Ludwig Wandinger: Music as Medicine

The Berlin-based jazz drummer, artist and producer on coming up in free improv and his new 'healing' ambient record as Sanguis

Earlier this year, I interviewed the Berlin-based neo-shoegaze trio Roomer.

One third of the band is Ludwig Wandinger, a studied jazz drummer, visual artist and electronic music producer who’s become a prolific figure shaping the city’s forward-thinking underground music scene throughout the last five years.

Under the alias Sanguis, he’s just released one of the most beautifully captivating ambient albums of the year on the ever-surprising Squama, a Munich-based independent label for jazz-adjacent music, which they call “(quasi)jazz”.

“Wandinger tries to capture fleeting moments”, the press release for Wounding explains. “All tracks are unedited first takes, some recorded only with his phone in various places, from a friend’s flat in Neukölln to his family home in rural Bavaria. Background noises become a part of the music and create a tangible sense of place, urging the listener to keep an ear out for one’s own surroundings.”

I caught up with Ludwig at his studio in Berlin-Kreuzberg to talk about his upbringing in Weilheim, his experiences in the free improv scene and the artistic journey that led him from indie rock to free jazz, from electronic dance music to ambient – and find out where it might still lead him in the future.

all photos: Laurén Maria

What are your earliest memories of sound and music?

My dad played baritone saxophone in a big band. I remember some of their concerts, especially the track “Moanin’” by Charles Mingus. I was really young but I often joined my mother to go see his shows, and that definitely made an impression. I also remember my siblings playing music at home. My sister would listen to Imogen Heap, and my brothers, who were in bands, listened to rock, like Nirvana and stuff. I have six siblings and they were all really into music.

And your father is a professional musician?

Yeah. He’s supposed to be retired now, but he still plays more gigs than I do. He played bassoon in an orchestra. My parents lived in Düsseldorf at the time, but they got homesick and moved back to Bavaria, so he became deputy chairman at this music school, teaching saxophone and bassoon. He’d met my mother at uni, where both were studying music. She’s a classical singer who gave singing and flute lessons as well.

A very musical household…

Definitely. But they never forced me to do anything. I loved playing the piano at home, and started getting lessons at 7 or 8 years old. Around 12 I lost interest because I didn’t get to learn how to improvise or write my own stuff, and I wasn’t interested in playing what someone else had written anymore. Around the time I watched School of Rock, and that changed a lot. I taught myself how to play the guitar and drums and started playing in bands.

What kind of music did your parents play at home?

Not that much actually. They were teaching music all day, so I guess they wanted to enjoy a little silence and calm in the evenings. But I often heard my mother practice singing, or my dad playing along with jazz records in the basement.

Weilheim, where you grew up, is a small Bavarian town well-known for being the home of successful German indie rock group The Notwist. Did you still encounter “their” scene in the city?

I think I was part of the last generation that did to some degree. I know a couple of people who are just a few years younger than me, and they haven’t experienced it anymore. I was part of this trio named Tiny Tim, that’s where I learned to play drums. No matter the weather, we always ended up in some basement practicing, jamming and writing music. We were really into Radiohead at the time, but we had a lot of other influences too. I started getting into jazz more and mixing in weird time signatures, it was a lot of fun.

We had a practice room at school, and whenever we had any spare time, I would end up there. I started playing in the school big band too, which was inspiring because suddenly there were so many musicians around me who were much better than I was, not just my peers but the alumni as well. One of them told me he was actually studying jazz at university, and I was like, “You can actually do that?” I knew right then and there what I wanted to do after school. So when I finished high school, I did nothing but practice drums for a year straight.

Because you wanted to pass the entrance exam for music school?

Exactly. I started learning theory quite late. Those entrance tests were hard for drummers. But I practiced every day, got accepted and moved to Berlin.

Were you interested in free improvisation and experimental music right away?

I think I was sucked into it very quickly in Berlin. In the first weeks, I didn’t have any friends in the city yet, so I just went to these small improv shows at these crazy spots every night, all by myself. Right in my first week I saw a show by [drummer] Christian Lillinger and [saxophonist] Tobias Delius in this small club, ausland, in Prenzlauer Berg. That freedom in their playing really impressed me. I came from rock, and I really loved that punk element in free jazz. I kept going to every show that felt exciting.

In music school, they tried to instill at least some tradition in us. The first two years, I had to transcribe a lot of Tony Williams, Philly Joe Jones and Max Roach. That was cool as well, but one of my professors eventually was [drummer] Jim Black, who taught us the most important thing is to make music you enjoy, with people you like, and nothing else really matters. That’s what I already believed, but hearing it from my professor still changed something. I always wanted to find my own style, and he encouraged me in that.

You were also already producing electronic music at that point, right?

