Slowdown Music

SLOWDOWN MUSIC ( http://www.slowdown-music.de/ ) is a continuous studio project, established in 1992 and pursuied by Constantin Gillies and Martin Suttrop, both producers and arrangers.

Constantin Gillies, born in Bonn, Germany in 1970, played the violin in his adolescence but soon changed the pitch when he received his first bass guitar. Later, he introduced himself to the piano and the acoustic guitar and started songwriting for his own band. He became familiar with modern production techniques after buying his first sampler (Roland MKS-100), which was initially intended to be merely an intermediate replacement for the drummer's vacant position, but later turned out to be a key instrument for creating music and sounds.

Martin Suttrop, born in Cologne, Germany in 1968, started as the drummer of a local jazz band to which he belonged for about eight years. During this time he also played tympani and percussion with the symphonic orchestra of the local music college and attended classical piano lessons. After shifting to jazz piano and improvisation he limited his classical activities and devoted himself to arranging and songwriting. He played keyboards with a local jazz-rock band and established a small recording studio. His technical skills developed later during his studies of media engineering.

Gillies and Suttrop, both dissatisfied with the ineffective music creation process within their respective bands, met at a recording session near Bonn and came up with the idea to start off SLOWDOWN MUSIC as their own small music production business, with supporting vocalists and musicians being invited only on a song-by-song basis.

Their first recordings were rough acid jazz songs and mixes, among them remixes for EMI and some pre-production work. The idea to move on to "smoother" territory was triggered by Walter Salles jr.'s inspiring documentary "Bossa Nova: Music & Reminiscences" which was aired on TV in 1994. Gillies and Suttrop recorded their first set of bossa nova songs from 1994 through 1997, together with Portuguese vocalist Maria Theresa Ullrich ("Gigi")  (http://www.gem-music.de/mt_ullrich/ ) and others.

Today, they work on several new musical concepts in the bossa nova and smooth jazz field which will be presented to the public, soon.