From RPM to [´ramp] ­ The history

The first get-together of this group of people later known as [´ramp] took place in spring 1996. Lambert Ringlage and Stephen Parsick ­ who had released their acclaimed CD "Trancesession" the autumn before ­ were thinking about producing a successor to their debut but somehow felt that it wasn´t wise to repeat exactly the same formula again. Frank Makowski of TRANQUILLITY, who had already supported them technically during a one-off live concert in September 1994, was also looking for something new, and ­ being fond of TRANCESESSION ­ he asked them whether they´d like to do some collaborative sessions. The first sessions took place in late March and early April 1996 at a spare room of Essen University where they recorded ­ among other tracks ­ "Hybernation/Dauerschlaf" (featured on SEQUENCES 18 and on their 2000 album "Frozen Radios"). During those sessions they discovered totally new territories for themselves, music materialized that they had never dared dreaming of before. Attending a concert of French group LIGHTWAVE at the Oberhausen Gasometer in July 1996 was the initial spark for Stephen and Frank to get into the territory of experimental dark ambient music. Consequently, a second session at the then defunct TV studio of a local TV station at Marl (Frank´s birthplace) in August 1996 saw Lambert Ringlage drop out of RPM (as they had called their project, using the initials of their surnames) as he felt literally scared of the musical direction Stephen and Frank were about to take. Although being looking for something new, Lambert felt that this wasn´t the music he would want to perform for the rest of his life. Frank and Stephen thus continued as a duo project, yet looking for a new name. Stephen suggested to make "ramp" out of RPM as he liked the short slogan-like name of the British NODE project (a band Stephen and Frank admire alike). Not knowing that this name did not only have connotations with a term from synthesizer technology ("ramp generator", as found on early EMS synthesizers, for example) but also meant "catastrophe" in Dutch, the ambiguous meaning of the word showed them that they were on the right path.

The band RAMP was officially founded in early 1997, the first RAMP concert took place on August 29, 1997 at the Insel Saal, located in Marl. It was a six-hour live appearance that was broadcast on local television. RAMP, however, didn´t play all six hours but were supported by Stefan Kraft aka ANTIDOT and GARTEN OHM (Edgar Hellwig, Dirk Cervenka and Burt Vennemann) who also played two sets of one hour each. The entire event got very positive reviews and encouraged them to do it once again, this time at a civic hall in Neuss near Duesseldorf on November 15, 1997. The concert turned out to be a flop as only a handful of people was gathered there, mainly due to a lack of proper promotion (not to mention a local football match). Recordings of these two live shows plus some snippets from previous studio sessions were released in 1998 on their debut CD "Nodular", issued on the MANIKIN label of Berlin-based musician Mario Schönwälder. Yet the group didn´t get the kind of support they would have liked to get, therefore they decided to release the next album on their own.

In 1997 Frank and Stephen decided that RAMP should be an open forum for others as well. They did not want to boil on their own´musically but keep on developing new musical ideas and vistas through the creative exchange with others. The first musician from another musical field was soprano Martina Beine aka Martina Fantar from Duisburg who joined RAMP in May 1997 and contributed to various live shows in 1997 and 1998 before she got thrown out of the band due to "artistic differences". The usual game. Proposed collaborations with Cologne-based painter Hellmuth Tollmann never materialized after Martina had left the group. Recordings of these "angelic voices meet Gothic sounds" concerts were given to both Michael Stearns and Steve Roach who encouraged Frank and Stephen to further develope their ambient style.

Another musician they did a couple of sessions with in late December 1997 was Stefan Kraft aka ANTIDOT from Gelsenkirchen who got introduced to the band through Stephen Parsick. Even though these early experiments with Drum´n´Bass, Industrial Breakbeat and minimal electronics never really made their way on an album, Stephen used a rhythm track of these sessions for the first track RAMP played at the sixth Alfa Centauri festival at Huizen/NL on April 10, 1999.

On their "Frozen Radios" album, RAMP were joined by Jens JOX BOX Peschke of KUBUSSCHNITT, NAVIGATOR and WEIRD. Jens played some wild keyboard lines on the title track.

For the release of "Frozen Radios" in March 2000 ­ coinceding with the seventh Alfa Centauri Festival ­ the band´s name was changed from RAMP to [´ramp]. The phonetic spelling was chosen deliberately by Stephen as he no longer wanted to see the band´s name being pronounced in English but in Dutch ("rump", for all you native English speakers), especially due to the constantly growing darker and edgier sound of the band. At this festival [´ramp] got in touch with Robert Rich who was given some recordings of the band but never responded to them, and with experimental guitarist Markus Reuter who had previously done a collaborative album with Ian Boddy. In late 2000, [´ramp] did a couple of recording sessions with guitar ambiances and textures submitted by Markus, creating raw recordings for a very dark ambient music album.

For 2001 the release of this album is proposed, as well as playing a live concert at Jodrell Bank planetarium in England. Apart from that, Frank and Stephen are both busy with recording and producing their respective solo albums in order to redefine who is contributing what to [´ramp].



