Ceeys

The brothers Sebastian and Daniel Selke or Brueder Selke, mostly known as CEEYS are East German composers and poly-instrumentalist recording artists and performers based in Potsdam, nearby Berlin. While mainly connected to the fields of contemporary classical and ambient music, their works balance these genres. BS perform an idiosyncratic style that is characterised by intimate and playful improvisations and a rather reduced approach to contemporary composition. By exploiting their knowledge of songwriting, textures and repetitive patterns, they create an experimental but accessible minimalism between the avant-garde and pop that incorporates elements of jazz, ambient and classical chamber music. Indebted to their childhood environments, their music is as much a product of their childhood landscapes, as it is the modern world in which they live. Their award-winning work is provoked by their urge to explore recollections of their youth, both before and after the fall of the Communist regime, and to apply those lessons and influences to contemporary music. Their full-length debut album “The Grunewald Church Session”, was released in 2016 via 1631 Recordings and has been named as one of the best of the recent batch of piano based works by Richard Allen and A Closer Listen. The album trilogy made from “Concrete Fields” in 2017 on 1631 Recordings , “Wænde” in 2018 and “Hiddensee” in 2019 both on Neue Meister followed along with participations on 7K!, Oscarson, Lady Blunt Recordings and the Thesis Project in 2020. As CEEYS and together with Peter Broderick and Daniel O`Sullivan known as Constant Presence they released a record that saw both duos explore the Zen teachings of Shunryu Suzuki (1905-1971), — “Nothing Special” — clocking in at 11-minutes. The bespoke laser-cut 10” with intricate artwork for the disc and sleeve was intended to coincide with the performance of CONSTANT PRESENCE at their very own Q3AMBIENTFEST 2020. Since 2017, Brueder Selke also run Q3Ambientfest, a boutique music happening the duo organize yearly, seeing them collaborate with some of their favourite artists from across the globe. Mary Anne Hobbs saw them premiere tracks from their albums and named it as “...an extraordinary piece of music.“ Their work have been presented in festivals and venues across such as Reeperbahn, Fusion, Berghain, Funkhaus, and many more. In October 2020 they released “Hausmusik” which saw John Lewis describe it as “...metronomic, Nyman-ish miniatures that sound as if they’ve been plotted on graph paper; tracks like Reunion see them jabber rhythmically, with Sebastian playing pizzicato; elsewhere they explore texture – creaking strings, bashed wood, triple stopping – over minimal one-chord drones with a horror-movie intensity.“ The Guardian writes.