Bio Claus Bockstandt
Foto: Claus Bockstandt at Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg
Claus Bockstandt was born in Ratingen in 1966. After 7 years of piano and 2 years of drums training, he turned to electronically generated music in the early 1980s and bought a Casio keyboard from his first training educational earnings in 1983.
Over the years he expanded his musical equipment with two synthesizers, an echo effects device, a 4-track mixer and a 4-track cassette recorder.
The synthesizers enabled him to create his own sounds for the first time. Inspired by this, Claus Bockstandt composed about 100 instrumental songs. Additionally he dreamed of becoming a part of the WDR1 radio show „Schwingungen” which he regularly listened to on Thursdays. This radio show “Schwingungen” was an institution in Germany and gave the electronic music the platform it deserved.
It was through this radio show that Claus Bockstandt met the musician Ron Boots, who enabled him to participate in the electronic sampler “Land, Sea and Sky” in 1991.
In 1992 Claus Bockstandt released his first own album “Voyages”, which Claus named best newcomer in electronic music in the „Schwingungen-contest 1992“ , which took place every year.
The title “Romantic Dreams”, which he had written for his wife, reached 10th place in the category “Best Title of the Year” in the same contest.
In 1994 studio musicians completed Claus Bockstandt second album “Lumania”, which was produced by his friend Guido Negraszus in Sydney.
As his full-time career became more and more challenging, the balance between his profession and music became increasingly difficult, with the effect that between the years 1995 and 2021 he was no longer able to give the necessary time to the further develop of his musical career.
2022 will be a special one of his biography as it is an anniversary year: 30 years after the release of “Voyages” Claus Bockstandt will publish his third album “Duel & Other Stories” as Limited Edition (he probably didn’t want to wait as long as ABBA did …) and starts a full-time music career.
In his new album, each song tells an episode from the life of a young, self-confident cowboy at the time of the Wild West.
A characteristic of our time is that music is increasingly streamed. The streaming often also enables special attention to the song cover pictures which are displayed in many playback devices. If the tracks in the MP3 format from “Duel & Other Stories” are streamed or purchased individually by download, each track contains the individual cover picture, which also visually describes the inspiration associated with the song.
In the new CD (Limited Edition), all cover pictures are printed in the booklet.
All pictures were drawn by Anna Baumgartner.
Discover the stories of the cowboy.
Claus Bockstandt himself likes to listen to melodic instrumental music produced electronically or orchestrally. His idols in the music industry are, a.o. Jean Michael Jarre, Alan Parsons, Yello, Hans Zimmer and Ennio Morricone. All of these will certainly have influenced his musical style.
Ratingen, December 2021