Viennese bass clarinettist Susanna Gartmayer and Düsseldorf-based electronic musician Stefan Schneider formed the band So Sner in 2015. When asked about their music, they said: »So Sner’s sound is equally oriented towards experiment and tradition. Its roots can be traced back to the UK of the early 80s: an era in which soul and synth, jazz and industrial, avantgarde and polyrhythm were blended with the help of intellectualism and punk attitude«. In 2022, the duo released their first collaborative album called »Reime«. Now they made a follow-up named »The Well«. Compared to the first one, this second album sounds quieter, more introspective, but still contains the not so contrasting elements of complexity and effective emptiness. We asked Stefan Schneider for an interview here, while Susanne Gartmayer has her say in this article.
skug: How did the two of you get to know each other?
Stefan Schneider: In 2015 I read a well written and enthusiastic review of Susanna’s solo album which made me curious about her music. The album, which I bought a few days later, sounded very unique to me as the music on this beautiful 10-inch seemed to be placed right between different music genres. Her energetic playing seemed to avoid all the well-known clichés of improv music or free jazz in favour of a total unique sound cosmos. Maybe something that I also hear in Tom Verlaine’s late solo recordings – a guitar player for people who don’t necessarily like rock music. A bit later, in autumn 2015, I managed to invite Susanna to Approximation Festival, which is a quite prestigious festival for piano and avantgarde music in Düsseldorf, organised by Hauschka. Her solo live set at the festival (at Salon des Amateurs) was fantastic and afterwards I asked her if she would be up for a recording session of the two of us. At that time, I was working a lot with a sine-wave generator (called Schlumberger) and the sounds of that machine reminded me of what Susanna was doing with her bass clarinet. In fact, it was clearly the way she would play her instrument that made me think of the duo. I was certainly not just looking for someone who would play bass clarinet in combination with my electronics. Our first recording session took place at Kraftwerk’s former Kling Klang Studio which was already abandoned by the group then, apart from the room sound facilities. The space sounded wonderful for her instrument. In 2020, we did a second recording session in a small wooden church in Düsseldorf to finish an album. In late 2021, we played our live debut at Approximation Festival, which was a nice coincidence.
»The Well« is the second album you made together, could you compare it to the first one?
After the release of »Reime«, our first album in spring 2022, we were playing a lot of concerts, and we were always trying to work on new material while we were traveling. That is probably why it took us a certain time to write and to record the music for »The Well«. Also, this time we wanted to produce the record in Vienna. I like Vienna a lot and I am always happy to be there to work with Susanna. Most of the basic recordings were done in Vienna at various spaces which we turned into recording studios. Sound-wise there was not a real concept for the album in the beginning. Susanna wanted the music to be well prepared and tightly rehearsed before the actual recording took place. The songs on »Reime« were all recorded quite spontaneously on the spot before we could play them live on stage. Before the recordings of »The Well«, we talked a bit about our admiration for the early recordings of Kate Bush and the production of some of the solo records of Paul McCartney from the 70s but we were not aiming for a record that would sound like a 70s record. We clearly wanted to make a record with the technical means of today. The final mixing and the mastering were done with Martin Siewert at his studio in Vienna. It was great to work together with him as he would often come up with ideas for some small details which in total give the record a very cohesive and accomplished sound.
You worked on this album for two years, but what does that mean?
There were some gaps in between the recording sessions due to other obligations we had in parallel. Yes, it took a while to put these songs together, but it was quite a focused process. We did not randomly collect new material. I think we had only twelve songs recorded before we did the final mixing of the album. As we are living in two different cities, we unfortunately cannot meet that often. Whenever we do, over the past three years we have developed our own way of doing things together which is important for any band.
How would you describe the role of Martin Siewert within the making of this album? Is he like the third member of this project?
No, he was definitely not the third member. I guess that was not required and also not what he wanted to be. He was entering the process of the whole production quite late just after we had finished almost all of the recordings. Like all good producers he would listen very carefully to what was already there and then, after a while, he came up with suggestions, for instance for a certain type of compressor or about the stereo panning of the mix. These details had a huge impact on the finished mix. It was a pleasure to work with him.
A thing that I enjoy about this album is that there is a lot of space in it, it doesn’t sound full. I also enjoy that it’s not a loud album.
Quiet and sparse, that is probably the way we like our music to sound like. To gain a maximum energy with minimal means. The space that you noticed is really important to us as it offers room for the imagination of listeners. What I also like about playing with Susanna is that our duo instrumentation feels quite incomplete as we are not a full group with a drummer, a guitarist or a singer. That means you have to think differently about the music as certain familiar elements are missing. Also, there are hardly any references in the recent music history for bass clarinet and electronics. I think that I always enjoyed duos or smaller groups better than larger ensembles. No matter what genre. Even today, when I see a band which consists for instance of six or seven musicians, after a few minutes i automatically start to fantasize about how to scale down the number of musicians and which musicians are not really needed.
The clarinet often does not sound like a clarinet, the electronics often sound percussive.
One thing I like about Susanna’s playing is that she does not use any technical effects, loop pedals etc. to manipulate the sound of her bass clarinet. She is really good in finding new ways to make her instrument sound unusual just by playing it differently. The bass clarinet has a wide range of frequencies and Susanna likes the challenge to explore the instrument further and further. I do not use any samples of her bass clarinet in my electronics. The Synthesizers are supposed to sound like themselves and not to imitate acoustic instruments. Besides the synthesizer is also a rhythm machine. That is where the percussion sounds are coming from. Susanna and I are both self-taught on our instruments which makes it easy to communicate through sounds.
When you make an album together, is your goal to blend or to accentuate the differences? Or can it be both?
Yes.
What does the title »The Well« refer to?
Susanna came up with the album title and most song titles too. »The Well« has connotations to being well and also to water as a source for energy and life.
What does So Sner mean?
Susanna came up with the name when she was juggling around with the letters of our two individual names. No idea where the »o« was coming from. Since the beginning, we wanted to have a band name. It was important to us to separate the duo from our other music projects and also from projects of the improv or contemporary jazz scene where almost all musicians are playing under their own names. A duo called Gartmayer Schneider would have been a nightmare for me. For a short while I was in a duo with drummer Sven Kacirek from Hamburg which was simply called Schneider Kacirek and it went quite wrong from the beginning. You cannot start something new when you don’t have a decent name.