Who is who ­ the musicians

Frank Makowski

Frank (born in 1968) got into electronic music through JEAN MICHEL JARRE´s "Equinoxe" album in 1978 but the band that really pulled the trigger for him was TANGERINE DREAM. He decided to try himself as a musician after having been happy with noodling around with grandpa´s old EKO Tiger organ (that was used by Stephen on "Annular" and "Angular" off the "Nodular" album, btw.). He acquired his first synthesizer ­ a Kawai K-1 ­ in 1988, recorded lots of stuff and presented his first official cassette "Cyberland Express" in 1992. The pseudonyme TRANQUILLITY was derived from an album of one of his most important influences, JOHANNES SCHMOELLING´s "The Zoo of Tranquillity". Apart from working as a soloist, Frank also collaborated with Norbert TIMEWAVE Gunkel for the opening concert of the first KLEM NRW Festival in 1993 (where he became sort of like a "performer in residence" as the two subsequent festivals saw him playing as a solo artist and as HOLLE MANGLER´s sideman as well). Also, he played with Olaf Hellenkamp and released a cassette of rather harsh and weird industrial stuff. In 1994 all these efforts led to the release of his first solo CD "The Spectre Within" which received positive reviews throughout. In 1996 he presented his second CD "Deus Ex Machina" which contained music from multimedia sessions Frank had done in collaboration with a couple of experimental movie makers from Marl. Focusing the time-consuming RAMP project for a longer period he finished his 3rd solo album "Core" in 2001.
While Stephen is more the analog real-time fanatic and avid MIDI hater, Frank is more focused on sampling, processing and using MIDI technologies in his music.

Frank has not only gained a lot of artistic credibility through his collaborative efforts with Stephen Parsick but also through his design artworks for many albums of other colleagues. He not only designed the sleeves for his three solo CDs himself, but also did artwork for artists like COSMIC HOFFMANN, RAINBOW SERPENT, SCHÖNWÄLDER & KELLER, RAMP or STEPHEN PARSICK. The peak of his graphics career undoubtedly was being commissioned to do the artwork for the reissue of EDGAR FROESE´s "Macula Transfer" on Manikin.

Frank, being a trained fitter of electrical systems, is now making a living from working as a computer engineer and freelance graphics designer.


Stephen Parsick

Stephen (born in 1972) got into electronic music already during his childhood days when his father played "A Clockwork Orange" by WALTER/WENDY CARLOS to him. "Autobahn" by KRAFTWERK and "Oxygene" by JEAN MICHEL JARRE followed soon after and sowed the seeds of Stephen´s ambition to become a musician as well. In 1983 he began taking musical lessons at the local music school of his hometown Moers. He endured these lessons (his chosen instrument was the electric organ, due to its close electronic relationship with the synthesizer) for seven years before he dropped out, encouraged by his teacher. In 1988 Stephen acquired his first own synthesizer ­ a Moog Prodigy, used heavily on the track "Frozen Radios", btw. ­ after having toyed around with a borrowed Korg MS-10, and in early 1989 he got his first real synthesizer: A Mini Moog. In 1989 Stephen released his first composition on a CD sampler called "Wunderwelt Musik" compiled by German ERDENKLANG label, his first solo cassette "The Rotation of Galaxy" followed in early 1990. In 1991 he released his second cassette "Polarity" before he joined forces with Lambert Ringlage and recorded the "Trancesession" tape (later on CD) in May 1993. This is where the history of [´ramp] begins. Also in 1989, Stephen was introduced to Klaus Hoffmann-Hoock of MIND OVER MATTER. Their long-term friendship (and their mutual devotion to the Mellotron) led to a reactivation of Klaus´ COSMIC HOFFMANN project after Klaus had contributed to Stephen´s solo album "Traces of the Past", released in 1998. Stephen co-wrote, played, arranged and engineered tracks on both COSMIC HOFFMANN albums "Beyond the Galaxy" (1999) and "Shiva Connection" (2000).

Stephen is a die-hard vintage synthesizer enthusiast and has accumulated a respectable amount of rare electronic instruments over the past 13 years. Apart from making music, Stephen is a freelance music journalist and studies communciation, journalism, English and history of art at Bochum University. Also, Stephen has been working in the field of public relationships and advertisement, the peak of his career being the involvement in the promotion campaign of JEAN MICHEL JARRE´s last album "Metamorphoses". Stephen wrote the official JARRE biography for SONY Germany which was printed on the promotional packages of "Metamorphoses", given to journalists and press representatives. At the moment, he´s making a living from selling furniture and teaching Dutch.

Stephen is currently working on a couple of projects, including a new solo album (working title "Debris"), an ambient-dub EP with Markus Reuter and an ambient solo album (working title "For a friend passing away").

What´s the point... or: What are these guys all about?

Basically, the motivation behind [´ramp] and all the projects the musicians are involved in is mere fun. Trying to blur the borders between musical genres is one goal, opening their listeners´ minds for other forms of music and musical presentation is another. This has become a rather difficult thing to do as they were originally billed as "Germany´s reply to England´s Radio Massacre International" by their record company. And even though their two albums share some similarities with releases from groups like RMI, REDSHIFT or NODE who are drawing heavily from the Berlin School background of Germany´s 1970s cosmic music , [´ramp] have always tried to go beyond these stylistic boundaries by incorporating elements from ambient music as well as from Drum´n´Bass, Trip-Hop, Industrial or Gothic music. Their influences are varied, the EINSTÜRZENDE NEUBAUTEN, DEPECHE MODE and FRONT LINE ASSEMBLY are quite as important to them as are DEAD CAN DANCE, PORTISHEAD, LIGHTWAVE, ROBERT RICH, BRIAN ENO, NODE, APHEX TWIN, VANGELIS, KRAFTWERK, JEAN MICHEL JARRE, TANGERINE DREAM, KLAUS SCHULZE, THE DOORS or PINK FLOYD. Creating a synthesis of styles and influences is their ultimate goal, reaching audiences beyond narrow circles entrenched by stylistic boundaries. "Being unpredictable is the main thing," Stephen says, "those attending our concerts or buying our albums mustn´t know what´s going to happen, even when we´re entering the scene".

(Etienne Gris)