From 1978-1980 I took part in an improvisation-trio together with Friedrich Gulda (piano, clavichord and flutes) and Ursula Anders (percussion). We had some concerts in Austria and Germany, playing radically improvised music without any arrangement. Usually we played two or three sets together and sometimes one of us played a solo between.

This recording contains two of my solos, one from the Konzerthaus Vienna and one from the Kongresshaus Salzburg, and a third one during a nice session on a housboat in Paris.

In addition I included two overdubs, which demonstrate advanced playing-techniques on the bass, developed with ears trained by electroacoustic music.
Especially the second one, 'Nebengeräusche', I still see as a milestone in playing technique and preparation on the bass as well as in recording: I played the second voice without listening to the first one, just concentrating on the same feeling.
Unlike with usual overdubs, the two voices are thus equally balanced. Nevertheless some kind of unisono-passages appear even after 20 minutes. All the colorful sounds one can hear on this track are produced mechanically, without any use of electronics or post-processing or cuts.

The title (sidenoise) refers to my studies in the late 70ies. Learning music just from the music of the past became more and more obsolete to me. Like a painter or a sculpturer has to study nature, I think, a musician and composer has to study the sound of nature too, not just music. So I tried to compose and play acoustical forms and gestures from everyday life – sounds, which are not intended to become 'music' – acoustic processes, which are produced unintentionally at all: 'side noise'.
In ETUDE IN GRAU, on Werke 3 ccr403, I tried to compose such gestures out of white noise.
This is the last music I played on the bass, in spring 1980. After that I stopped playing an instrument. Günther Rabl

Nebengeräusche also contains all the basic material for the work on EVE (Werke 5 ccr405).