Hello everyone, it’s your host Oliver from DULAXI, and today I’m delighted to be joined by Markus Mehr, an experimental musician and composer from Augsburg, Germany. Working across electronic, avant-garde, leftfield, soundscape and experimental music, Markus has developed a distinctive practice centred on digital editing, field recordings and the transformation of overlooked sonic events into new forms of sound. Today, we are discussing his latest single, “Day 15,” released on September 4, 2026, and the first release from his forthcoming WATERSHED EP.
Before we begin our conversation with Markus Mehr, here’s what you need to know about today’s featured project.
About Markus Mehr
Markus Mehr’s approach to experimental music begins with listening. Born in Augsburg, Bavaria, Markus is a musician and composer whose work focuses strongly on digital editing and the rearrangement of field recordings and found sounds. Rather than treating sound simply as something that accompanies a musical composition, he searches for events and details that might initially go unnoticed, using digital processes to make them audible in new ways and reshape them into what he describes as new “sound plastics.” His path into this world developed after moving away from the familiar structures of rock and pop and discovering the wider possibilities offered by electronic and avant-garde music.
That sense of freedom is central to understanding “Day 15,” the opening release from WATERSHED. The project emerged from a very different kind of listening experience, one shaped by the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the overwhelming reality of witnessing war unfold from a distance. For the WATERSHED EP, Markus worked with recordings made available online during the early days of the invasion, specifically material connected to the 7th, 15th and 17th days following Russia’s attack. “Day 15” focuses on the fifteenth day and transforms those found recordings into an experimental sound work that considers fear, helplessness, uncertainty, freedom, democracy and the wider historical consequences of the conflict.
The material was not drawn from a conventional recording session. Markus encountered audio from surveillance cameras and videos available online, including sounds connected to events taking place in Kyiv. Among the central sounds within “Day 15” are sirens warning of airstrikes on the Maidan. From his studio approximately 1,800 kilometres away, Markus watched events unfold and experienced the profound emotional conflict of witnessing a war from the safety of his own surroundings. The distance did not make the experience emotionally distant. Instead, feelings of shame, powerlessness, fear, anger and relief became part of his response to what he was seeing and hearing.
His artistic response was not to create a traditional protest song or a conventional cinematic soundtrack. Instead, the recordings became the raw material for an abstract sound sculpture. Markus processed, granulated, cut and reassembled the recordings while deliberately avoiding additional instrumentation. This distinction is important to the character of “Day 15.” The sounds remain connected to their original reality, while digital manipulation allows them to reveal different textures, perspectives and emotional possibilities. Sirens retain their immediate recognisability, while other fragments are transformed into less obvious sonic forms.
The work also reflects Markus’s wider belief that listening can open doors that ordinary attention often leaves closed. In a modern environment filled with constant noise from cities, social media, television and radio, his practice involves filtering that overwhelming flow and concentrating on individual sound events. “Day 15” applies that philosophy to material connected to an extraordinary historical moment. Instead of attempting to provide a simple explanation for an event Markus himself describes as difficult to comprehend, the work remains with the uncertainty and emotional overload that surrounded it.
Having this brief introduction to today’s featured project, I’m sure both new listeners and longtime fans are interested to hear directly from Markus about the ideas, emotions and artistic decisions behind “Day 15.” So, without further ado, let’s begin today’s interview.
INTERVIEW SESSION
Oliver:
Growing up in Augsburg, Bavaria, and developing a practice centred on experimental composition, digital editing and field recordings, what were the early experiences that made you interested in listening to sounds that most people might overlook, and when did you realise that these seemingly ordinary or inaudible events could become the material for your own artistic language?
Markus Mehr:
I actually come from a rock background. At a certain point, I began to find the forms and structures in rock and pop (intro/verse/chorus/verse/chorus/solo/chorus/outro, etc.) restrictive, so I set out to explore other options. My curiosity led me to electronic music and then to the avant-garde. From then on, everything was new and exciting—and above all, free. That’s the essence of experimental music. It took a while to find my way around this playground, but I knew I’d found a new musical home. You don’t have to have grown up in Bavaria or Augsburg to go through this kind of development, though (smiley).
Oliver:
Your work is built around taking recordings from the world around us and transforming them through digital processes into what you describe as new “sound plastics.” What does listening mean to you personally, and how has your understanding of sound changed as you have moved deeper into this experimental approach?
Markus Mehr:
Listening means experiencing something. Opening yourself up to something—in my case, sound—and listening closely opens doors where there were none before. Our modern world is loud and annoying. It’s a 24-hour cacophony—whether in urban environments, on social media, TV, or the radio—our attention is constantly being demanded. Filtering out the unimportant and focusing on just one or a few things can be very healing. I do this when I scan my surroundings acoustically and process them artistically. I concentrate on individual, striking sound events, take them as inspiration, and use them to tell a new story—either through them or with them.
Oliver:
There is something particularly distinctive about working with sounds from places and situations you have not personally experienced. When you encounter a field recording from a distant environment, what determines whether you simply preserve that sound as a document or begin transforming it into something that carries a new artistic meaning?
Markus Mehr:
I work exclusively from a conceptual standpoint and only begin searching for the appropriate sounds after completing the theoretical work. In that sense, I’m usually physically present at the locations where I search for and record the sounds. For “Day 15,” things were a bit different for once, since it involves found sounds. I then sort through the recordings in the studio. I usually discard any unwanted sounds right away. But anything that seems to serve the concept is archived, carefully labeled, and prepared for later editing. Whether this then results in “artistic significance” is determined by the process that follows.
Oliver:
Day 15 is connected to the fifteenth day of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, February 2022, and emerged from your confrontation with feelings of helplessness, fear and threat during a period when the realities of war suddenly became immediate. How did those emotions affect the way you listened to the material, and what was happening internally when you decided that these sounds needed to become part of an artistic work?
Markus Mehr:
A key element of the track is the sound of sirens on the Maidan warning of airstrikes on Kyiv. The square was already deserted at that point; only a few pigeons were still flying around. It was a gray, cold, wet day in March. Using the surveillance cameras installed there, I watched the events unfold like a voyeur from my comfortably heated studio 1,800 km away. It was hard to bear. I felt shame and powerlessness; the incomprehensibility of the events was indescribable. At the same time, I also felt anger, as well as a kind of relief that I don’t have to live in this war-torn region. I think all these emotions are audible in the track. All I could do was grapple with it artistically. I know this doesn’t help the Ukrainians, especially the soldiers on the front lines.
Oliver:
Rather than responding to the invasion through a conventional song structure or lyrical narrative, you chose fragments found online and allowed the recorded sounds themselves to become the central voice of the work. What can field recordings communicate about an event like war that words or traditional musical composition sometimes cannot?
Markus Mehr:
Sirens are very intense. They tell a very threatening story. If you will, that’s the hook. And even though I’ve processed these found sounds for the track, the immediacy of the threat remains the focus. The individual images that arise in listeners’ minds may be different from the ones conveyed through the song’s lyrics. It’s perhaps an even more personal, more sensitive approach to all that horror. At the same time, though, it’s also an assessment of my own emotions. I see “Day 15,” as well as the entire “Watershed EP,” as my modest contribution to solidarity with the Ukrainian people, fully aware of my insignificant position.
Oliver:
The material used for Day 15 came from videos available on YouTube, meaning that you were working with audio captured by other people during a moment of profound historical significance. How did you approach the responsibility of taking those fragments out of their original context, editing them and placing them into a new sonic environment while preserving the reality and emotional weight contained within them?
Markus Mehr:
First of all, these are audio recordings from surveillance cameras—not private recordings—that show potential atrocities. And I don’t take them out of context. However, I view the events from a different perspective and try to trigger an emotional response in the listeners on a different level. I’m not documenting; I’m not a correspondent or even a news anchor. I am a sound artist, and in this role I try to make sense of things and take a stand. The depth and historical significance of the recordings themselves—or the events behind them—remain intact. However, if I’ve done my job well, I create alternative emotional pathways for those who are open to them. I see it as my artistic responsibility to stir people up and ask questions using the means at my disposal.
Oliver:
You describe Day 15 as “a sonic question” and a search for explanations of something that feels inexplicable. When you were working on the piece, were you looking for an answer to that question, or was the uncertainty itself something you wanted the finished work to preserve?
Markus Mehr:
The issues surrounding this war are so complex, with historical, political, and global roots and ramifications that I find almost impossible to fully grasp. But of course, one can’t help but think about them and search for explanations. The EP was born out of an emotional overload—an impulse to confront the situation and face the facts head-on.
