Posts Tagged ‘Sicker Man’

Sicker Man – Spökenkieker

Posted: 23 February 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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blankrecords – 13th February 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

For context, a definition: Spökenkieker: soothsayer / a person who has second sight and is believed to have the ability to know and tell what will happen in the future. And we also learn that ‘The local mythological figure of the Spökenkieker is situated in the mystical depths of the Teutoburg Forest and serves both as name giver and patron saint for this journey to the initial starting point.

Arguably, anyone who has invested any significant time in studying the past can predict the future. History has a habit of repeating itself, and this has perhaps never been more apparent than now. Consider the following:

In 1933 Mussolini closed the national opera to “renovate” it.

In 1934, Hitler closed the national opera house to “renovate” it.

In 1935, Portuguese dictator Salazar closed the national opera house to “renovate” it.

Orwell’s 1984 is considered one of the greatest dystopian novels of all time, but 1984 is an inversion of 1948, the year it was written, and as such, penned in a recently post-war world, holds a mirror to the ways in which totalitarian regimes operate. And now, here we are, and it’s not just the US under Trump, but a creeping shift towards totalitarianism and total surveillance. We may not be in World War 3, but the world is very much at war, and what peace we have is hanging on a knife edge. If you’re not scared, you’re simply not paying attention.

Sicker Man’s fifteenth album, Spökenkieker is a mesh of different elements thrown together and mixed, blended, chopped, and pulped together. ‘Stop the Gravy Train’ is a perfect example of the melting pot of post-punk, stuttering drum machines, ambience, rave, and experimental jazz. And that’s just four minutes. And however representative it is, it doesn’t really prepare the listener for so much going on all at once. And it’s no mere wheeze that the album is strewn with spoken word samples culled from the past – the idea is to pull these snippets into the present, and cast the future, too, a layering of sorts whereby the past reverberates, echoes forward through the generations.

‘Jojatsu’ and its reprise, and the three-part ‘Ad Finem’ sequence is built around an orchestral / jazz hybrid that transitions between passages of tranquillity and of tension, while samples flit in and out.

I’m going to hit the pause button here for a moment: I’ve been fairly explicit in my dislike of Public Service Broadcasting over the years, online and in conversation. So why is Spökenkieker great and PSB’s work an abomination? It boils down to the fact that Sicker Man is digging through the archives and responding to both the past and the present in a way which strives to articulate something meaningful. It may not be immediately apparent, but some of the titles offer clues: ‘Greedy People’ and ‘Mean Drift’ for example. In contrast, boil these dark moments in history and present them as some for of nostalgia-infused entertainment, no more than the endless ‘documentaries’ churned out on Channel 5, lean on content and even leaner on analysis.

Spökenkieker engages on another level, and the aforementioned ‘Greedy People’ lands like Melvins gone jazz with a Roland 606 spinning a primitive post-punk beat while muttering samples criss-cross over one another as things take a turn for the experimental / ambient / dark dance vibe – and if that sounds like a wild hybrid, it is. ‘Matchless’ is simply a frenzy of elements which defies categorisation. The fact that it works is barely conceivable. But work, it does, and well.

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Sicker Man – Stop The Gravy Train / Hollowed

Posted: 6 June 2025 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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Limited Edition 7" Dubplate / DL Blank Records – 13th June 2015

Christopher Nosnibor

Tobias Vethake aka Sicker Man has spent a quarter of a century doing things differently – differently from other artists, and differently in terms of his own sound and approach to making music.

As his bio points out, ‘as our world changed a lot during the last 25 years, so did his music. On his last release, KLOTZ WENZEL VETHAKE, the interaction with other musicians and the political dimension of a musical wake-up call became a main focus… The single „Gravy Train / Hollowed“ marks a new and fresh look at both, his musical history and present. It features Sicker Man’s love for dub, noise and electronic music as well his passion for classical composition and spiritual jazz… ‘Stop The Gravy Train / Hollowed’ feels like a collaboration of Moondog and The Bug’

It certainly does. For these two pieces, Sicker Man has enlisted saxophonist Matze Schinkopf, and

