (like the time video got 578 views in 8 years), she is a guitar beginner, she never had real vocal training and then of course there is Corona.

    So “Keine beschisne Musik” – I guess you may now better understand why Cat doesn’t make music anymore even if it “can have more functions besides sounding nicely”.

  17. Heuter Says:

    Cat is now almost sixty and even for well-aging professional musicians with a big fan base things get not so easy at that age, especially not for females. Without going too much into detail, Cat is not really well-aged, nor does she have a fan base (like the time video got 578 views in 8 years), she is a guitar beginner, she never had real vocal training and then of course there is Corona.

    60 ?!!! Isn’t that a bit late for personality development (“Selbstverwirklichung” in german)… I mean you usually start a band when you are a young adult, right?

  18. Torke Munn Says:

    As written above Cat and Nico Lai performed at some birthdays, actually even on a bigger 50’s birthday with over 100 people.

    Was there somebody making a video of that birthday performance?

  19. nad Says:

    Was there somebody making a video of that birthday performance?

    Not really. We had put a camera on a tripod and asked someone to turn on the video recording, when the concert starts. Which worked somewhat – that is the recording started during the first part of the first song, but then after about 3 songs the camera striked for what ever reasons and nobody noticed. And then there were more problems. Like after the first song someone switched off the lights (which is is really bad if you can’t play the guitar fully blindly….) and then also someone switched off some speakers (I think the DJ who performed there before us), which we didn’t notice on the stage monitor. So we became not so well audible among the party background noise.

    Anyways OK. Here an image with Nico Lai and Cat on stage at the birthday party in 2014:

  20. nad Says:

    OK here a snippet before the lights were switched off. The song you hear is by Cat. As you can see a visitor crosses right in front of Cat to fetch a “Flens.” (A lot of people on that party in Berlin were connected to the town of Neumünster.)
    What I didn’t write here is that Cat’s job and other things were so demanding that in the end Cat stopped even to listen to music. It has only been in the last year that she started to listen to music again. Let’s see how long she will be able to maintain that.

  21. Herkules Says:

    what i see and listen here reminds me of the group Nastja

  22. Dr. Adelheid Schulte-Merchweise Says:

    Heuter commented:

    60 ?!!! Isn’t that a bit late for personality development (“Selbstverwirklichung” in german)… I mean you usually start a band when you are a young adult, right?

    Heuter – thanks for having the courage to say these difficult and necessary words.

    Since you seem to understand german – the german Wikipedia article about self-actualization cites -next to more or less useful statements like “Nach Karl Marx sollte die Selbstverwirklichung vor allem durch die menschliche Arbeit geschehen” (transl: according to Marx, self-actualization should happen foremost through human labour) – a statement of the proceedings of a conference of one of the most important organizations of Staatsrecht lawyers (for the english speakers: Staatsrecht is a part of public law).

    On page 10 of the proceedings it is written:

    Die innergesellschaftliche Problematik sei mit drei Stichworten schlaglichtartig beleuchtet: Deutschland – ein Land von Singles, von Konsumenten und ein Altenheim. Man kann auch die ersten beiden Stichworte zusammenfassen: ein Land von Selbstverwirklichern.

    translation:

    The inner societal problems can be highlightened with three words: Germany – a country of Singles, of consumers and a retirement home. One could also combine the first two words: a country of self-actualizers.

    In those proceedings a lot of work had been put into a careful discussion and analysis of the implications of large scale individualism on the state, like on page 94 it is written:

    Die von Ralf Dahrendorf als „Böckenförde-Paradox” bezeichnete Einsicht lehrt uns, daß der Staat von Voraussetzungen lebt, die er selbst nicht garantieren kann, daß er viel Moral braucht, ja verbraucht, die er selbst nicht produzieren kann. Er bedarf
    eines ethischen Umfeldes, das bisher in verschiedenen vorstaatlichen Erziehungs- und Sozialisationseinheiten entfaltet wurde, das auszutrocknen und zu zerfallen droht, wenn Ehe, Familie und Kirchen in Krisen geraten. Wer sich nicht in den üblichen rhetorischen Optimismus eines Referatschlusses flüchten will, darf sein Auge nicht vor den vielen Fragezeichen unseres Zukunftshorizonts verschließen.

    translation:

    The insight, which was dubbed by Ralf Dahrendorf as “Böckenförde-Paradox”, namely that the state is founded on preconditions, which it however can’t guarantee itself; that it needs a lot of morals, yes basically feeds itself on morals, which it can’t produce itself. The state needs an ethical environment, that has been developped in many stateforming educational and societal units, which are threatened to dry out and to decay, when matrimony, family and church fall into crisis. Those who don’t want to evade into the rethorical optimism of a talk conclusion should not close their eyes in front of all those question marks of our future horizon.

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