Oliver:
WATERSHED is built from recordings made on the 7th, 15th and 17th days after the attack, creating a kind of sonic chronology of those early moments of the invasion. What did you discover by placing sounds from different days alongside one another, and how did the passage of those first days change the emotional character of the material?
Markus Mehr:
I actually found the audio tracks on the very days they were recorded and posted online. So it’s a kind of sonic reflection of the first two weeks of the invasion, when everything was still completely overwhelming. I can imagine that audio recordings from war zones generally share many similarities, so in that sense, it’s not really a decisive factor. The difference—or rather, the emotional connection to this war—stems from the fact that it’s taking place right on Europe’s doorstep. The fact that Europe is at risk of being drawn into a war is a new reality and emotional situation for people of my generation. I think this dimension is reflected in the final result.
Oliver:
Your usual process involves extensive digital editing and rearrangement, yet you have deliberately kept synthetic sounds to a minimum on this project. What made you feel that the original found sounds were powerful enough to carry the work, and how did that restraint influence the final sonic character of Day 15?
Markus Mehr:
No, the recordings have already been heavily processed, granulated, cut, and reassembled, and they certainly have a certain “synthetic character,” which is simply part of my working method. However, I have deliberately refrained from adding any additional instrumentation. My interventions are based on aesthetic considerations and lend the source material new perspectives without altering its intensity. The found sound fragments continue to speak for themselves—or from within themselves—and are not reduced to a mere soundtrack by the imposition of instrumentation.
Oliver:
Experimental electronic music can sometimes make the listener concentrate on texture, frequency, and atmosphere rather than immediately searching for a recognisable melody or narrative. How do you think about the balance between abstraction and recognisability in Day 15, particularly when the source material comes from an event that already carries such a strong real-world meaning?
Markus Mehr:
My compositions are very dynamic; they’re often emotional roller coasters that oscillate between abstract and concrete elements. In “Day 15,” sirens are a central and immediately recognizable element—an unintentional “hook,” as I said earlier. But you’re right—my works create atmospheres; they’re sound stories that you have to immerse yourself in for them to work. The narrative in “Day 15” is very ominous, and that’s exactly how it’s meant to sound. Sugarcoating things isn’t my goal.
Oliver:
The idea of making initially inaudible sonic events hearable is central to your wider compositional philosophy. When you applied that approach to material connected to the invasion of Ukraine, what kinds of details or emotional qualities emerged through the editing process that you felt were hidden inside the original recordings?
Markus Mehr:
Exactly—the search for the sound within the sound is one of my main motivations, and that’s no different for “Day 15” or the entire WATERSHED EP. When I dissect sound under a microscope, in the best-case scenario, hidden treasures come to light that can be unearthed and cultivated. For “Day 15,” I deliberately sought out and refined conciliatory, melancholic fragments to create a counterpoint to the sirens I mentioned earlier.
Oliver:
Day 15 is described as an attempt to capture a turning point not only in European history but in the history of the wider world. How conscious were you of the historical dimension while creating the piece, and did thinking about the work as an eventual document of its time change any of the creative decisions you made?
Markus Mehr:
There are situations in which one intuitively realizes that they could have epoch-making implications. Russia’s war of aggression was such an event. For the first time in eight decades, it has brought this kind of aggression to Europe’s borders once again. I would say this is a fundamental turning point in the entire history of the world. However, the “epoch-making” aspect was not the focus of the composition. It was sheer horror. Despite all the emotional turmoil, I hope that I have managed to handle the subject responsibly.
Oliver:
You have called WATERSHED a document of its time, particularly because it reflects a period when many people believed that certain aspects of modern European history had already been overcome. How does creating an auditory document differ from simply documenting an event, and what do you believe experimental music can preserve that conventional historical records might leave behind?
Markus Mehr:
I’d like to draw a distinction between art and a radio drama based on real events. Art plays no role in the trenches, but in a peaceful, modern, enlightened, democratic, vibrant, multicultural civil society, it is the lubricant that fosters cohesion universally and across all social classes. In Kyiv, theaters and cultural venues have remained open since the start of the war—even to this day. Art is indispensable for the resilience of social coexistence—an indispensable luxury, so to speak. Documenting the environment through sound is important, as is very clearly evident, for example, in the work of Bernie Krause. However, this is more of a contribution to science or to history books. But where there is art, there is peace…or vice versa. WATERSHED is a plea for peace.
