Electronic Beats Magazine Issue 04/2011

N° 28 · WINTER 2011/2012

w w w. electroni cbe ats . ne t

conversations on essential issues WINTER 2011/2012

electronic beats · BRYAN FERRY · ZOLA JESUS · Carsten Nicolai · Tuxedomoon · Anika

yo u r dig i ta l d a i ly

­ lectronic E beatS

“Don’t forget: I studied art. . .”

Bryan Ferry talks to Dieter Meier

ZOLA JESUS pantha du prince brandt brauer frick aérea negrot

EDITORIAL

“One plus one is eleven” TUNE IN!

E L EC T RO N IC B E ATS RADIO APP

Hans Ulrich Obrist: Max, Electronic Beats Magazine is entirely based on documenting an oral tradition. People talk to each other, the conversations are being recorded, transcribed, edited and published.

Max Dax: I’d always say the inter-

viewer and the interviewee are both authors: they both contribute equally to the result by investing not only their time, but also their experiences and knowledge. So an interview is always the result of a collaborative effort. That’s why we put the names of both the interviewers and the interviewees in the magazine’s imprint.

HUO: Why do you focus on interviews?

MD: I’ve spent a lot of time thinking

The Electronic Beats Radio App. DJ mixes and festival live cuts, exclusively compiled for the website can now be streamed via iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. Over 150 mixes and live cuts by artists such as Modeselektor, Planningtorock, Anja Schneider, Little Dragon and Holy Ghost.

LISTE N N OW !

WWW. E L EC T RO N I C B E ATS . N E T / R ADIO

about why so many readers don’t take reviews or writers’ opinions seriously anymore. Certainly it has to do with a general mistrust of socalled journalistic objectivity—like whenever you read some generic formulation like “this is the best record since . . .” Usually phrases like that say more about the author than the record . . . So I always think of interviews as a kind of hub or a conduit to more specialized and more complex pools of information. That’s partly because every conversation has erratic and unpredictable moments where people jump from one thought to another.

HUO: I attempt to pursue infinite conversations. The interviews with

Dear Readers, When we traveled to the north Italian city of Turin to meet Pantha du Prince and Dan Snaith, the rain came down in sheets.

It seemed like the city was close to being washed away.

Only two weeks earlier, we spent a fascinating week in sunny Athens.

In mid-crisis, the smell of tear gas and garbage accompanied an uncertain mood, as general strikes and daily clashes with the police paralyzed public services.

These are times of dramatic change, and musicians and artists have always been at the forefront of verbalizing protest and utopian ideas. There’s nothing more interesting than traveling to meet the people whose art is a part of that change— and asking them how they relate to it. The answers are inspiring.

Best wishes, Max Dax Editor-in-Chief

artists I published as part of my Conversation Series follow the idea of a never-ending conversation.

This is, by the way, a central issue in the digital evolution of media: narration that never stops. I just interviewed the visionary poet and writer Ko Un in Seoul who wrote Ten Thousand Lives, a series of short, dense portraits based on his encounters with every person he ever met. Together, they form the polyphonic portrait of these encounters as a whole.

MD: Changing forms of narration

in the digital age are fascinating to me. That’s why I embrace the format of the blog so much.

Serious blogs are fascinating webs of thought—rhizomatic entities.

The German writer Diedrich Diederichsen famously said: “Blogs are the first true literary invention of the twenty-first century.”

I personally draw a direct line from Samuel Pepys’ Diary to Rolf Dieter Brinkmann’s Rom, Blicke to Alexander Kluge’s ultra-short stories. These works somehow anticipated a kind of narration that doesn’t necessarily define itself in terms of a classic dramaturgical thread, with climaxes and build-ups and all that. Instead, all aspects of the image being drawn or the story told are of equal importance.

HUO: And not only that: in the best possible case, two people meeting and having a real conversation will create something bigger than the

sum of its parts . . . One plus one is eleven. Of course, print magazines are still the prime medium for interviews—even if it makes sense for them to be published online or in books. The modern magazine was and in many ways continues to be made for interviews.

MD: When an interview or a con-

versation or a monologue is printed in a magazine, it immediately assumes a certain historical status—however impossible it is to understand its future function.

We’re talking here about the physical documentation of an exchange of human energy. And all parties are learning from each other—the readers included . . .

HUO: Bringing people together in dialogue will almost always generate new thoughts and ideas. As J.G. Ballard told me: it’s about junction making—creating conceptual intersections.

