A little story of Excursions & Visites
by Romeo Fahl, former member of E&V


E&V history, as I remember it. I met Bernd in Kassel... I think it was July 1985, I was in Germany at the time going to school... he was playing a show with Raab L. Toxh at Cafe Libre. The show was more or less 100% improvised. Bernd (aka Toxh) playing two Korg MS20s, a KPR77 drum machine playing beats and triggering a simmons sound module and also triggering the MS20s. Raab was Rainer Schaefer, who would blather his lyrics into a microphone, often making stuff up as he went. L was Martin von Loesch. He played minimal/rhythmic guitar. I befriended the trio and spent a lot of time with them. During the winter that followed Martin was killed in a freak accident and that was the official end of Raab L Toxh. I think that they were having problems before that, but that officially ended the project.

Soon after, Bernd started looking for new ways to work and myself and Stefan Scharnberg collaborated with him under the name Excursions et Visites. He got the name from an old Dada poster (picture left) which fit the spirit of experimentation and collaboration. Most of the stuff was done with the two MS20s, a Roland TR 606 drum machine, a beat up old Uher report and anything else we could get our hands on. The Uher was used as a crude sampler, as was an old cassette deck. Multitracking was done by recording to one cassette deck, then recording that into another deck while playing on top of it. Very crude work - we were broke but determined. Bernd was very resourceful! We put together a compilation tape and played one or two shows around Kassel. Around April of 1986 I returned to the US. Around that time Bernd had met Wolfram Spyra and started working with him quite a bit over the next few years, including more E&V.

After I moved back to the US, I sent Bernd tapes regularly with the intent of providing him sample material. That stuff is on several of the SMC tracks and on some Drome, too.


This little story is a summary of a mailing contact with Romeo Fahl last year (2008).