Only With You is an electronic music duo formed in Berlin in May 2021 by Eliad Wagner and Korhan Erel, both highly experienced performers in the field of experimental electronic music. We come together into this collaborative project in exploration of two core interests: a) the idea that technology is a place where meaning can be made and explored (rather than only a tool to express meaning) and b) an interest in observing and deconstructing various technologies and techniques, bound within famous cultural contexts, through our current state of mind, ideas, personal histories and intuition. We do this by interacting with the technologies in the process of performance and composition.
We see this technological observation/deconstruction as opening up to critical reconsideration of our (artists as well as audiences) understanding of certain cultures, vocabularies and tools. We look at the connections between these cultures/vocabularies/tools seeking to uncover what these can mean in a current mindset (philosophically, technically or even politically).
We have chosen technologies and techniques that are typical/semiotic of different time periods, cultural charges, imagined worlds, ideas or practices:
Our chosen technologies: digital FM synthesis, physical touch controllers, feedback/cybernetic circuitry, analogue modular synthesis, sequencers, delay lines, ring modulators and mixers.
Our chosen techniques: improvisation, spatiality, composition, dubbing, unique approach to manual play (not to be taken for granted within the context of electronic music where much relies on automation), programming.
With this collection of tools and methods we are set up to explore diverse cultural niches from the oddities of early sci-fi music, contemporary music, and free improvisation to dub and dancefloor styles.
We have been rehearsing regularly since May 2021 and will have our first live appearance as a duo at P7 Gallery in Berlin on November 27, with more concerts to follow in 2023.
Korhan Erel 