MD: Dialogue is the building block

of the concept of a community, and in terms of producing a given reality, it’s how communities are created. My job is to highlight and, in a sense, curate these communicative strands for the reader.

HUO: That’s exactly why I conduct polyphonic interview marathons at the Serpentine Gallery and elsewhere: because I’m curious not only about what people are thinking, but also how these thoughts are connected! ~

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EDITORIAL

“One plus one is eleven” TUNE IN!

E L EC T RO N IC B E ATS RADIO APP

Hans Ulrich Obrist: Max, Electronic Beats Magazine is entirely based on documenting an oral tradition. People talk to each other, the conversations are being recorded, transcribed, edited and published.

Max Dax: I’d always say the inter-

viewer and the interviewee are both authors: they both contribute equally to the result by investing not only their time, but also their experiences and knowledge. So an interview is always the result of a collaborative effort. That’s why we put the names of both the interviewers and the interviewees in the magazine’s imprint.

HUO: Why do you focus on interviews?

MD: I’ve spent a lot of time thinking

The Electronic Beats Radio App. DJ mixes and festival live cuts, exclusively compiled for the website can now be streamed via iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. Over 150 mixes and live cuts by artists such as Modeselektor, Planningtorock, Anja Schneider, Little Dragon and Holy Ghost.

LISTE N N OW !

WWW. E L EC T RO N I C B E ATS . N E T / R ADIO

about why so many readers don’t take reviews or writers’ opinions seriously anymore. Certainly it has to do with a general mistrust of socalled journalistic objectivity—like whenever you read some generic formulation like “this is the best record since . . .” Usually phrases like that say more about the author than the record . . . So I always think of interviews as a kind of hub or a conduit to more specialized and more complex pools of information. That’s partly because every conversation has erratic and unpredictable moments where people jump from one thought to another.

HUO: I attempt to pursue infinite conversations. The interviews with

Dear Readers, When we traveled to the north Italian city of Turin to meet Pantha du Prince and Dan Snaith, the rain came down in sheets.

It seemed like the city was close to being washed away.

Only two weeks earlier, we spent a fascinating week in sunny Athens.

In mid-crisis, the smell of tear gas and garbage accompanied an uncertain mood, as general strikes and daily clashes with the police paralyzed public services.

These are times of dramatic change, and musicians and artists have always been at the forefront of verbalizing protest and utopian ideas. There’s nothing more interesting than traveling to meet the people whose art is a part of that change— and asking them how they relate to it. The answers are inspiring.

Best wishes, Max Dax Editor-in-Chief

artists I published as part of my Conversation Series follow the idea of a never-ending conversation.

This is, by the way, a central issue in the digital evolution of media: narration that never stops. I just interviewed the visionary poet and writer Ko Un in Seoul who wrote Ten Thousand Lives, a series of short, dense portraits based on his encounters with every person he ever met. Together, they form the polyphonic portrait of these encounters as a whole.

MD: Changing forms of narration

in the digital age are fascinating to me. That’s why I embrace the format of the blog so much.

Serious blogs are fascinating webs of thought—rhizomatic entities.

The German writer Diedrich Diederichsen famously said: “Blogs are the first true literary invention of the twenty-first century.”

I personally draw a direct line from Samuel Pepys’ Diary to Rolf Dieter Brinkmann’s Rom, Blicke to Alexander Kluge’s ultra-short stories. These works somehow anticipated a kind of narration that doesn’t necessarily define itself in terms of a classic dramaturgical thread, with climaxes and build-ups and all that. Instead, all aspects of the image being drawn or the story told are of equal importance.

HUO: And not only that: in the best possible case, two people meeting and having a real conversation will create something bigger than the

sum of its parts . . . One plus one is eleven. Of course, print magazines are still the prime medium for interviews—even if it makes sense for them to be published online or in books. The modern magazine was and in many ways continues to be made for interviews.

MD: When an interview or a con-

versation or a monologue is printed in a magazine, it immediately assumes a certain historical status—however impossible it is to understand its future function.

We’re talking here about the physical documentation of an exchange of human energy. And all parties are learning from each other—the readers included . . .

HUO: Bringing people together in dialogue will almost always generate new thoughts and ideas. As J.G. Ballard told me: it’s about junction making—creating conceptual intersections.

MD: Dialogue is the building block

of the concept of a community, and in terms of producing a given reality, it’s how communities are created. My job is to highlight and, in a sense, curate these communicative strands for the reader.

HUO: That’s exactly why I conduct polyphonic interview marathons at the Serpentine Gallery and elsewhere: because I’m curious not only about what people are thinking, but also how these thoughts are connected! ~

EB 4/2011

3

imprint

Content Electronic Beats Magazine Conversations on Essential Issues Est. 2005 Issue N° 28 Winter 2011/2012

Publisher: Burda Creative Group GmbH, P.O. Box 810249, 81902 München, Germany Managing Director: Dr.-Ing. Christian Fill

Editorial Office: Electronic Beats Magazine, c/o .HBC, Karl-Liebknecht-Straße 9, 10178 Berlin, Germany www.electronicbeats.net/magazine magazine@electronicbeats.net Editor-in-Chief: Max Dax Managing Editor: Benjamin Schnitzer Duty Editor: Michael Lutz Editor: A. J. Samuels Photography Editor: Corinna Ada Koch Copy Editor: Karsten Schoellner Art Director: Johannes Beck Director Creative Solutions: Ralph Fischer

Cover: Bryan Ferry, photographed by Frank Bauer

Contributing Authors: Chris Bohn, Brandt Brauer Frick, Thomas Demand, Christoph Dreher, Alexandra Droener, Christian Farley, Bryan Ferry, Gudrun Gut, Annika Henderson, Peter Kruder, Kuedo, Steven Levy, Billie Ray Martin, Dieter Meier, Aérea Negrot, Carsten Nicolai, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Blaine L. Reininger, Andreas Reihse, Dan Snaith, Hendrik Weber, Zola Jesus

Contributing Photographers and Illustrators:

Pictures to the Editor ............................................................. 8 Recommendations ......................................................................... 18

s e u g o l o n o M

Music and other media recommended by Kuedo, Peter Kruder, Christoph Dreher, Alexandra Droener, Chris Bohn, Gudrun Gut, Andreas Reihse and Thomas Demand; featuring new releases by David Simon, The Field, The Grateful Dead, Elektro Guzzi, Kraftwerk, Gonjasufi, Conrad Schnitzler and Oneohtrix Point Never ABC The alphabet according to Brandt Brauer Frick ........................ 30 Mr. Style Icon Zola Jesus on David Cronenberg ......................... 34

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“That song changed the world” Max Dax on the phone with ANIKA ...................................................... 40

Inter views 36

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Electronic Beats Music Sponsoring: Claudia Jonas and Ralf Lülsdorf Public Relations: Stephanie Binder / Haeberlein & Maurer stephanie.binder@haebmau.de Subscriptions: www.electronicbeats.net/magazine Advertising: advertising@electronicbeats.net Printing: Druckhaus Kaufmann, Raiffeisenstr. 29, 77933 Lahr, Germany www.druckhaus-kaufmann.de

Thanks to: Anne Haffmans, Rüdiger Hergerdt, Friedrich Kittler (R.I.P.), Alexander Kluge, Arto Lindsay, Roy Marsh, Glenn O’Brien, Sergio Ricciardone, Ben Robinson, Stephan Rothfuss and everybody at .HBC Berlin, Peter Vitzthum © 2011 Electronic Beats Magazine Reproduction without permission is prohibited

The weekend is a relict of the past.

44

EB EB 4/2011 3/2011

“In terms of freedom, more was possible” Hans Ulrich Obrist interviews CARSTEN NICOLAI aka alva noto ................................................ 46 “I was the last one to leave and I didn’t turn off the lights” A.J. Samuels and Max Dax meet Tuxedomoon’s blaine l. reiningeR ....................................................................... 54

37

Frank Bauer, Georg Gatsas, Iris Janke, Andrej Krementschouk, Luci Lux, Sebastian Meyer, Elena Panouli, Kevin Scanlon, Hans Martin Sewcz, Karl Stoecker, Uwe Walter

Electronic Beats Magazine is a division of Telekom Electronic Beats Music Sponsoring Program

Counting with . . . Azari + III ...................................................... 36

Roxy Music’s bryan ferry in conversation with Yello’s DIETER MEIER .......................................................................... 62 Dinner in Turin: caribou in conversation with pantha du prince ........................................ 72

s n o i t a s Conver

What it takes to be a diva: aérea negrot in conversation with billie ray martin ........................................ 76 A day in the life: 24 hours in Athens ................................................... 82 NEU: Steven Levy on crypto currencies ......................................... 98

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Three of our featured contributors: Dieter Meier

Hans Martin Sewcz

Zola Jesus

(* 1945) is a Swiss musician and conceptual artist best known as the singer for the electronic music act Yello.

Meier is also a business man and professional poker player.

This issue features his conversation with Bryan Ferry. (p.62) Photo: Frank Bauer

(* 1955) is a visual artist and photographer from Halle, Germany. Sewcz firmly believes that one of the most important aspects of photography is psychological accuracy. This issue features his group portrait of Brandt Brauer Frick. (p.30) Photo: Self-portrait

(* 1989) is the stage name of Russian-American singer-songwriter and former philosophy student Nika Roza Danilova.

In this issue, she tells us about the considerable influence David Cronenberg has had on her life and art. (p. 34) Photo: Iris Janke

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imprint

Content Electronic Beats Magazine Conversations on Essential Issues Est. 2005 Issue N° 28 Winter 2011/2012

Publisher: Burda Creative Group GmbH, P.O. Box 810249, 81902 München, Germany Managing Director: Dr.-Ing. Christian Fill

Editorial Office: Electronic Beats Magazine, c/o .HBC, Karl-Liebknecht-Straße 9, 10178 Berlin, Germany www.electronicbeats.net/magazine magazine@electronicbeats.net Editor-in-Chief: Max Dax Managing Editor: Benjamin Schnitzer Duty Editor: Michael Lutz Editor: A. J. Samuels Photography Editor: Corinna Ada Koch Copy Editor: Karsten Schoellner Art Director: Johannes Beck Director Creative Solutions: Ralph Fischer

Cover: Bryan Ferry, photographed by Frank Bauer

Contributing Authors: Chris Bohn, Brandt Brauer Frick, Thomas Demand, Christoph Dreher, Alexandra Droener, Christian Farley, Bryan Ferry, Gudrun Gut, Annika Henderson, Peter Kruder, Kuedo, Steven Levy, Billie Ray Martin, Dieter Meier, Aérea Negrot, Carsten Nicolai, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Blaine L. Reininger, Andreas Reihse, Dan Snaith, Hendrik Weber, Zola Jesus

Contributing Photographers and Illustrators:

Pictures to the Editor ............................................................. 8 Recommendations ......................................................................... 18

s e u g o l o n o M

Music and other media recommended by Kuedo, Peter Kruder, Christoph Dreher, Alexandra Droener, Chris Bohn, Gudrun Gut, Andreas Reihse and Thomas Demand; featuring new releases by David Simon, The Field, The Grateful Dead, Elektro Guzzi, Kraftwerk, Gonjasufi, Conrad Schnitzler and Oneohtrix Point Never ABC The alphabet according to Brandt Brauer Frick ........................ 30 Mr. Style Icon Zola Jesus on David Cronenberg ......................... 34

6

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“That song changed the world” Max Dax on the phone with ANIKA ...................................................... 40

Inter views 36

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Electronic Beats Music Sponsoring: Claudia Jonas and Ralf Lülsdorf Public Relations: Stephanie Binder / Haeberlein & Maurer stephanie.binder@haebmau.de Subscriptions: www.electronicbeats.net/magazine Advertising: advertising@electronicbeats.net Printing: Druckhaus Kaufmann, Raiffeisenstr. 29, 77933 Lahr, Germany www.druckhaus-kaufmann.de

Thanks to: Anne Haffmans, Rüdiger Hergerdt, Friedrich Kittler (R.I.P.), Alexander Kluge, Arto Lindsay, Roy Marsh, Glenn O’Brien, Sergio Ricciardone, Ben Robinson, Stephan Rothfuss and everybody at .HBC Berlin, Peter Vitzthum © 2011 Electronic Beats Magazine Reproduction without permission is prohibited

The weekend is a relict of the past.

44

EB EB 4/2011 3/2011

“In terms of freedom, more was possible” Hans Ulrich Obrist interviews CARSTEN NICOLAI aka alva noto ................................................ 46 “I was the last one to leave and I didn’t turn off the lights” A.J. Samuels and Max Dax meet Tuxedomoon’s blaine l. reiningeR ....................................................................... 54

37

Frank Bauer, Georg Gatsas, Iris Janke, Andrej Krementschouk, Luci Lux, Sebastian Meyer, Elena Panouli, Kevin Scanlon, Hans Martin Sewcz, Karl Stoecker, Uwe Walter

Electronic Beats Magazine is a division of Telekom Electronic Beats Music Sponsoring Program

Counting with . . . Azari + III ...................................................... 36

Roxy Music’s bryan ferry in conversation with Yello’s DIETER MEIER .......................................................................... 62 Dinner in Turin: caribou in conversation with pantha du prince ........................................ 72

s n o i t a s Conver

What it takes to be a diva: aérea negrot in conversation with billie ray martin ........................................ 76 A day in the life: 24 hours in Athens ................................................... 82 NEU: Steven Levy on crypto currencies ......................................... 98

62

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63

Three of our featured contributors: Dieter Meier

Hans Martin Sewcz

Zola Jesus

(* 1945) is a Swiss musician and conceptual artist best known as the singer for the electronic music act Yello.

