Thom. ... Drums, Percussions, Vocals


Welcome, my good old friends – Welcome you NEW friends
... on board the independence!

Thousand drumsticks, one hundred skins and approximately 20 cymbels later, I celebrate the coming out of our CD with me drummers jubilee. My passion is naturally the "70´s" Rock ´n Jazz. But it was never really important to me, what kind of music I happend to be making. Whether Solo-Live-Performance in Techno-Genre or Popmusic. Whether with my Digi-DTX Drum or my old "soundtechnically grown on my heart" Perl Master Drums, and in a emergency a salad-bowl and a couple of wooden spoons – "back to the roots" so to say!

As I startet back then with Ace, to develope a music, that had to have a professional quality of sound but yet, and what is for me most important, could question any other musical basis, much work lay ahead. A sort of "walk on razors edge..." always courageous, progressive, curious, challenging, pulsating but always in connection with all that music-history can give – and that without danger of there being another similar sounding band as ours anywhere else in the universe.

And I Think We Have Achived That!
Well, 25 years after "my first hit...", many band-projects and some music-productions later
and shortly after the completion of our production, I can only say: "I have become a bit more FREE!". More free from many conventions, rules, hard-set opinions – but also from certain wishful thinking and daydreams! I look back on an up to now changeable life. I will now explain certain excerpts from my half-biographical notes:

Always Searching
... musically and generally – often in "free fall" intentionally – or not – the years brought some conflicts with myself with them. Sometimes, and before someone else could do it I knocked myself out. Much had to be experienced and all to often "I WAS LIVED"! My life, well... was not so different of many others. Mostly ruled by everday worries I reacted and acted from one ideology to the next.

... until I realised, that, as a musical collegue used to say, all "?isum", have their weak-point exactly there where they see their bases. Namely in the questional individuality.

Questions About Questions – AND NO ANSWERS!
At the b
eginning with Sokrates, about Platos Idealism, up until Nietzsches nihilistic theory. Many Philosophists reached into my dreams and influenced my spiritual view of the world. Yet all this teachers left out the most important things in their theories. Fascinated by Bhagwan Shree Rajneeshs (better known as Osho) pragmatic teachings, the Tibetish Masters or the Shamanitish Medicine-Weel – in all I could feel a piece of truth. Inspired by Hermann Hesses "Siddhartha", I was gripped for a long time by Buddhism. Through Erich Fromms "The Art Of Love", which was for a long time a reference work, I could beginn to understand, why much, that seems so simple and what everyone longs, does not carry as design. Many free spirits, great authors, world religions and those who would become such, came and went. No one could give me an answer to my questions, WHY they where there and WHERE they came fromthis deep inner desire for freedom and truth! All my attempts to get explanations shattered. Therefore remained nothing for me, except to surpress everything. But this part in me didn´t allow itself to be ignored. The opposite!!! I realized increasingly that it grew and grew. The pain, the ignorance and confusion remained – this feeling, this wish wanted to be taken seriously!

The Search For Your Own Identity
... because that´s in the nature of the progress, if then some things, that we decide, meet with no understanding or rejection from others. But lets start with the beginning. Finding your own freedom, means searching for your own identity first: Who am I, where do I come from and where do I want to go.

... and all that is really very difficult. Where do I really want to go??? Yes – wanting this. Not wanting to let the attempt fall down, on the complex philosophical subject, I then got the tip to simply ask myself the question: "Where do I not want to be?!" AND I had to give myself "the allowance" to be allowed to find it! All attempts to come close to a future full of hope mostly fail on the "missing-allowence-entry-card" of the immediate surroundings.

The Doers – Quit Bono?
... to make the chaos perfect and to smoothen every individual thought in the making, "social dogmatic" couples with a multiculti-median "nothing is impossible?"! All this happens in a time-layer in which the emotional root (base) experiences a renaissance, but no more than a cry for help and with that, we see a reaction of different circumstances. This aimless searching is often shamelessly used "BY THE DOERS"! So, who wants that? Who is that good for? With other words... Quit Bono? Seemingly remote controlled individuals can only develope from an intensionaly and arbitrary formed society. Only from intelligent ignorants or from people who aren´t in the position to understand more complex contexts, will these development be classed as totally undangerous. Yet – Who are "the Doers"?

What Kind Of Freedom Makes Sense – Freedom As A Fashionable Movement
Does everybody really understand somethings different under the word "freedom"? Is independence not a need for existence, that in the meantime – and for a long time no longer only a tendence – is marketed as a luxurious item? In one aspect the wish for true independence stand apart: In the need to take your innermost movements, values and feelings seriously and to be taken seriously by others.

In my first occupation as a nursing orderly I had much opportunity over the years, meet many people of any age in the most difficult times of life. But especially impressing were the situations in which this people had seemingly "no power" over the developement of their illness. With every day upon witch the rage about "God and the World" increased, I felt their fear, desperation and hopelessness at the same time.

Your Mind Is General But Your Heart Is King
... and everything that then seems to move or stand still, mostly gets quite coincidentally a sense – or we arrange things for ourselves, how we think or decide, we find the feelings in ourselves. But the thought mostly prevents us from feeling and viceversa. Therefore what do we do? What is the right way?


I wish you LOVE – BELIEVE – HOPE – AND PERSEVERANCE

See you soon. Thom.

thom@ephra-world.com

Updated September 2008