In 1987 an EP with 4 songs was released, “Ewald Kegel 2”. It was released on cassette and the EP was the follow up to the initial 1986 mini album “The Right Way”.
The original “2” EP contained 4 songs “When Words Get in The Way”, “Wild Girl”, “1974” and the cover of Tim Hardin’s classic “Red Balloon”. Releasing the 4-track EP meant a departure from an earlier idea to release a full fledged album with songs that were recorded during autumn/ winter of 1987.
Some 28 years later the original idea for an album comes alive again. “2” is now a 30 minute sound experience that contains a broad range of styles. There are ballads (“When Words Get in The Way”), Beatles oriented psychedelic pop (“Good Day Friends”) and 1987 contemporary influences like Prince (“Pretty Little One” and “Don’t Wave Goodbye”). The central song of the original EP and the 2015 album remains without any doubt “Wild Girl”. The track is disco oriented and uses extensively new recording technology that arrived in the mid-80s. It was composed and recorded with an Atari 1024STf computer running Steinberg Pro-24 software. The sampled voices on the song come from another technology that arrived by the mid-80s, sampling. In this particular example the Roland MKS-100 sampler was used.
The songs on the album represent the original music and tracks as recorded in 1987: no additional instruments were recorded or added. The songs were digitally transfered from their original 4-track recordings (Tascam 246) to a 2015 digital DAW and from there remixed and remastered using software like Klangheim MJUC Compressor, Waves V-Compressor, Q equalizer, L2, S1, H-Delay, Kazrog KClip and Native Instruments Passiv EQ.
The track listing of the album is as follows:
Introduction
Good Day Friends
When Words Get in The Way
Wild Girl
1974
Red Balloon
Don’t Wave Goodbye
Dynamic & Velocity
Home with You by Christmas
The total running time of the album is around 30 minutes. The album marks a shift in sound and recording with the introduction of the computer as a DAW (digital audio workstation) and the use of sampling.
Listen on YouTube: