Jürgen Stahl. Episode 1: Height.
Where the bass becomes gravity.
There would be nothing unusual in my brother’s profession if he were welding gates in garages. But Jürgen chose a different path. His work begins where, for ordinary people, the vestibular apparatus ends.
Jürgen (X) Stahl — a man living on the edge of the impossible, between risk and mastery — is an industrial climber. Such individuals have always seemed to me to be the descendants of the builders of ancient towers — those who ascended to where people did not yet know how to live, but were already trying to leave their mark.
Life above the abyss.
High-altitude welding for Jürgen is not a specialty, but a form of communication with unknown forces. He doesn’t just connect metal structures — he builds fragile bridges between the reliability of engineering solutions and the mystery of high-altitude spaces.
The traces of injuries on his body are a living archive of routes beyond the possible. Every scar, every mark is a cartography of extreme states, where risk becomes not a threat, but a guide beyond the horizon of one’s own capabilities.
The “Seal of Hephaestus” on his neck is not just a burn. It is a mark of initiation. A trace of a pact with the very nature of risk. For him, a scar is not a wound. It is a cryptogram inscribed by fire. A mark of quality. A confirmation of a tempering unavailable to the majority. It has become his calling card, his brand — along with his undercut hairstyle.
Sometimes it seems to me that melted metal of sensations flows through Jürgen’s veins instead of blood. Every movement of Jürgen is a dance above the abyss, where the ordinary loses its meaning. In his psychology, there is something of the pioneers of forgotten lands. He does not seek danger — he listens to it. Adrenaline for him is not a hormone. It is a state of clarity that allows one to see the world without unnecessary noise.
I would call him a risky adventurer. The nickname “X” was born from the word X-trim — extreme. In Jürgen, there was always an almost metaphysical pull toward borderline states. One of Jürgen’s hobbies is ancient history and vanished civilizations. And the search for untrodden routes will later draw our band into adventures I could not even imagine then, but which would influence all of our work. But that is another story.
The Height.
One day, Jürgen invited me to take a “couple of shots for his portfolio” at a height. And at the same time, to listen to some music — though this detail of his offer went unnoticed at that moment. He explained that no one else, including colleagues and professional journalists, dared to go up with him. I, a naive “office nomad without illusions, ” accustomed to looking at the city through the safe armored glass of a skyscraper, agreed.
It was a trap. Not a trap for the body — but for the hearing.
Jürgen never risked my safety. He caught my attention, attention to the surroundings — that rare state in which a person ceases to resist the world and begins to hear it.
We ascended to the very top of the steel skeleton of a building. To where the walls end and the pure, whistling geometry of the wind begins. The people below turned into abstract points, devoid of meaning. Strapped in with five safety lines, I clung to a beam with such force that I could have left dents in the metal. My hands dug into the iron, sinking in as if it were plasticine, seeking support. And my mind screamed about danger, refusing to perceive reality.
The wind here was not a meteorological phenomenon, but a living, rational entity that pulsed between the steel structures, testing our ontological fragility. It didn’t just blow — it passed judgment, testing our ability to withstand its absolute will. Suddenly gusting, it shook not only the structure itself but also my confidence in its reliability.
And what about Jürgen? — a question I would have asked myself if I weren’t right there.
He just sat on the beam, dangling his legs into the void, sitting freely and carelessly as if it were a swing in a park. He raised his mask, and I saw his face. There was no fear on it. There was peace. The kind of peace held by those who arrived here before you — and stayed.
He took out a thermos, poured himself some tea, and with a smile offered me a snack.
— “Good view, isn’t it? There’s no air like this in the office, ” he said, taking a sip, while beneath me the very foundation of the world wavered. “Listen closely, and you will understand the beauty of this place.”
The wind fanned the feeling of an inevitable fall. A primal terror seized my entire being.
— “Why did I agree to this scam? What is there to listen to?!” I thought in a panic.
In such minutes, fear cuts off extraneous sounds, as if the world narrows to a single channel of perception, and everything superfluous — voices, thoughts, memory — tumbles over the edge, the same place the body is being pulled. And you catch only the whistle of the wind, the creak of beams, and the deafening beat of your heart, which breaks through the unnecessary noise, screaming of danger.
Taking a deep breath, I tried to calm down and concentrate, if such a state even exists in this destructive chaos. A moment later, I suddenly caught a sound that created a thrilling sensation of volume and depth. As if an unknown living creature that breathes, reacts, and echoes the surrounding world, capable of creating a whole spectrum of emotions, was nearby.
The Celestial Guitarist.
It was the sound of a bass guitar, where every strike on a string radiates low frequencies. Vibrating in the air and resonating in the head, they leave behind a unique trail. I heard a deep, rich, and powerful rhythm penetrating to the very center of the heart and mind.
— “Where is the music coming from?!” I tried to understand. “The wind! It was the wind plucking the strings of the stretched steel cables, rhythmically and confidently. It was the harmony of the storm!”
I realized that this rhythm existed long before us and will exist after. We were not listeners — we were accidental witnesses. And then I calmed down and submerged into the velvet blanket of the melody, enveloping my body and the entire space around, immersing me as if in a dream, mesmerizing and dangerous, ready to cover the listener completely. These deep sound vibrations evoked the image of a turbulent, stormy sea, where the surf rolls in, washing away sandcastles.
And then I understood: Jürgen brought me here not for effect-heavy shots and not for the height. He knew that down below, I would never hear this. That between the glass of offices and the even hum of streets, the sound would always be tamed and safe. Here, it was wild — not intended for man, not striving to be heard. The wind played not for us and not for our sake; we simply happened to be inside its instrument. And while I sat, pressed against the cold iron, I felt for the first time that music is not what we create, but what sometimes allows us to survive. Jürgen finished his tea, lowered his mask, and said nothing more. Words were superfluous here — the sound had already done its work.
Musician of the Abyss.
These waves — heavy, viscous, receding downward — suddenly and precisely matched who Jürgen had always been to me. In our band, Metallherz, he holds the weight of the entire structure while I seek the melody and Klara seeks the emotion. Not because the roles are assigned that way, but because otherwise, everything would crumble.
His bass sounds exactly as he lives. It is not just low frequencies — it is the rebar poured into the concrete of rhythm. If Hans, with his hammer, is capable of turning sound into chaos and sparks, then Jürgen’s bass binds this chaos into a single monolith, preventing it from falling apart under its own weight.
He doesn’t play notes. He creates gravity.
And sitting there, on the edge of the void, watching him calmly weld a seam over a kilometer-deep abyss, I suddenly understood: our music will not collapse as long as he holds the neck. Not because he is flawless, but because he is not afraid of the weight.
The bass guitar in his hands is not an instrument, but a conductor. Its sound reminds one of the relief of a primordial landscape, where every note is not a decoration, but a shift of tectonic plates, from which the internal supports of the listener tremble.
The “extreme excursion with Jürgen” was not in vain for me. There, almost under the sky itself, I heard the song of the steel cables for the first time — and realized that sound can be forged, not just composed.
(from the notes of Viktor Stahl)