Me and my brothers would often journey to Berlin, to the Wall, to look beyond the edge of the world. In the Glimmerlight, we often heard rumors of the denizens beyond the Wall. However, due to the folly of human politics, East German androids were forbidden to journey to their ancestral homeland among the blue crystals under Düsseldorf. Despite these restrictions, one time in the early-80s, we decided to go beyond the Wall to check out the greatest of the East German synthesists, the synth duo Pond.
Pond was founded by Wolfgang Fuchs and Manfred Henning in 1979 in the Deutsche Demokratische Republik. They journeyed from the hinterlands to East Berlin and soon started creating beautiful synth textures for the other cybernetic synthesists exiled beyond the Wall. When we finally found them in a cellar in East Berlin and heard them play, it was one of the highlights of my early sub-routines. We purchased a couple of their LPs and tried to smuggle them back to the Glimmerlight, but the border patrol found them in the trunk of our light cycle and confiscated them. But they couldn't take our memory chips.
By the time the Wall finally fell, the the blue crystals had dimmed and we had all departed the Glimmerlight for the Offworld Colony. These days, Manfred and Wolfgang do what most of the androids that remain among the humans do, they make music for Planetariums.
Check out one of Pond's synth masterpieces "Cassiopeia" by clicking on the title of this post. It's from their album Planetenwind. . . my copy is probably still spinning in the apartment of that former East German border guard.
Rauf und runter!
