MAUD THE MOTH and AIDAN BAKER live on board the MS Stubnitz, Hamburg (April 24th 2026)

After Roadburn Festival comes the Roadburn Blues, that thing where you have seriously developed an entitlement for amazing performances, secret show announcements and a community of kindred spirits to share it with on a daily basis. But instead you get the disappointing grind of everyday life.

Before my five-part Roadburn review - which is in the works, but always takes its sweet time - comes my report from the first show I visited to actively fight Roadburn Blues. And with these two performances, which would both have been absolutely worthy of being a part of the festival, I made the absolutely right choice.

I had a moment of doubt though. The audience boarding the MS Stubnitz didn't exactly look like the usual Ambient/Drone/Expermimental crowd (if there even is something like that) - and a look at the merch table revealed that some Polka thing was playing. Wait! What?
I actually had to check the date, remained confused for another moment, before I realized that there were two parallel events happening on the ship and I had to go to another room, where I had never attended a show before. With the stage being on floor level it felt much more intimate, while still having those huge Stubnitz acoustics. Perfect for this night's artists.

AIDAN BAKER

Aidan Baker came with a guitar, his effect board and a violin bow, delivering a truly beautiful, emotionally laden Ambient set in several unbroken connected movements. You could both feel the endless experience the male half of Nadja has with this kind of performance, as well has the soul he still pours into it.

The biggest break of the flow happened towards the end, when everything was caught in a rectangular loop, before Amaya López-Carromero aka Maud the Moth joined in on eery vocals and keys, together with her guitar player (and also Healthyliving bandmate) Scott McLean. Their improvisation was a stunning finale for this immersive show.

MAUD THE MOTH

Since everything was set up anyway, it wouldn't have bothered me at all, if they had just continued with Maud the Moth's show immediately, but of course they took a little breather, before the singer sat down at her keyboard to play one older song, which just consisted of piano and her half-operatic hauntingly beautiful voice.

After that McLean joined her for a set of manifoldly layered newer tracks, in which synths, guitar, samples, loops and López-Carromero's spectacular singing grew to breathtaking dramatic highs.

And just when you thought the mixture of ethereal Neoclassical, Experimental Post Something music couldn't get better, Aidan Baker came back for one last trio performance during the finale "Kwisatz Haderach", the last track from Maud's recent 2025 album "The Distaff". And wow, what a mighty way to finish this night! Roadburn Blues definitely beaten - for now.

Cool, I see you actually scrolled through all my pictures! So normally the review would end here, but since the band in the ship's main room was still playing I also stayed for a couple of their songs, which somehow added to the Roadburn feeling, when you walk out of one thing and into something worlds different. So here's my absolutely unqualified "review" of that show as well:

HEPTA POLKA

As the name says, these are seven guys playing Polka (and other Folk music with inspirations from all around the globe). When they switched on their party mode it was definitely too much and a bit too shallow for me, especially after the spiritually charging music I had witnessed before.

But when they took it slower, Hepta Polka actually developed some intriguing depth... so between these poles all in all this had propably been a pretty good show as well, I guess. But that's it now! Any more of my opinion would really be presumptuous.



Weird place to end a live report, I know.



Deal with it!

cassette craze chronicles XLII feat. MAUD THE MOTH, SOLAR CORONA ELEKTRISCHE MASCHINE, TAVARE, THE MOND and THISQUIETARMY x OTAY:ONII

Ok, since I already have enough new tapes for the next epsidode this post is overdue as fuck. So let's not waste time and press PLAY!

MAUD THE MOTH - The Distaff (2025)

This is not a transparent vinyl edition. I had actually ordered that one, together with Messa's "The Spin". Yet somehow my retailer kept putting me off from month to month, even though both limited editions were already on the market. So at some point I canceled that order and rather got the albums in other formats. And I must say that the Woodford Halse tape version of Maud The Moth's "The Distaff" was a great choice, since it surely must be the loveliest edition of the release, with a slipcase, a cut-out J-card and the possibilty to put in an alternatiove cover artwork. A very nice item!

And musically? While Amaya López-Carromero remains the sole songwriter of her project, and her piano work and ethereal or operatic vocals are still the main attraction on her new album, it features a lot of guitar by her Healthyliving bandmate Scott McLean (who also contributes Moog synths and saxophone) and drums, which often make it feel like a "real" band effort.
On top of that it can of course never be wrong to also have Alison Chesley aka Helen Money on cello on your recording.

"The Distaff" is an impressive journey through dynamics and emotions. From the small and brittle to the surprisingly crushing and cathartic it's an amazingly beautiful achievement. And it does it all in complete defiance of genre conventions. Neoclassical, Doom, Ethereal Wave, Singer-Songwriter, Experimental Folk, Post Rock... the tag list on the album's Bandcamp page goes on and on - and nothing is wrong there, while it still feels as if this is made of a dozen more stylistic influences.

Maud The Moth doesn't try to outdo the the hooks and earworm qualities of Healthyliving's 2023 debut, yet instead impresses with touching heavenly heights and profound spiritual depths. Mesmerizing art.

