Mathias Grassow & Thomas Weiss

Mathias Grassow short biography: Mathias was born in Wiesbaden / Germany in 1963. First of all he played drums and guitar in the 70?s and moved on to keyboards in the early 80?s. Since the late 80?s he has specialized in synthesizer drones and myriad forms of overtone music and discovered their effects on the human psyche. During his further musical career he started to learn more about true spirit in life and music and reflect back his experiences via his musical creativity.

In this relationship he concerned on themes like Buddhism, Sufism and Christianity as well as the pagan North European ancestors (Celts and Vikings). More and more Mathias fell in love with the spiritual power in music and it?s messages. He was significantly influenced by Klaus Wiese who concernes intensively on singing bowls and overtone effects. Mathias started to collaborate with him and after years of development with Klaus Wiese, doors began to open to many projects with talented musicians such as R?diger Gleisberg, Oophoi, Amir Baghiri and the others.


Tomas Weiss short biography:
Born near Frankfurt/Main (Germany) in 1975, Tomas Weiss built early on a deep relationship to many kinds of musical styles. From 1997 to 2004 he worked as electronic DJ in different national clubs and with radio stations. From 1997-2005 he owned the vinyl store "el culto" - a shop selling high quality electronic music. He created the global network "el culto" - a global and idealistic portal for contemporary music. Supported artists are: Klaus Wiese, Mathias Grassow, Con_Sense, Thamnos, Solveil, Circulum musicum, LichterSchatten, R?diger Gleisberg, Bruno Sanfilippo, Nostalgia and others. Tomas Weiss is founder of the labels "Musical Philosophy", "Thar", "Sound Claim" and "ClassXX". Within his different projects and collaborations his aim is to create and release exclusively high quality music and also to expand and break artistic boundaries - his work expands into many styles including Ambient, Electronica, Classical, Experimental and possible combinations


MATHIAS GRASSOW & TOMAS WEISS - CONSCIENCE (CD by Nextera) Although I'm not familiar with the entire body of work put out by Matthias Grassow, I must say what I heard was not bad at all. Ambient with the big A, but always with a slight touch of experimentalism, keeping it away from the dreaded new age posse. Here he teams up with one Tomas Weiss, of whom I know nothing, but he thanks 'God for his immense love and kindness'. The four piece on this CD sound exactly I would expect this to sound (which in itself is a pity since a surprise is always nice). Deep washes of synthesizers, with sparse, slow melodies and in the ornament side some far away, alienated sounds. Ambient with the A, as I said. It's not an album where big or new things happen, but Grassow and Weiss walk a well-known path: through a misty forest on an early sunday morning, with a touch of sunlight. One where even the firmest non-believer could think God exists. The cover tells us that the music doesn't want to entertain us, but 'give you a view inside your 'self''. Perhaps I am just too much a non-believer and merely want to enjoy the music and the spiritual side is a bit beyond me.