Name: Anchor and Burden
Members: Alexander Dowerk, Markus Reuter, Asaf Sirkis, Bernhard Wöstheinrich
Interviewees: Alexander Dowerk, Bernhard Wöstheinrich
Nationality: German, Israeli (Asaf Sirkis)
Current release: Anchor and Burden's new album Kosmonautik Pilgrimage is out now.

If you enjoyed this interview with Anchor and Burden and would like to find out more about the band, visit their official website. The quartet is also on Facebook.

To keep reading, we recommend our interview with Anchor and Burden band member Markus Reuter. We also have an earlier Bernhard Wöstheinrich interview about a wide range of topics.



Where does the impulse to create something come from for you? What role do often-quoted sources of inspiration like dreams, other forms of art, personal relationships, politics etc play?

Bernhard: I don't think that these kinds of sources of inspiration, like the ones mentioned, are actually the trigger for my creative process. I see them more as a kind of focal point from which an intrinsic impulse takes on a kind of momentum of its own. It's like a still abstract idea that needs something tangible to solidify.

So to answer the question, I would say that I don't really know where this impulse to create something comes from. I can only assume that it must be something from within me that corresponds with a general feeling of being strong and nourished enough to create something. Only then would I start gathering my tools, instruments, and themes to work on.

For you to get started, do there need to be concrete ideas – or what some have called a 'visualisation' of the finished work? What does the balance between planning and chance look like for you?

Bernhard: What I need is a concrete idea from which I can start. But I also need the freedom to be able to deviate from that idea, and to be able to decide to change that original idea in favor of what that deviation has produced instead.

But this is not to be confused with complete arbitrariness. The challenge is to find a balance between commitment and flexibility. The crucial point is to know whether it was a happy accident that might lead you to a new and much more interesting aim - or if it was just a slip.

Is there a preparation phase for your process? Do you require your tools to be laid out in a particular way, for example, do you need to do 'research' or create 'early versions'?

Alexander: In the weeks before a recording session I will finetune my gear and musical setup, creating custom sounds and enhancing existing presets. I’ll also increase my practise time with the instrument, both by doing more technical as well as improvisational exercises.

By the time I’m arriving in the studio I want to be ready for creation and not require any preparation except for 15 minutes of setting up my gear.

Do you have certain rituals to get you into the right mindset for creating? What role do certain foods or stimulants like coffee, lighting, scents, exercise or reading poetry play?

Bernhard: The ideal ritual would simply be like well slept, well breakfasted and relaxed. Of course, such conditions are often not easy to fulfill in a professional context. This means that I have to be able to put myself in a state that leads to the same positive feeling of body and mind.

I personally find certain breathing exercises more effective than having too many stimulants of various kinds. I would prefer to avoid creating too much confusion and not being able to sense those very moments when the process becomes greater than what I originally sparked.

Alexander: I don’t require any rituals or stimulants for creation. If there’s time before the session or concert I’ll do technical exercises on my touch guitar. I have a set of longer exercise cycles that flex the fingers and focus the mind.

The moments before I’m starting to play I’m putting my mind into an state of awareness and focus. My aspiration is to be able to create something great in any moment and to not be dependent on a particular surrounding.

An atmospheric location or attentive audience can encourage an even better musical outcome though.

Once you've started, how does the work gradually emerge?

Bernhard: Once I get started, it's almost like jumping off the cliff. From then on, the whole thing seems to take on a certain momentum of its own.

Matters start happening just because I start working on something. As a result, I have to watch attentively and hear (or maybe even taste) whether it was good or not. Or if it was possibly even better than I expected.

How do your key ideas behind your approach to music and working with sound factor into this process?  

Alexander: For me music and sound need to live. Every moment of my music should be unique even when a pattern or riff is repeated. Playing an instrument like the touch guitar is beneficial to this because it is possible to play the same note in many kinds of ways. To induce uniqueness to  tonal material can mean constant variation, be it through transposition or restructuring the notes itself.

As far as sound is concerned I do a lot of reamping and parallel processing to make the material richer, more detailed and also more unpredictable.

In Anchor and Burden Markus and I are using Neural DSPs QuadCortex as a preamp and effects processor. As with the Kemper Amp you can create captures of stomp boxes and amps and have them as building blocks in your FX chain. I used several captures, amps and distortion modules at once to build rich and produced-sounding presets for my guitar.

We then took Markus' QuadCortex unit to capture these presets, essentially creating meta-captures. I used this meta-captures in parallel for treating and processing the separate string groups of my guitar’s Cycfi multi pickups.

Often, while writing, new ideas and alternative roads will open themselves up, pulling and pushing the creator in a different direction. Does this happen to you, too, and how do you deal with it? What do you do with these ideas?

Bernhard: I think the secret behind this phenomenon of constant distraction by emerging ideas is that what you are working on goes beyond what you usually think of as the ego.

As a creator interested in going beyond the usual understanding of what it is to be creative or to be an artist, this means that these alternative paths that are emerging must be taken as an indicator that something is in motion to draw upon as you move forward.

There are many descriptions of the creative state. How would you describe it for you personally? Is there an element of spirituality to what you do?

Bernhard: To describe the creative state, I would like to quote a story told by Bodhidharma, a Zen master who once visited the Emperor of China. When the emperor asked Bodhidharma what enlightenment was, his answer was, “Lots of space, nothing holy”.

As you can see, to a certain degree I would compare enlightenment to a creative state, but not in such a way that it should be considered something supernatural. But rather something very present, if not mundane.

Once a piece is finished, how important is it for you to let it lie and evaluate it later on? How much improvement and refinement do you personally allow until you're satisfied with a piece? What does this process look like in practise?

Alexander: Before releasing a new song I will have listened to it around 100 times during the production process. I want to make sure that what I’m releasing will stand the test of time.

As far as improvement and refinement goes, it depends on the concept of the project and exterior constraints like for example a release date.

For the pieces on Kosmonautik Pilgrimage we didn’t do any overdubs or editing in terms of quantization. The major part of the production was to clean up the recorded tracks, do some reamping and to create premixes so that our mixing engineer Stefano Castagna has a better idea in which direction we want the material to sound like.

This also helped to have fewer rounds of iterations during the actual mixing process.

What's your take on the role and importance of production, including mixing and mastering for you personally? How involved do you get in this?

Alexander: Production and sound are essential for me. Mixing and mastering can drastically change the focus and impact of the music.

I’m heavily involved in my productions, but I prefer to outsource tasks like mixing and mastering. It helps to get an outside perspective on my art and the product is always better in the end.

Of course it helps to work with such amazing engineers like Stefano Castagna and Lee Fletcher.