THISQUIETARMY x OTAY:ONII - Howl And Tell (2025)

Speaking of captivating female singers there's no way around the spellbinding magic of Lane Shi Otay:onii, who seems to be everywhere right now - yet still I keep missing my chances to see her live in Hamburg due to clashes with other shows...

For this album the Chinese-American artist spontanously teamed up with Canadian Drone guitar master Eric Quach aka Thisquietarmy. So this is just the two of them - guitar and effects on one side, vocals, keytar and kazoo on the other interacting with each other. A duet and dialogue here, a harmonious or deliberately cacaphonous merging there. Whatever happens, the artistic chemistry is always palpable.

At the latest once you reach the feral despair of the album's midpoint in "Limps Dragging Towards Saturn Slowly", there's no denying that this a meeting of exceptional experimental artists, who know how to make your bones rumble and your soul shake. A logical sequel to Hypnodrone Ensemble's "The Problem Is In The Sender - Do Not Tamper With The Receiver", where they met before, yet a much closer and more dangerous experience. Amazing waves of emotional Noise!

The cassette design is solid, I especially like the full print on the shell itself.

TAVARE- Too Small To Be So High (2025)

Smooth transition to another core member of the Hypnodrone Ensemble with Aidan Baker's trio Tavare featuring him on guitar, Tristen Bakker on bass and Angela Muñoz (who's also part of the Ensemble) on drums.

Their music is quite quiet, a minimalist semi-acoustic form of slow-motion Alternative and Post Rock, very song-driven with all members singing. It is stripped down, but ambitious enough to still intrigue you. Atmospherically this actually reminds me a lot of good old SubRosa, but Tavare have their own very distinct vibe, providing an excellent soundtrack for winding down with songs that keep getting stronger with each listen.

Could this be one of my favorite Aidan Baker projects? Possibly. But he has so many, right? Well, who cares? Especially the natural, imperfect but just right feeling and tasteful harmony vocals on "Too Small To Be So High" are just balm for the soul.

And the interestingly structured "Left Behind" alone makes me happy that I got this cassette, which comes in an all-cardboard packaging, from Cruel Nature Records. A cool, lovely release.

SOLAR CORONA ELEKTRISCHE MASCHINE - Live At Cafe Oto (2024)

And now we're getting really trippy with a live release from last year, featuring a live performance from 2023, when the Portuguese Improvisational Stoner Rock band Solar Corona played an especially cosmic, hypnotic, infinitely improvised and above all very electronics-based show in London - hence the "Electric Machine" extension of the band name.

In two long Kraut jams with robust robotik backbones sounds are pulsating, oscillating, creaking, wafting and drifting through the cosmos like an android's mind discovering its soul and consciousness and the beauty of the stars in existential wonder.

The hand-numbered tape comes in an interestingly designed, layered combination of one transparent, one shiny silver J-card and prints on the cassette tray. A good visual fit for this great Experimental Psychedelic music. Awesome stuff!

THE MOND - 3 修正ニュートン力学 (2019)

My introduction to the Czech trio The Mond and their self-titled 2016 album hasn't been long ago. I actually featured it in the previous edition of the cassette craze chronicles.

Three years later their combination of Electronics, trumpet / bass clarinet, synths, organ and electric guitar still creates a distinct range of sounds. And while this is still home at the crossing of Experimental Free Jazz and Psychedelic Noise the performances on "3 修正ニュートン力学" (which unsurprisingly I cannot pronounce) actually feel less bonkers and more focussed here. Still way too crazy for the average consumer, but that's a basic prerequisite of everything Avantgarde, right?

The kind of weirdness that makes me happy, with a nice artwork that doesn't hurt either.

Roadburn 6x6

Maud The Moth / Brutus

Yes, I'm not done with festival content yet!

Last year I revived the Roadburn 6x6 series (=me taking 6x6 cm live shots with an Adox Golf folding camera on Ilford Delta 3200 film). This year I continued the tradition - and next year I'll probably bury it. 

Why? Well, last time I stopped after Friday, because my shutter cable was broken. This time I just wasn't feeling it enough.*
It's just a bit too much of a hassle. You always have to consider whether a show can be shot with it, then you get the thing out, you have to fumble the shutter cable out of your pocket without losing any of all the other stuff you keep in there in the process... Then you don't want to contemplate an eternity when to take your precious picture - and right after you have taken it something visually more interesting happens.

You forget to spool to the next frame after Maud The Moth, which leads to an actually very cool double exposure with Brutus. (see above) But then in a brain fart you're so determined to not do that again that you spool forward twice and waste one of your only twelve  frames.

Nah... of course I like some pictures, but I think I will rather shoot smaller shows on medium format again instead of Roadburn. Already got enough stuff on my overstimulated mind there anyway.

But that being said here's the rest of the bunch of pictures I took:

The Shits

Poison Ruin

Yrre

Judasz & Nahimana

Esben And The Witch

Julie Christmas

Bo Ningen

France

Ad Nauseam

Bell Witch

Under the Surface & White Boy Scream

* What I only realized the next morning was that after I had decided to quit shooting with the Adox I probably dropped and forgot my shutter cable in the Paradox anyway.