This is why we can have nice things

December 28, 2019 5:37 AM

Meet Marten Berger, a young sound engineer who has been driving his rolling recording studio around Europe for 2 years. He's covered 40,000 km and 25 countries, and he's recording the best street musicians he can find.

What probably started out as a hazy dream with no defined goal has gotten better and better, and It doesn't seem to be stopping, the videos just keep coming.

He has even put out a CD, which has been very well received. You can get it at his site.

posted by Cobalt (11 comments total)

Here's an interview with Berger that aired on a podcast in 2018.

Interesting project. Thanks for posting.
posted by eirias at 6:45 AM on December 28, 2019

Since this was my first question about this project...

From the press kit.

50% CHARITY
"Sounds Like Van Spirit" has always been a completely independent one-man-operation, and my goal was to always help artists reach a bigger audience. Unfortunately, I don't have the means to take over the royalty administration for over 50 musicians on my own. Especially since some of them don't even have a bank account and with others, most of the times, I communicated with improvised sign language. This is why I agreed, with every participating artist, that 50% of all profit from all album sales will support a charity that commits itself to making the world a better place through music and musical education. And I believe I have found the most suitable partner for this, "musicians without borders".
posted by MrBobaFett at 7:20 AM on December 28, 2019 [4 favorites]

love it, and am quickly reminded of how Damo Suzuki joined the band known as Can. Simply put, they'd recently lost their previous singer and were sitting at a sidewalk cafe in Munich wondering what to do about it ... and suddenly there was this hippie busker at the street corner being amazing.

He joined them onstage that night, stuck around for about four years, and then left more or less as casually as he came.
posted by philip-random at 8:26 AM on December 28, 2019 [4 favorites]

This was great. There are some great talents in there. I want to hear more from a bunch of those musicians.
posted by WalkerWestridge at 11:19 AM on December 28, 2019

I caved in and bought the digital album a couple of hours ago. It's really good.
posted by Cobalt at 1:03 PM on December 28, 2019

Stumbled on this a couple of weeks ago, really amazing concept and really fantastic work. He’s definitely found some gems. (His website wouldn’t let me order the documentary at the time, this reminds me to check and see if it’s fixed!)
posted by LooseFilter at 1:40 PM on December 28, 2019

This is wonderful, the whole thing!
posted by Chitownfats at 2:41 PM on December 28, 2019

I fucking love street musicians. The oldest, purest, and greatest of musical performances. If you pass one of these people and do not toss something in the pot you fail humanity.
posted by charlesminus at 5:24 PM on December 28, 2019 [2 favorites]

Randomly browsing his youtube channel. Take eight minutes of your time for this.
posted by _dario at 8:06 PM on December 28, 2019 [3 favorites]

I stumbled across him earlier this year - he set up his drums on a street corner in a quiet SF neighborhood and was clearly having a great time.
posted by PhineasGage at 11:56 AM on December 29, 2019

This is great. I'm having so much fun listening to the YouTube channel!
posted by capricorn at 12:55 PM on December 29, 2019