Name: Dominik Grenzler aka An Moku, Nicolas Streichenberg aka Yes It's Ananias
Occupation: Sound artists, composers, instrumentalists
Nationality: Polish (Dominik), Swiss (Nicholas)
Recent release: An Moku & Yes It's Ananias team up for Fluxus Verve.

If you enjoyed these thoughts by An Moku & Yes It's Ananias and would like to find out more about their work, visit their respective websites: An Moku; Yes It's Ananias.  



The 70s as an era and an artistic period are one of the points of departure for Fluxus Verve. They have always held a special place in my heart as well, and I sometimes attribute this to the fact that I was born in them but did not actually get to experience them first-hand. So it’s a time which feels familiar but in a magical, inexplicable way. Where does your own interest in the 70s stem from, do you feel?

D: First of all, thank you for having us here. Like you, I was born in the 70s, but my memories are definitely of the 80s. As we know, the decades flow into each other. There is no direct cut. Be it in politics or in art. The echoes of the 70s lasted a long time. So, I definitely grew up with bands from both decades.

Before my siblings were born and my parents had to leave me alone in the house to do errands (which could be pretty complicated in the former communist Poland), my father would come with his cassettes and say to me: “Listen and tell me what you heard”. That’s how my journey began.

I remember the first cassette was Animals by Pink Floyd. My father introduced me to his favourite music, and I’m grateful to him for that. So my interest in that period is personal.



I attended a concert not too long ago by Dark Star Orchestra, a band which re-enacted the Europe 72 tour by The Grateful Dead. It was both fascinating and bewildering at the same time, but the band have been doing this for a long time and almost seem to lose themselves in their roles completely. For yourself, how far did you take this idea of trying to capture something that was very real in the 70s and may now be more of an idea?

N: I think snare drums and drum or percussion especially were very different from today’s popular music. It is because they spent millions to get certain sounds around the globe. The disco four on the floor beat was nothing but pumpy music. Again reflections of our body responses.

These engineers back in time were literally wizards. Think about Alan Parson's Dark Side of the Moon project with Pink Floyd. It was outrageous how much they put into the sounding of an object. Nothing is topping or coming near to a sound that the change of techniques and evolution of mixing desks have been having back in early seventies.



It was the big change for every studio in the world.

D: Our album should put the instruments in the foreground. Nicolas will talk about his keyboard instruments, just like I will talk about my tools later. Because his instruments are the real stars of the album for me. They are the authentic 70s; everything else is the idea you mentioned.

In the 70s, there were lots of connections between the worlds of art and the worlds of music, to the point where the two were essentially the same. Tell me a bit about the idea of music as painting with sound and art as visual sounds or however you yourself would possibly see this, please – and how it informed Fluxus Verve.

N: To me, Dominik has been the influence number 1 in 2021 and 2022 in terms of slow burning room sounds. Frequencies dancing around. (no pun intended). I listened to his record Less MORE than 100 times within about 200 days and it influenced me while meanwhile got the great luck of receiving a Rhodes Piano, developing soft hard moments on the acoustic instrument.



We met for the first time recorded instantly, met second time and the third time so the recording process was like maybe 10-15 hours of improvisations or so. And then he was bluffing me with fantastic mixes and ideas of snippets chosen by his influence and state of mind. I adore his craftsmanship.

D: Thank you, Nicolas!

Fluxus has had an undeniable influence on the arts and even politics. Music was an integral aspect of it, but this is often neglected in historical analyses, possibly because many of its aspects – absurdity, humour, playfulness – aren’t always appreciated in today’s musical landscape. How do you rate this influence both more generally and for yourself?

D: When I came across Fluxus a few years ago, I was immediately hooked on the ideology. In 2021 I already released an album called Microdemystification, which, for me, already contained Fluxus but was much darker and more modern in sound compared to Fluxus Verve.



