Telva And Gabriel Strobel Explore Active Listening Through Oceanic And Interdimensional Stories

How did you get in touch with Emme and Atmosphères?

Gabriel Strobel: Emme and I go way back, almost a decade now, since our music school days. We clicked right away and have been close friends and collaborators ever since, cheering each other on through all the ups and downs of life as friends, artists, and event makers. Between us, we've worn many hats across Berlin's venue circuit.

I joined in from the very first event, helping all around, and after a few editions I was deep in it, handling design, photography, and artworks. When Emme asked me to come on as art director for Atmosphères in this pivotal moment to launch the label, it felt like an honor and an obvious next step at the same time.

Honestly, I could see it becoming a label pretty early on. It just had that kind of energy, the potential was clear. And now, two years in, here we are with our first release on vinyl.

Telva: I met Emme the first time I landed in Berlin, on a warm afternoon, sitting on the grass at Funkhaus. She and a couple of dear friends were the first people I encountered in the city.

Years later, we crossed paths again and she invited me to play the first Atmosphères, which was lovely. One day I showed her a few tracks I had sitting in an old folder, and she asked if I was down to press Ocean Kiss. When I heard the rest of the composition, I loved it. Music did it all.

What does active listening mean to you and how do you practise it?

Telva: For me, active listening is a form of respect. It means being willing to understand what lies beneath the music we hear.

If music isn’t experienced actively, it loses its meaning. This has always been the way I listen; I can’t really conceive of any other approach.

Gabriel Strobel: For me, active listening is really about being present, intentionally tuning into music and your surroundings with an openness to whatever comes through. Letting yourself focus, or get lost in it completely, without resistance.

And it doesn't have to be a solitary thing either. That's actually what I find so beautiful about it. It sparks reflections, new thoughts, conversations. As a music maker, it's something I do constantly.

Sound genuinely fascinates me. I love music and organized sound, but I find just as much inspiration in the chaos of everyday noise, all those accidental, mundane sounds that nobody planned.

Describe the creative process for your contribution to the compilation, please.

Gabriel Strobel: I had the pleasure of creating the artwork for this one. The goal was to capture that introspective, otherworldly feeling of the record, bringing a sense of transmutality through the blending of textures.

I chose the blue poppy flower pretty intuitively, while we were aligning on intentions as a team. The image of the flower was very clear in my mind while we spoke, not like it is in the artwork but symbolically, and the more I looked into it, the more it felt like the perfect choice. It carries this symbolism of spiritual awakening, higher consciousness, the pursuit of knowledge. Everything we were reaching for.

The idea was for it to feel like an object with power, like a magical relic or a gateway into something beyond, an interdimensional portal you could hold in your hands.

Telva: “Ocean Kiss” is an emulation of a fantasy world, a story drifting between rhythm and atmosphere, just like the ocean.



Each element plays a specific role, with main pad I recorded on my Korg acting as the lead character, traveling through the scene and shaping the emotional intensity of the landscape, woven together with the dirty machine noise that melts into a sea-like ambience.

The journey begins with field recordings and the fascinating sound of horses’ hooves, panned across the stereo spectrum, guiding the listener toward waves, which I recreated using a mix of hand-brushed textures and dubbed recordings, to evoke fluid motion.

Through an interpretation of flamenco and African djembe, at the end the rhythm turns percussive, becoming rounded and slightly muted. Creating a king of “glitch” texture shaped by old recordings and the sound of my own hands drumming on my studio´s wooden table.

The piece concludes in a state of soft equilibrium, retuning us to the shore.