Yeah, I’d started quite early, at age 14, 15. I learned to use Ableton, first just by ear and then later by watching a few tutorials. I even showed my beats to Jim Black once, and he was just like: It’s super sick, release it already, just put it out there. That’s when I started seeing electronic music as part of my musical identity, even though I was still mainly a jazz drummer.

Who inspired you as a producer?

Oh, so many people. I always had these intense phases where I really checked out a certain producer and tried to emulate their sound. That was my main mode of learning. I had a huge Flying Lotus phase, a Hudson Mohawke phase, an Iglooghost phase. I was and am still a huge fan of SOPHIE. And then I started going out to electronic music concerts, and I really enjoyed myself there, because it wasn’t just a bunch of dudes trying to impress each other. The jazz scene felt quite depressing in that regard.

So did you fall into the typical clubbing phase after moving to Berlin?

Well yes, but not a super hard one. I met [fellow musician and Roomer bandmate] Luka Aron soon, who’d studied jazz guitar in Basel, and we became close friends, seeking these little adventures out in the night together. So we did go to clubs but never lived an excessive lifestyle. It was a really beautiful time discovering and exploring Berlin’s nightlife together with him.

When did you start bringing together jazz with electronic elements in your music?

I released a project under an alias name, Alban Winter. A couple people from the jazz scene really liked it – people like Petter Eldh and Lucia Cadotsch. Suddenly I hung out with those people, talked about music with them, even made music with them. And then I put out my first solo album under my own name in 2020. That was really inspired by this SoundCloud mixtape that Petter once did; it was a beat mixtape with me playing drums and various musicians playing over my beats, whom I recorded on my phone and then produced these tracks in Ableton, using a lot of effects. But over time, I moved away from producing beats into this ambient, beatless direction that you can hear now on my recent solo records as well as on the Sanguis record.

Is there an important production lesson that you learned over the years?

These days I am asking the music to tell me what it wants to be, not the other way around. Sound is emotion, so you just need to listen and ask what the music needs, and if you can enhance the emotion somehow. I love music that evokes deep emotions.

You’ve started producing for other musicians as well, for example you’ve worked on Marta Forsberg’s new album.

Yeah, I love being in that producer role. I mostly work with friends so I know them and know about their strengths and personalities, and what I love about their music. Often you don’t really see that in yourself. It’s a privilege to tell them which parts should be highlighted and enhanced, or if there’s a certain veil that could be lifted to make the music shine even more. That was actually the case with Marta, because she was using so many filters and reverb effects on her vocals, and I wanted to hear her raw, unfiltered voice, which I found much stronger and more relatable. For her it felt like quite a crazy idea at first though.

She told me that you helped her accept the demos as final versions.

I am quite extreme about releasing stuff that others would see as a demo, something that isn’t quite ready and polished yet. But I like that raw character much more than something overproduced, with too much make-up. The music loses so much when you try to make it sound perfect. It needs mistakes and fragility.

Back in the days, when you recorded directly to tape, you couldn’t autotune things or fix every beat that was slightly off. The take was just the take, and it had the vibe of that performance on that specific day. It’s something I argue with over a lot with other musicians. I always love the first take the most. Sometimes, it’s not easy for the singer for example – they might think their performance was much better in another take.

I heard this story about Manfred Eicher when he worked with Meredith Monk. When she recorded the first take of “Gotham Lullaby”, he loved it, but she insisted on recording more because she knew she could sing it even better. So he just went off to lunch and when he came back, she had recorded many more takes, but none had the magic of that first one, which ended up on the record.

Yeah, it might get technically “better”, but often character gets lost with that.

Tell me about the process working on the Sanguis record.

Many of these tracks had already been released on Bandcamp, but I’d never really promoted them or even just told anyone that they’re out. I make a lot of music in this style, because that’s what I want to listen to myself. So I created this alias for my ambient tracks, and sometimes I’d make four or five tracks in one night. And that’s it, they’re done, I’d never touch them again. I’d just create a cover artwork, for which I’d mostly use my own photography, and then upload it to Bandcamp.

I’m super frustrated by that whole cycle of self-promotion. I just wish there was a way of making music without social media and all that stuff. My dream would be to find a label that does all the promotion and marketing work, so I can focus completely on the music. This album actually came quite close to that dream, because Martin [Brugger of the Squama label] found this music, liked it a lot and then just asked me if I wanted to release it on his label.

I’d never even sent him the music. I just uploaded it and told nobody about it. At one point, he sent me a message and said he found it really beautiful, and that he thought it would sound good on vinyl. I didn’t really want to promote it, but after being hesitant for a second, I found it nice that he wanted to release it properly. So I gave him all the tracks plus a few unreleased ones as well, and he basically curated the album.

They [Squama] thought the music sounded healing, almost like medicine, so they used a certain material on the cover that will wear off the more you pull it from the shelf and put it back again, just like a favorite book that you read until the pages are really worn. I think it consitutes a beautiful relationship to an object, because you tend to love it even more as it wears out. It feels really good to see the music coming out in that format.

