Apparat – Krieg und Frieden (Music For Theatre) (2013)

For Apparat, aka Berlin-based Sascha Ring, experiments in sound are strongly linked to exploring emotions. Over the course of seven album releases he has developed a multifarious, emotional universe. From early works, such as “Multifunktionsebene“ (2001) and “Duplex“ (2003), which took the abstractness out of electronic music and introduced a new spectrum of feelings beyond electronics’ well-tested modes, through collaborations with Ellen Alien (Orchestra of Bubbles) and Modeselektor (as Moderat), Apparat is always in transition. In 2010 he founded the Apparat Band and opened himself to a new sonic cosmos that culminated into “The Devil’s Walk” (2010), his first release on Mute.


Apparat, aka Sascha Ring, announces the release of “Krieg und Frieden (Music for Theatre)”, an album of music based on Sebastian Hartmann’s theatre production of Tolstoy’s War and Peace.
Sebastian Hartmann is considered one of the big innovators of contemporary German theatre, and asked Ring to contribute to this mammoth project, which was commissioned by the renowned German arts festival Ruhrfestspiele in Recklinghausen.
During the first meetings with Hartmann it became clear that there was no script or anything comparable, Hartmann instead develops the whole text with the entire ensemble. After time spent with Tolstoy’s original text Ring returned to Germany and spent four weeks in an old abandoned factory building and rehearsed with the whole 30-piece ensemble. Says Ring, “This is anything but conventional theatre. It’s a free space, where a bunch of freaks can go wild. It starts with the lights and stops with the actual actors. At night, we worked on the music in the empty hall. It was kind of magical.”
Featuring artwork by Tilo Baumgärtel, whose work forms part of the theatre production, Krieg und Frieden was recorded with Philipp Timm (cello) and Christoph Hartmann (violin), who form part of Apparat’s live band.