How many ideas is it possible to pack into four and a quarter minutes? With ‘Stop The Gravy Train’, Sicker Man manages more ideas per minute than it’s possible to even begin to count. The piece starts with a low, grinding bass and industrial hums, before the saxamaphones enter the mix, interweaving through and across one another. They trickle smoother, teasing with points and counterpoints, laid-back and mellow over the simmering rhythm section, the bass and the beats building currents beneath. Around the midpoint, the piece makes a change of trajectory, the gentle jazz giving way to something altogether more urgent and driving, locking into a robust groove with low saxophone punching rhythmically and in syncopation with the whip-cracking snare and palpating kick drum.

‘Hollowed’ is different again: a swampy surge of seething electronica, a morass of meshing noise – at least to begin, and then it melts into a rather pleasant swaying jazz work, a clip-clip beat nodding along nicely. Swells of noise bubble and surge, but don’t quite break through, and industrial grooves settle in while the saxes tootle off in different directions, hither and thither to brain-melting effect.

‘Genius’ is a word which is chronically overused and often severely misapplied. Is this a work of genius? Maybe not, but it’s got to be close. There’s no question that it’s wildly inventive, and unexpectedly listenable, while challenging every musical preconception.

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Sicker Man – Dialog

Posted: 29 March 2021 in Albums
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Bankrecords – blank037 – 12th March 2021

Christopher Nosnibor

In his everyday work, Tobias Vethake composes music for theatres, installations, radio plays, television and film, and while also participating in various collaborative projects, including Mini Pops Junior, his primary outlet for his experimental explorations is Sicker Man. With electric cello at the heart of the compositions, Vethake incorporates myriad additional sound sources and draws on a vast cultural spectrum spanning jazz and industrial, from east and from west to forge expansive and quite intense works of range and depth.

Like Jo Quail, Vethake plays the cello in ways that rarely sound recognisably cello-like: it’s apparent that the instrument’s versatility is severely underrated. So while there are certainly orchestral elements present on Dialog, it’s by no means an overtly orchestral album, and by absolutely no means an overtly ‘cello’ album. It’s more of an abstract, ambient, (post) rock work. Moreover, collaboration has a way of drawing different ideas and methods out of artists, with the potential to realise works which are infinitely greater than the sum of the parts, the product of the ‘third mind’, if you will.

Dialog contains a collection of pieces recorded in collaboration with different artists – all improvised and unarranged. The dialogs therefore represent the musical exchanges between the musicians in the moment as they respond, spontaneously and intuitively, to one another, often as they meet and ‘converse’ for the first time.

The album’s first track, ‘dialog with Manuel Klotz’ begins with a weaving air of eastern mysticism (a Turkish marriage orchestra Tobias would pass as they played on his way to the sessions), and I’m reminded of the Master Musicians of Joujouka, only with more prominent percussion – but before long, a yawning swell of noise engulfs it, the wave finally breaking to a heavy tidal drone with an instant beat. Eventually, everything collapses to a buzzing drone.

Each piece has its own distinctive style, indicating not only the merits of what each collaborator brings, but also Sicker Man’s versatility. There’s a swampy swagger to the piece recorded with Lip Smh, where drill-like drone buzzes vibrate against serpentine scales that twist enigmatically into a desert haze.

Aidan Baker gets everywhere, and here he is bringing brooding shadows of melancholy the a mournfully lugubrious piece, which is, for my money, one of the standouts. Of the others, there are lengthy passages of gentle, abstract ambience in succession, but the dialog with Kiki Bohemia brings all the dingy bass, as well as all the shimmering space-rock synths, while Scheider TM goes all out on the electro pulsations. Clocking in at over nine and a half minutes, it makes for one mighty finale, building into an immense wall of overdriven guitar that’s absolutely crushing in its weight and density. It has the elements of Earth 2 and Sunn O))), but played at pace, a swirling black metal vortex of overloading distortion. It’s absolutely punishing, and its relentless.

After the curious journey that is the rest of Dialogs, this is just a devastating finisher. There is nowhere to go from here, other than to turn out the light and stare at the ceiling.

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