As part of the 48th Leipziger Jazztage, Hamburg Dada enthusiast Felix Kubin will be performing together with Polish percussionist Hubert Zemler at Werk 2 this Friday evening. The two musicians have been running the CEL project together for several years. To find out more, our author Philipp Mantze went in search of clues.

Lifelong learning and the intention to retain curiosity and the desire to discover even after one's 20s - this is usually more of a pipe dream. Soon routine sets in, it's time to manage and if things go well, laurels can be won. It seems to be different with Felix Kubin. Who is this tireless life artist? If you take the naïve route of online research, the question of who Felix Kubin is not soon takes center stage. At least there is no shortage of sometimes more, sometimes less flattering labels.

In order to get a picture unshadowed by terms, we meet up for a chat. However, a few hard facts emerge from the jungle of superlatives: born in Hamburg-Bergedorf in 1969, he grew up in hectic circumstances: A different radio station was on in every room and there was a lot of shouting. Even as a child, he had his own copy of the now legendary Korg MS-20 analog synthesizer.

The discovery of bands like Der Plan or Palais Schaumburg was a real awakening. They came from that brief period in German music history in which it was suddenly cool to sing German lyrics to experimental pop, and in which the so-called Neue Deutsche Welle (New German Wave) epidemically swept the entire Federal Republic. The feverish wave of enthusiasm soon died down again, but for Felix Kubin it remained a fixed star in the musical universe - at least its more interesting products. With his youth band Die Egozentrischen 2, he picked up where his role models left off. In 1990, the electro-noise duo Klangkrieg with Tim Buhre was added. Since then, it has been difficult to keep track of Felix Kubin's busy projects. 

His voice on the phone sounds soft, almost youthful. His coastal dialect quickly reveals his origins. If you look at performances and photos of the artistic figure Felix Kubin, you might expect a certain affective self-stylization: but not at all. In keeping with this year's festival motto, he takes his time and begins to talk - brimming with knowledge and experience.

The history of CEL goes back to the early 2000s, when Kubin worked with the Polish band Mitch & Mitch. Zemler and Kubin finally met through Lado ABC label ownerMacio Moretti and percussionist Milosz Pekala - both veterans of the Polish so-called Yass scene.

To the listener, he raves about the music scene in Warsaw and Gdansk at the time. There he met many classically trained musicians with a preference for minimal music à la Steve Reich and Terry Riley, but who were also not afraid of influences from jazz, folk, electronic or punk and rock. Hubert Zemler also comes from the same scene. Their first major joint project is the NDR commissioned work "Takt der Arbeit", a soundtrack to archived training and functional films for May Day.

The name CEL comes from Polish and can be translated as "goal" or "purpose", but is also a loan word from German. Anyone who suspects a statement on German-Polish friendship will find it in Felix Kubin's radio play "Territerrortorium" - an art form that can hardly be overestimated. But there is also a musical vision behind the project: the hypnotic, motoric drumming so cultivated by NEU!and Kraftwerk drummer Klaus Dinger is taken up by Zemler in his playing and thrown into the ring with Kubin's programmed electronic sequences. In the maelstrom of repetitive patterns, as we know them from minimal music, the music is reduced to a quintessence.

But why is a drum machine not enough, why do we need a percussionist in the flesh? Despite his infatuation with electronic machines, which is evident not least in his own inventions - such as the Mechatronikon used on the album - the acoustic and visual live aspect is irreplaceable for Kubin.

Always meandering at the interface between science and the visual arts, Felix Kubin's life is a never-ending preoccupation with the unknown, the as yet undiscovered, but also the hitherto criminally ignored. At its core, it always remains an experiment, an approach to something. A never-ending project that we enjoy watching.

TEXT: PHILIPP MANTZE