About Opus Abscondi

Opus Abscondi is Art Abscon's webshop and label. And Art Abscon, that's me, Michael. This website has been existing for more thatn ten years. Back then, I set it up with the help of my then-girlfriend because - frustrated with my experiences with various music labels - I wanted to have a place to publish and distribute ART ABSCONs' music in a way that would ease my urge to kill other label owners. It wasn't easy, though; being a full-time translator, passionate artist, ambitious music producer, dilettante label owner and inefficient internet retailer at once is actually a job for five people. And every once in a while, I have a life to live.

Nonetheless, Opus Abscondi was always very important to me. Apart from seeing it as a vehicle to offer my own music (ART ABSCONs, TELLBACH, EINSCHORNSTEINSIEDLUNG), I am very fond of the idea of presenting and sometimes releasing music by artists I admire and who are often good friends of mine through this webshop, thus showing who I consider my family in aesthetic terms. This family includes my dear friend MISTY BYWATER from England, whose debut album Lullaby Waterfall I produced in my kitchen in Duisburg in the Ruhr area and whose next album I will produce in my new proper studio in Waldenburg, Saxony, in early 2024. This family includes KINIT HER from Wisconsin, whose music I have been admiring since the early days of ART ABSCONs and whose album Fire Returns To Heaven was released via Opus Abscondi.

This family includes AELDABORN, with whom I have more in common than just following their path from the Ruhr to Saxony: I mixed, mastered and released their last album, Sun of Melancholy, and look forward to further artistic collaborations. This family includes CROOKED MOUTH from Canada and Lithuania, to whose album Between the Fool and the Magician I contributed and with whom I performed on stage in Vilnius, in Gotha and in Heidelberg. This family includes DER ARBEITER whom I have the pleasure of supporting live on stage. This family includes LEGER DES HEILS, whose album Sonnenflammen I mixed, sound-designed and mastered in 2022. This family includes KAELTE, whose album Aus tiefen Höhlen I produced, mixed and mastered in 2023. This family includes NEBELREICH PROJEKT, whose next release I will produce in November 2023. And this family has included, for countless lifetimes, STEIN, whose forthcoming release I will produce in Studio Absconditus in December 2023.

Since I moved to Waldenburg in Saxony in early 2023, I have, for the first time in my life, everything I need in one place: my job, my art, my love, my studio, the stocks for Opus Abscondi and, close at hand, my good friends and many of my aesthetic family members. All this gives me the strength and confidence to revive Opus Abscondi in a new guise after the long break, while continuing my work with ART ABSCONs.