raimund a. gitsels

Born in 1968 in Düsseldorf (Germany), I soon learned how to handle my elder brother's record player. Having scratched his Beatles  record collection I felt ready to listen to the 1970´s progressive rock  bands. Genesis, Deep Purple and Pink Floyd had to kick the bucket. As every young boy at the age of five I decided to  become a drummer. But when I got a Helmut Zacharias double-LP as a present for  Christmas in 1974 I knew that it had to be the violin. Some years and many terrible violin-lessons later it was more fun playing football instead of  violin. A cheap pick-up on my acoustic instrument and a  second-hand guitar-amp to plug it in changed my life at the age of 16. The sound was fantastic and every inserted distortion-pedal broadened my musical horizon. By the way Vivaldi became much more interesting to me being played electrified. What followed were ear-splitting sessions with bad bands and  guitarists who could play even louder than me. As well I sometimes caught suspicious looks from my fellow players in the orchestra. At the beginning of the nineties I turned my attention  more and more to music that avoids using clichés. First publications with my art-pop band Kammerjaeger at that time show my intentions in writing music of that kind and in developing an individual style of playing called rhythm-violin.

With Zinctone I still enjoy making “serious light  music”. I love the combination of extremes that we do: pop-songs, free improvised soundscapes and complex rhythm-compositions. It's much fun being the violinist, electronic-string-noise-maker, singer, composer and song-writer at the same time. And I'm happy to play my music with Malte, Matze and Andreas who are all really fine musicians. I apologize to them for the weird stuff they have to stand sometimes.

 

the band
Matthias Bonheger-Kadel Andreas Heuser maltevr Raimund Gitsels