Microdemystification is a continuation of my journey that started with Less. This album was about Hauntology (also a fascinating look into the past). It was conceived with only my bass guitar and effects pedals. Fluxus Verve ideologically aligns with this and follows this approach.

In September, Shapes for a Name, which takes up the Bauhaus art movement will be the final release. As you can see, my works thematise a tension between black and white, influence and defamation. Be it artistic or political. The interaction interests me.

N: I come back to popular music. Bedroom Psychedelia has grown all over the world since 2010’s Innerspeaker by Tame Impala and such.

Today we find a complete universe of bands who rediscover the performance-aspects and recording of the late 60s Western music influenced by the Eastern idealogy of scales and music in general. Going back to the roots of vibration (again!) it comes to conclusion, that if we keep searching, we keep finding.

Pushing boundaries isn’t easy because you need to find interest in the underground and search for hidden spots in the musical landscape. The longer we live, the more the hightimes of 60s, 70s or even 80s drum machines will be forgotten again and then rediscovered. I truly believe there will be a 70s disco era in 2050 when our kid’s kids or so find out what cool vinyl we kept.

Yet I believe moods and tastes will be fully controlled by A.I. But robots have taste. I am sure. Ask Manuel Gagneux.

One aspect of Fluxus, the way I see it, was to make us aware of the borders we draw between phenomena which may in reality be different points of a spectrum. From this angle, do you feel as though writing or performing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn’t or wouldn’t in more ‚mundane‘ tasks?

N: The freshest thing about Fluxus Verve to me is not creating a new taste of coffee or brewing the perfect recipe and wandering odours in our mouth. It was creating a new cup to hold onto where everything we know about piano and improvisation or sound effects, can be contained in a new vivid storm inside a new type of glas.

We wanted to shape our own ideas influenced by things already existing. Therefore footprinting two individuals doing and crafting anew is a beautiful possitiblity to name a tendency of a fresh new style of drone and “heavy-ambient”. How hard can relaxing music be. Yet how can a metal head sleep to slayer? It is all possible with the individual person who resonates to the … yes … Vibration of soundwaves.

Emotions can be a basic or a highly ocmplicated thing. We have it but sometimes music has the task to transform the meaning to undescribable feelings.

Tell me about the small but carefully selected range of tools you picked for this project. What do you still remember from the recording sessions?

N: Personally I had a Fender Rhodes MARK II from the late 1970s and a ultra rare ELKA Rhapsody 610 Stringorchestrator. The first of its kind. Used by Genesis, Klaus Schulze, Tangerine Dream, Vangelis and so on.

[Read our Steve Hackett of Genesis interview]
[Read our Tangerine Dream interview]

D: I met Nicolas in 2021 in the tiny hat shop Risa in Zurich. We got to talking and became friends. I immediately liked his appearance and went home to see what he was doing musically. At that time, I was recording Microdemystification, and the idea of going one step further was circling in my head. I needed a suitable counterpart for that.

When we met again a few months later, I suggested a collaboration. My idea was to use his Rhodes as the main instrument. A year later, we implemented this basic idea and expanded it intuitively. My equipment consisted exclusively of tools. I put together a big pedalboard.

From experience, I can predict what will interact with each other and how. Still, there were happy accidents, and magic happened. I used two mixers and had three parallel paths of powerful pedals. I also had three compressors in use, each acting on the others in turn and used an old Fostex tape machine only for pre-amplification. The recordings were made with a digital mixing console. The computer was only used for editing.

Late producer SOPHIE said: “You have the possibility with electronic music to generate any texture, and any sound. So why would any musician want to limit themselves?” Especially with regards to the minimal set-up of Fluxus Verve and the idea of reduced post-production, what’s your take on that and the relevance of limitations in your set-up and process?