Oliver:
The work also carries a personal sense of solidarity with the soldiers and people of Ukraine in their struggle for freedom and democracy. Because you were creating from a distance and through recordings made by others, how did you navigate the relationship between artistic observation, personal empathy and the lived reality of people directly experiencing the conflict?
Markus Mehr:
I hope this with the utmost humility, esteem, and respect.
Oliver:
Creating art from material associated with war inevitably raises questions about fear, suffering and the ethics of representation. What were the most emotionally or technically challenging aspects of working with these recordings, and did you encounter moments where you had to reconsider how far you should transform or manipulate the source material?
Markus Mehr:
Depicting war scenarios artistically is an extremely sensitive matter. That’s simply the nature of the subject. It must be questioned on both a rational and moral level: Who needs this, and who benefits from it? And yet, it is—my—expression of solidarity. Dealing with such traumatic events in an abstract way may serve as an outlet, a distraction, a balm for the soul—something that makes us human.
Oliver:
WATERSHED takes its title from the idea of a decisive turning point, and Day 15 sits within that larger examination of a world changing at an accelerating pace. Looking back at the work now, what has creating this project taught you about your own relationship with history, technology, sound and the unpredictable direction in which the world is moving?
Markus Mehr:
Gratitude for living in a place where I can speak my mind and move about freely, without fear or restrictions. Just as we are doing right now with this interview.
Oliver:
When listeners encounter Day 15 without knowing where the sounds originated, you are asking them to engage with the work first as an auditory experience and only then potentially as a historical document. What kind of emotional or intellectual journey would you like the listener to take while moving through the piece, and what do you hope remains with them after the sound has ended?
Markus Mehr:
I hope that “Day 15” stands on its own as a sound sculpture. I’ll leave the rest up to the listeners. I have no expectations and am delighted by whatever moves the composition.
Oliver:
As WATERSHED develops beyond Day 15 and brings together material from several defining moments in the early days of the invasion, what does this project represent within your wider evolution as a composer, and where do you see your experimental practice taking you after you have finished giving these particular moments a sonic form?
Markus Mehr:
As a civilian living in a European country, I am confronted with this war every day. As an artist, I continue to explore themes that move me and on which I can take an artistic stance.
“Markus Mehr approaches one of the most difficult subjects of our time without pretending that sound can explain what history itself struggles to comprehend. In ‘Day 15,’ listening becomes an act of attention, reflection and responsibility, turning fragments of a distant crisis into a deeply personal encounter with fear, uncertainty, memory and the enduring human desire for peace.”
~ Oliver (DULAXI Team)
EDITORIAL PERSPECTIVE
“Day 15” is a striking example of how experimental sound can create meaning without relying on conventional songwriting structures. Markus’s use of found recordings, digital manipulation and carefully preserved sonic detail gives the work a strong sense of purpose, while the tension between recognisable sirens and transformed textures keeps the listener questioning what they are hearing. More importantly, the conversation reveals an artist deeply conscious of the ethical weight of his subject. The result is not an attempt to speak for those experiencing war, but a personal artistic response to witnessing it from afar.
~ Oliver (DULAXI Team)
CLOSING
Our conversation with Markus Mehr offers a thoughtful look at the ideas and responsibilities behind “Day 15,” while also revealing the wider philosophy that shapes his experimental practice. From his early movement away from the structures of rock and pop to his fascination with overlooked sounds, Markus approaches composition as an active process of listening, questioning and transformation.
“Day 15” is part of a project that asks difficult questions without attempting to provide simple answers. Its relationship with real recordings from the early days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine gives the work a particular historical weight, while Markus’s approach allows those sounds to become an artistic reflection on fear, freedom, history, peace and the experience of witnessing events from a distance.
We would like to sincerely thank Markus for taking the time to speak with DULAXI and for sharing such thoughtful insight into his creative process, his relationship with sound and the personal considerations behind WATERSHED. We encourage readers to experience “Day 15” for themselves and to explore the wider work of an artist whose practice continues to examine the possibilities of experimental sound.
Thank you for spending time with DULAXI. This is Oliver, and we look forward to bringing you more conversations with artists, composers and musicians from around the world in our future interviews.