X´oul – Steamhammer

In 1998, Rainer Trendelenburg produced his first CD. At that time, he was guitarist and singer with „The Soulutions“ and had just set up the Lemontree Studio in Freiburg.

Only two of his own compositions are on the CD. These are from the time he worked with Robert Debacher and Berthold Blau at „Stout“. The funk rock band „Stout“ was one of the well-booked acts with up to 75 performances a year and opened for artists such as Luther Allison and Scrifis.

The seven other songs are all covers of well-known artists, some of which were arranged according to his own ideas.

The guitar, bass and drum recordings were made in the rehearsal room of „The Soulutions“, in a run-down basement in Freiburg’s Wiehre. For the first time, a digital Tascam multi-track recorder was used, the „must-have“ at the time for the ambitious sound creator.

The rest of the production took place in the Lemontree Studio. This also included the vocal recordings, which clearly show that correction programs such as Autotune or Melodyne were not available for this production.

The cover design was also particularly pleasing. Brigitte Gundel created this entirely by hand, without any computer support.

Unfortunately, the lyrics on the CD itself were lost at the pressing plant. That was not the only mistake. A „loop“ was created during mastering and the entire edition had to be pressed again. This time, too, without lyrics on the CD. To this day, there are still four-digit numbers of misprints in the basement; perhaps they will decorate the Christmas tree for a special occasion one day.

Rainer Trendelenburg, voc , git, keyb
Angela Mink, backing Vocals (4,5,6,8)
Magnus Kaiser, git (1)
Robert Debacher, keyb (1,3,4,7,9)
Libor Sima, sax
Frank Muffler, trumpet (6)
Sebastian Lorenz, bass
Mokthar Biammi, conga (4)
Marco Randazzo, dr (1,3,4,5,6,7,8,9
Berthold Blau, dr (2)

Other people involved are
Producer, Recording & Mixing: Rainer Trendelenburg
Mastering: Miki Summ (acoustic media, Freiburg)
Cover Design: Brigitte Gundel