D: As with everything from my pen, I don’t strive for perfection. It is no longer important to me to be accurate to the millimetre. Instead, I am fascinated by the inaccuracies. Maybe it’s not just me; the computer is starting to overwhelm me. I don’t want to sit at the screen for hours, going through all the possibilities I end up not using. I run a selection of hardware that limits me but inspires me just as much.

The other day I was listening to my modular system to hear the noise the circuits and chips make. Believe me, I didn’t just hear the coughing of fleas! There is so much going on. An independence of soundscapes, set to the desired level in the DAW using only a slider labelled “Noise”.

The last time I performed with a computer on stage was 2019, and since then, without. Even though my back curses …

N: I don’t feel any electronic-city in our record. It feels very human. I truly believe if flowers could talk it would sound more m00Gish than we think. We have a high approach on 70s minmalism of music. I see a lot of inspiration of “Evil Nigger” or “Päärt” in our production.

Dominik has shown me a lot of Deutsche-Schule Proto Electronica. I got influnced a lot by it yet found a lot of great swiss musicians who achieved phenomenal work. Remember YES’ very own Rick Wakeman replacement “Patrik Moraz”? He did Relayer with them and was experimenting on the Lake of Geneva with his toys and made a great TV debut in Geneva itself.



I have this stunning album at home it brings a lot of Fluxus Feelings. Super rare. Got the only copy in groove records Bern. Call me if you get lost.

You mentioned that you consider Fluxus Verve as a form of peaceful protest. How do you see the role of music in society and its potential for bringing about actual change?

N: Without la musica we would be lost and not functioning. We need a heartbeat to walk to. In my county (not country …) 90% is given to classical music support. Funds. And the rest 10 % is given to popular music. So naturally, acoustic music is more important to what we call, popular music.

Kings employed palace pianists back in the days to sort out thoughts and try to reign a king- or queendom. Therefore music can be seen as a silent war. You don’t need necessairly say something to protest. You can record, push, cry out loud. Or pop a balloon of fakeblood in front of the worldnews. Heroic stuff is going on in the world nowadays and we seem to simply soundtrack it.

D: Our response lasts 43 minutes and leaves room to breathe as a protest against our society’s fast pace and reprehensibility. A peaceful, silent protest through music whose expressiveness screams loudly: It’s up to us!

Fluxus Verve is out on cassette tape – a medium which feels very nostalgic today, but was actually somewhat futuristic in the 70s. What was the impulse to present the music on this format?

N: The pink colour and tape noise. And the fact, for myself, that I got introduced to An Moku’s work through this format. Status Anno pre-An Moku was a Tape Collection of 20. Two years later I got 60 tapes. I trippled my interest in the format and found a lot of new ways to listen to music.

I am an addict to music. It nourishes me. If it was made out of cake (Dominik runs a café and cake bakery) I’d even eat it.

Hope Dominik does not read that, or else I am screwed.

D: What? No way, Nicolas!

I just love this format. A cassette is handy and beautiful. Like vinyl, you have to stand up to change the side of the cassette, or the music won’t keep playing. A cassette must have seemed really futuristic. At that time, there were only the big and heavy tapes like from Revox, and suddenly you’re holding a beautiful, light cassette in your hand on which you recorded the music yourself. Revolutionary!

The last time I had such an aha experience was with the mini-disc. And I still do … As I said, it’s up to us …

As a listener, I loved the experience of exploring these ideas and feelings with you on Fluxus Verve. Are there any plans to return to them at any point in the future (or past?) again?

D: We are both still busy with upcoming projects. Nicolas has his big album in September, which I genuinely recommend, and his piano tour. But next year or the year after, I see room for a new journey together. We will see what the time brings.

Uwe Zahn, aka Arovane, wrote me the other day when he listened to “Salz & Honig”: “Very nice, it leaves a lot of time and space for development.”

[Read our Arovane interview]

That is precisely what I want to repeat with Nicolas, and say goodbye with a quote from the recently deceased Swiss author Ruth Schweikert::

“Time does not change us. It only unfolds us.”