There’s nothing on sale here.
Hello,
And thank you for visiting this page!
My name is Stephan and I’ve been making music for over 30 years.
Since 2020, I have been working under the name ‘Schall und Stille’ (Sound and Silence) and have released two albums and two EPs under this name.
I have just finished my third album and I don’t want you to buy it and I’m not giving it away either.
Actually, it’s not available.
Not on Spotify, not on Apple, not on Google, not on Bandcamp. Not as a YouTube video forcing you to endure forty-three ad breaks, and not exclusively on this page, but only if you register, follow me on Fashbook, disable your ad blocker, allow tracking from my 98192 trusted advertising partners, and give me and the immigration authorities access to your browser history.
It’s simply not available online. At all.
Nevertheless, you have a good chance of being among the select few people – I estimate there will ultimately be around 8-12, maybe even fewer – who will get to hear “Strategies Against Algorithms” (which is the title of my new album).
And I would be very happy if it happens, because I believe it will be something very special for these people and for me.
And actually, it’s really quite simple.
To get this album from me (on a nice wooden USB flash drive with custom engraving plus a beautiful booklet and a personal dedication), you only have to do one thing:
You need to do something creative… and give it to me.
Which can be anything.
A poem, a picture, a recipe, a song, a few words on paper, a photograph… There are no limits to your imagination; there’s only one thing I don’t want: anything generated with “AI”, or something you stole (which, by the way, is the same thing).
I won’t judge or evaluate what I get from you. It’s not a competition. Anything creative and original is fine with me – because this world needs people who hold on to their creativity now more than ever.
Of course, I don’t expect you to go to this trouble for something completely unknown (although you are certainly welcome to do so, as it is sure to be very exciting).
But someone clever once said that writing about music is like dancing about architecture, and I think they were right. So I won’t say much about it, except that it’s both my most personal and my most political album to date. It’s more raw and electronic and much less polished than my usual work. For the first time in my career as a recording artist, I played all the instruments myself and also took on the lead vocals. I see it as a loose collection of protest songs about the dark times we are currently sliding into at full speed because our society is simply becoming more and more immature (or being made so). But that’s just a side note.
If you’d like to get a rough idea of what you’re getting into, here’s a short video that briefly introduces four tracks from the album, hopefully giving you a general idea of where the journey is headed:
So how does this actually work?
Like I said, very, very simple.
Create something and send it to me by May 31, 2026. If it’s something that can be sent by mail, please send it to my address:
Stephan Kleinert
Unter-Erler Straße 1
53547 Kasbach-Ohlenberg
Germany
If it’s something that can be sent digitally (like a poem or a photograph), that’s fine too. The email address for that is strategies@schallundstille.de
I also welcome visitors. If you would like to bring your creative work to me in person, simply contact strategies@schallundstille.de and we will arrange a meeting date, also by May 31, 2026 .
So as soon as I have received something from you in one way or another, you will then receive my album from me in return – as already mentioned, on a wooden flash drive, including a nice booklet with the lyrics and a personal dedication.
Well, and that’s basically it.
I deliberately kept this text short because attention spans on the internet are getting shorter and shorter; many people no longer even know how written word works, let alone that you can create it all by yourself, completely without the use of Large Language Models.
Nevertheless – for those who want to know more and are not averse to the prospect of indulging a little more in the good old written word (plus one or two pictures), here is some additional material:
I’m really looking forward to exchanging something creative with you.
See you later
Stephan