Spot on – tibslc – frohfroh – electronic music from leipzig

Ambient from Leipzig is a bit of a rarity. That makes it all the nicer to get to know producer and live act tibslc and gain an insight into her world of sound. Her new album “Silver Visions” is characterized by previously undiscovered facets.

tibslc – pronounced [ˈti ˈaɪˈbiˈɛsˈɛlˈsi]

We look out over the small swampy park on Wurzener Strasse and sit on a park bench. That's another thing park benches are for, to sit and talk about music. I'm happy to be able to get to know Iona, who produces and performs under the name tibslc. I've been following her music on Soundcloud for a while now. I've rarely heard such beautiful, deep, wide, close and detailed sounds. I'm interested in the person behind this sound.

“Producing,” says Iona, “is something I've always done.” It started with a 4-track recorder, a guitar, a keyboard and her voice. Since then, her sound and her devices have changed. What has remained the same is the role that making music plays for her: “I've always been able to lose myself in this process and I've taken refuge in it,” she describes.

It becomes very clear in our conversation that music is a place of refuge for Iona. Her sound aesthetic is characterized by her modesty and a shift between large and small spaces, which she creates very carefully. Beneath this lie many small sounds that have been waiting for us under a blanket of clouds. But Iona also likes to break this caution in her music with noise cuts, drones and dystopian digital noises.

It is particularly important to her to portray this contrast and the tension that results from it. Experimental and ambient with an art-pop vibe – that is what she believes her music is all about. But that doesn't mean that other people will hear it that way. “Everyone can decide for themselves [was jede:r raushört]“, she says firmly.

Music is very for the people I am with

Many artists have idols, great role models who have shaped their sound over time. Iona says that her immediate environment, and the feedback from it, is and was much more important in finding her sound than any particular artist would have been. For her, influences come from the exchange with others at that particular time.

“Music is so much about the people I'm with, the people I surround myself with – and that's what influences me the most,” she says. Another important influence, as it is for many other producers, is Soundcloud. The platform is especially important for small music scenes to discover other less well-known artists. Soundcloud has been with Iona from the very beginning and has helped her to discover niche music and get inspired. Iona talks about the joy of spending nights on Soundcloud and getting lost in it.

Return of sound worlds as equalization of fast-paced life

Finding your own sound in our fast-moving world is not that easy. Iona's approach to her sonic self-discovery lies in the preservation, deconstruction and associated further development of a certain sound aesthetic.

“We move in a world where many things are constantly coming back slightly changed, which of course also applies to music.” In recent years, she has developed her own approach to dealing with music based on this idea. While some artists are always looking for that one new, special sound, Iona has been accompanied by her sounds for a long time. She describes how some sounds and sound fragments remain lying around and can be rediscovered. And how a meaning can be found in them that she might not have been able to find at another time.

This creates textures that Iona keeps with her for a longer period of time and that also recur in her music. She finds it important to take these with her and to let them become part of her and her sound. For her, it is a kind of affection and the will to really get to know the sound itself or different sounds.
and to keep discovering new things in them. A bit like having a favorite item of clothing that you wear a lot, combine in new ways, put aside and then after a while learn to love again.

This deconstruction and affection are reflected in the use of granular synthesis in production. It is a hallmark of Iona's sound: “It's a digital synthesizer,” explains Iona, “you granulate, divide audio into points. It's similar to sampling, only different because you pick out lots of different points from the audio files. You work more with a cloud of sound points, depending on how the granulator is set.” Granular synthesis creates a continuous sound from these individual points. This makes it possible to continually rediscover a sound texture and add new layers.

Silver Visions

Last year, Iona started her new album project “Silver Visions”, which was released on July 12, 2024. It is the first album with so much singing, but like other EPs, albums and tracks by tibslc, it is characterized by a lot of careful movement. With her sounds, Iona creates spaces of different sizes that merge with her voice. She herself calls it “skywork”.

“Here I found my way back to my voice,” she describes. Iona says that it was a long, important process of self-discovery for her to find out where she “feels right” with her voice in her music. In doing so, she also deals with the vulnerability that comes with showing your own voice. Her voice has definitely found the right place in this album. Delicate, gentle, a little majestic, dramatic and floating at the same time, you are carried through the 36 minutes of the album.

tibslc online entdecken: Instagram // Soundcloud // Bandcamp

__Photos

At this point, a big thank you to Iona Dutz. She met with Tibscl for a photo session in the spring. And once again, incredibly good artist photos were created.