Does jazz still play a role in your creative life?

Absolutely. I’m still part of the Band TAU with Philipp Gropper, Moritz Baumgärtner, Philipp Zoubek and Felix Henkelhausen. I love these guys. It’s not easy, on the contrary – it’s actually quite stressful, but it’s always fun. I have to admit I don’t really enjoy a lot of jazz concerts anymore though. That virtuosity just doesn’t touch me.

Back in the days, I’d be impressed when someone had crazy drum chops, but now when I see someone just running through their scales or using these pseudo-heady compositional concepts, I’m just not that interested. Don’t get me wrong, I love complexity and I love concepts. But the most important aspect of music is its emotional value, and if I don’t feel anything, then I don’t care. But yeah, I still have one foot in the jazz world. There’s so much great talent out there, I just often wish they would play more from the heart and less bound to virtuosity.

Lea Bertucci told me that she left the jazz scene because it felt too macho for her.

I agree. There are such deep patriarchal structures in that music. It’s very stone-age in that regard. The whole scene is dominated by men, and that’s what most of the music sounds like too. Nobody shows any emotions that aren’t allowed for men. Men are only allowed to be strong and heroic and angry and violent. But fragile or melancholic or sad? That’s quite rare. Look, I love Chet Baker and Bill Evans. I think we could use a couple more of those people right now.

Sure. But those two were quite broken people too.

You’re right. To be clear, I don’t believe you need to be a broken, unhealthy person to show true emotions. David Lynch actually said in an interview that if you’re really depressed and pumped full of drugs, it’s quite hard to be creative. So I think that’s just this persisting myth.

Many great artists did have a terrible life and made very fragile, beautiful music as a consequence of living through those conditions, and that music touched many other people who might have had terrible lives too. But I don’t think that having a terrible life is a precondition for making emotionally resonant music. Those people were just extremely talented, and they also happened to have some deep issues, and they used both music and drugs as outlets.

Personally, I aspire to be making music for a very long time. I have friends who have substance abuse issues as well, and I’d never shame them for it but I sometimes just can’t understand it. I get really sad when people throw their lives away like that. As an artist and human being, you should aim to get these things under control to be healthy and make great music for as long as you can, for yourself first of all, but also your loved ones around you.

Is it easier for you to find that certain softness and that emotional resonance in ambient music?

Definitely. Here in Berlin I found this scene within experimental electronic music that’s very different from the jazz scene, as it’s totally fine to be yourself and show every aspect of yourself. Some of my friends make extremely brutal club music, but they’re the nicest, most tender people. You can make the hardest shit or the softest ambient, and they will always find the beauty in it and just understand it. Whilst when I’d show that kind of music to some of my jazz musician friends, they’d probably be like, “Whoa, that’s kind of cheesy. Quite a lot of minor chords, huh?”

To be honest, I’d love to produce some jazz artists as well, but only if they’re open to zone in on a specific emotional quality or idea. I listen to so many jazz albums where the musicianship is outstanding and you might have one really beautiful song, but the rest is just generic modern jazz banging. Many records and concerts have that one beautiful moment, but they don’t manage to hold on to it and then it’s gone way too quickly. I’d love to isolate that moment and make a whole record out of it.

That’s the idea of a loop basically, isn’t it?

Yeah, that was also the idea behind the Sanguis alias. That’s exactly how I worked for the music on Wounding. I played and experimented until I had one element that I really loved, and then I built the whole track around that simple idea – a melody line, or just a sound, or even just a texture.

I’d love to make a record with drums at some point again, but right now it’s still really hard for me. As soon as I hear drums, it just gives the music a time stamp. I immediately know when and how it was produced. The drums give it all away. Ambient sounds more timeless to my ears. It’s not about making it sound vintage – it’s more about not knowing exactly how the music was made. Music that carries a certain sense of mystery.

I remember asking a fave musician of mine about a track once, and they were like, “Oh, that’s just a stretched-out Justin Bieber sample.” And to be honest, I’d actually rather not know that. I want that sound to remain a mystery, a gift. Someone made the effort to create it and present it to me – I don’t need to know how it was made, that just takes away from its effect.

You have your neo-shoegaze band [Roomer], you play in many different bands and projects, you’re producing your own solo music and other artists as well. What’s something you’d still be interested in doing musically?

I’d love to work more with vocalists. I actually love rap music. There’s an energy I loved so much when I discovered music from Monk and Miles, that’s something I find more in rap music than in jazz nowadays. That punk attitude, just doing your thing, being weird and self-confident – I find that in the most out-there rappers from Atlanta more than in kids who learned jazz in music school. So I’d love to work with some rappers. I tapped into it a bit with a joint EP with Brodinski and a track with xato and 645AR earlier this year and would love to do more stuff like this. Composing for an orchestra and writing film scores would also be really interesting to me.

Sanguis’ Wounding is out now on Squama.