Allow Me To Reintroduce Myself

Hello to my old and new subscribers in 2025

Hi, I’m Stephan.

I live with my family in Berlin and an old, off-grid farmhouse in a small village in the rural Northeast, the most sparsely populated part of Germany – quite close to the Polish border and the Baltic sea.

These days, I am working as a freelance writer, consultant and university lecturer.

I’ve been a music and culture journalist for most of the last 25 years. I’ve also dabbled in artist management, ran an independent record label, curated playlists, developed content brands and hosted community radio shows.

In my mid-30s, I went through a difficult life phase – I’d left a job because of burnout, my first marriage was disintegrating and I suffered from severe mental and physical health issues.

In this period, I turned towards meditation and minimalism. I started attending spiritual retreats – an eight-week course in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and my first seven-day Vipassana retreat led me to eventually exploring the practices of Zen Buddhism and Deep Listening.

A couple of years later, I deleted all my social media accounts. To keep in touch with friends and “followers”, I launched an old school mailing list. I used it to send out irregular music recommendations and life updates – hence the title, Zen Sounds, which became zensounds (lowercase, like much of the music I present here) after I moved to Substack, switched to English and adapted a weekly schedule. That happened in late 2022.

Publishing my own newsletter seemed like a viable way of getting my writing out to people who are still interested in connecting deeply with music and culture, unfazed by mainstream trends and the popularity contests of streaming numbers and social media vanity metrics.

People who listen to albums instead of playlists, who read books instead of bingeing podcasts at double speed, who prefer slow arthouse films to short video reels.

People like you, I assume.

I grew up here.

Where I’m From

I spent my childhood and adolescence in a small beach town in Northern Germany. It was a beautiful place to grow up – bustling with excitement in the summer, sleepy and cozy in the winter.

Reading became my first passion. An early favorite was Tolkien, and in high school, I’d be devouring Hesse and Dostoevsky novels. Of course I’d go through a heavy Beats phase, then a New Journalism phase. I’m still reading around 50 books per year – literary fiction, non-fiction, classics.

We got our first VCR in the mid-1980s. On weekend mornings, I sat on the living room floor, watching movies like War Games or Blade Runner. A few years on, I’d discover the works of Jim Jarmusch and David Lynch. They introduced me to the wonders of indie and arthouse cinema.

My parents owned a sizeable vinyl collection. My father was into progressive rock, my mother preferred blues and folk. Both loved the Beatles, the Stones, the Beach Boys and Roxy Music.

One of my cousins, who’s a couple years older than me, used to record music off the radio. Sometimes she’d babysit me. Her mixtapes, which I’d borrow and copy, were a formative influence on my taste. This was the some of the edgier stuff of the mid-1980s: synth pop, italo disco, freestyle music, electro and early hip-hop.

I was 14 when Nevermind came out. I spent my youth on a diet of MTV, skateboarding videos and video games. In my teens, I loved harsh and dark music – grunge and metal, goth and industrial. I also still enjoyed hip-hop, and by the mid-90’s, when I slowly came of age, I got deep into UK underground music – trip-hop, drum’n’bass and electronica.

Inspired by sample-based production techniques, I started digging for older records at the same time. My musical universe constantly expanded through my finds – to jazz, soul, funk, dub, afrobeat, bossa nova, and so on.

Over the years and decades, I gathered quite some knowledge about many different genres, styles and eras of music. I noticed I felt drawn to the margins and fringes rather than the mainstream. The ‘classic’ canon of Western white male rock/pop songwriters didn’t appeal much to me.

While acquiring two pretty much useless law degrees, I began writing for music magazines and newspapers. I didn’t know yet I’d spend most of my professional life in music and culture journalism.

After a joyless year in a media and entertainment law firm, I dropped out of that career path to become the editor-in-chief of Juice, which was the biggest local hip-hop magazine. I did this job for almost six years – one of the formative experiences of my professional life.

Later I tried different other roles within the music industry, freelancing as a project manager for brands and labels, as well as working as an artist manager and running an independent record label. In the mid-2010s, I got involved in streaming playlist curation, which I’d do full-time for several years, and ended up leading a global team of editors and programmers.

During the pandemic, I wrote and published a non-fiction book, Zen Style. I’m quite proud of it – but so far, it’s only available in German.

Since I left my last full-time job in the music industry, I’ve returned to working as a freelance writer and consultant. I’m also teaching culture journalism to university students – and writing this newsletter.

I’ve lived in various cities throughout Germany and Switzerland, but settled in Berlin a long time ago. At the tail end of the pandemic, my wife and I bought the ruins of an old farmhouse on a piece of land in the rural Northeast of Germany, where we’ve been spending much time ever since, working remotely and fixing up the space.

My Schedule

I currently publish new episodes once to twice per week.

The content of my posts may vary – I might tell the story of one specific record, or conduct an interview with an artist, or write a personal essay. I might compile some listening, reading and watching recommendations. I might do all of this at once, or none of it.

Musically, this will be all over the place, but focused on “experimental” music – which I realize is a very flawed and indefinite term. Still, it’s the only way to describe the quality I’m looking for.

I don’t care too much about genre. I write about ambient, experimental electronic, leftfield hip-hop, avant-garde rock, free jazz and anything else that sparks my interest really. I hope you appreciate the diversity.

Where To Start

I create mostly evergreen content, so please dive into older issues – they will hopefully still feel new and relevant to you.

The archive is exclusively available to paid subscribers.

If you’ve subscribed for free and enjoyed my posts, please consider upgrading your subscription for the full experience.

Here’s a selection of articles that provide a good start into the world of zensounds.

3 Popular Posts

1. Enjoy The Silence

   Your life is not a movie, so stop soundtracking it 24/7

2. A Guide to Berlin’s Experimental Music Scene

   An overview of venues, festivals, listening bars and online resources

3. Still The Problem With Music

   Spoiler alert: It's the money

3 Personal Essays

1. It Seemed Like Someone Else’s Life

   Why personal branding is wrong, limiting and can even make you sick

2. The Music That Made Me

   My life from 5 to 45 in 9 records

3. How I Turned Into A Gorpcore Minimalist

   Life is too short to not wear your favorite clothes every day

3 Music Features

1. Mark Hollis: King Of The Introverts
   An ode to the quiet Talk Talk singer and songwriter

2. Boards of Canada: Rare Transmissions
   The revered Scotsmen, who have been AWOL for 11 years, are stirring up the internet

3. As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls
   Decoding an ambient jazz classic by Pat Metheny and Lyle Mays

If you feel like introducing yourself too, please take to the comments.

Thank you for reading!

Stephan