Markus Reuter—Modern sounds from the past: In The Castle Studio with TWORNA

German musician Markus Reuter is perhaps best known as one third of Stick Men, a King Crimson offshoot that includes bassist Tony Levin and drummer Pat Mastelotto. Markus began his career as an ambient musician with his 1998 solo album Taster. He has collaborated with ambient / electronic musicians Ian Body, Robert Rich, Tim Motzer and Zero Ohms, and works in his own improvisational trio centrozoon with Bernhard Wöstheinrich and Tobias Reber. Markus is a modern classical composer—Todmorden 513 (2011), Sun Trance (2017) and String Quartet No. 1 ‘Heartland’ (2019), and he’s an instrument designer as well, having designed the U8 and U10 Touch Guitars. Markus is also a producer and audio engineer.

I’ve known Markus since 2001 when we were both on the ambient record label Hypnos. He recently told me about a unique Dresden-based folk trio he was producing. TWORNA performs traditional pre-war German folk music with modern elements of jazz, ambient processing, looped soundscapes and improvisation.

Let’s travel to The Castle Studio in Röhrsdorf, Germany and learn how Markus helped capture the music of Caterina Other (nyckelharpa, vocals, percussion), Jessica Jäckel (vocals, forest zither, percussion), and Frieder Zimmermann (guitar, bass and percussion). Note: this is the second time RECORDING has checked in with Röhrsdorf. The first was when we interviewed Sylvia Massy back in January 2017—this studio is one of her favorite recording destinations.