Feel Berlins subbass with Tiefdruckgebiet

Pretty much everyone likes bass, right? That deep, grumbling and vibrating feel around the stomach area you experience standing in the middle of a club. Electronic music without a bassdrum would be a mistake, right? So what happens if you leave away the music and start focusing on just the subbass, on the frequencies beyond 60 hertz? You won’t be hearing very much then, but the physical experience would be overwhelming. So you’d be pretty set to experience Tiefdruckgebiet, Berlin’s first mobile subbass orchestra.

This Sunday, Berlin’s district of Neukölln will see a subwoofer installation with ten souped-up cars each blasting an individual twenty minute sinusoidal tone between 50 and 30 Hertz, creating a complex waveform of modulating sounds on the streets. Besides the cars individual sound, the performance venue near Schillerpromenade as well as the audience have an influence on the sound and feel of Tiefdruckgebiet – you won’t come much closer to the phrase ‘the sound of the streets.’

Tiefdruckgebiet was created by Berlin-based sound designers (respectively: sound artists) Carl Schilde and Anselm Nehls as a project for the city’s culture festival 48 Hours Neukölln, and as a reminiscence to Neukölln’s typical streetscape with sports car trunks packed with bass speakers. If you’re able to read some German (or know how to get along with Google translations) you can read a longer interview I did on Tiefdruckgebiet over here. In case you’d like to come along, make sure to be at Schillerpromenade between Kienitzer Straße and Herrfurthplatz on Sunday, three pm sharp. The performance will start on time and will last only 20 minutes, without any reruns.

Get ready for this physical performance, and don’t even think about recording this with your phone – it won’t capture a thing anyway.

Published June 16, 2011.