Meier is also a business man and professional poker player.

This issue features his conversation with Bryan Ferry. (p.62) Photo: Frank Bauer

(* 1955) is a visual artist and photographer from Halle, Germany. Sewcz firmly believes that one of the most important aspects of photography is psychological accuracy. This issue features his group portrait of Brandt Brauer Frick. (p.30) Photo: Self-portrait

(* 1989) is the stage name of Russian-American singer-songwriter and former philosophy student Nika Roza Danilova.

In this issue, she tells us about the considerable influence David Cronenberg has had on her life and art. (p. 34) Photo: Iris Janke

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pictures to the editor Send your photos to pictures@electronicbeats.net

In Pictures to the Editor, we like to show things from a reader’s point of view.

If your image gets chosen, you will receive two free tickets to an Electronic Beats concert or festival.

Here we have Róisín Murphy performing at the Electronic Beats Festival in Vienna, 2010. Photo sent by Eduard Meltzer, Zurich 8

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pictures to the editor Send your photos to pictures@electronicbeats.net

In Pictures to the Editor, we like to show things from a reader’s point of view.

If your image gets chosen, you will receive two free tickets to an Electronic Beats concert or festival.

Here we have Róisín Murphy performing at the Electronic Beats Festival in Vienna, 2010. Photo sent by Eduard Meltzer, Zurich 8

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Winters aren’t always fun, but they’re often beautiful. These evocative ice crystals were found adorning the skylight of an attic apartment in Berlin last winter. They look like a miniature version of The Great Wave by Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai: nature imitating art imitating nature.

These days, the image unfortunately conjures up something more sinister. Photo sent by B. Marone, Berlin 10

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Winters aren’t always fun, but they’re often beautiful. These evocative ice crystals were found adorning the skylight of an attic apartment in Berlin last winter. They look like a miniature version of The Great Wave by Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai: nature imitating art imitating nature.

These days, the image unfortunately conjures up something more sinister. Photo sent by B. Marone, Berlin 10

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Pictures of the New York skyline taken from Brooklyn rooftops are a dime a dozen, but this one (shot from a factory in Red Hook) captures something more telling about the city’s development: a Manhattan skyline that seamlessly turns into downtown Brooklyn, and a grey future for the world’s financial capital. Photo sent by Martin Waltz, Brooklyn NY 12

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Pictures of the New York skyline taken from Brooklyn rooftops are a dime a dozen, but this one (shot from a factory in Red Hook) captures something more telling about the city’s development: a Manhattan skyline that seamlessly turns into downtown Brooklyn, and a grey future for the world’s financial capital. Photo sent by Martin Waltz, Brooklyn NY 12

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As the saying goes, the Sicilian Mafia gets high from two types of powder: cocaine and cement.

And while half-built neighborhoods can be a real eyesore and shady building contracts are a real problem, these beautiful, vaulted highways are a joy to behold. Photo sent by Denise Campa, Agrigento 14

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As the saying goes, the Sicilian Mafia gets high from two types of powder: cocaine and cement.

And while half-built neighborhoods can be a real eyesore and shady building contracts are a real problem, these beautiful, vaulted highways are a joy to behold. Photo sent by Denise Campa, Agrigento 14

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What can’t a stone do? The projectile of choice for protestors during the Arab Spring, these ones keep Morocco’s free press from blowing away from a Casablanca kiosk. Unlike its neighbors, Morocco has largely been spared violent political turmoil. And if recent concessions to the pro-democracy movement are any measure, King Mohammed VI seems to know which way the wind blows. Photo sent by Siri Kondé, Casablanca

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What can’t a stone do? The projectile of choice for protestors during the Arab Spring, these ones keep Morocco’s free press from blowing away from a Casablanca kiosk. Unlike its neighbors, Morocco has largely been spared violent political turmoil. And if recent concessions to the pro-democracy movement are any measure, King Mohammed VI seems to know which way the wind blows. Photo sent by Siri Kondé, Casablanca

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recommEndations “An excellent example of German humor” Thomas Demand recommends Kraftwerk 3D (Kling Klang Konsumprodukt)

Thomas Demand is a German sculptor and photographer. He currently lives and works in Berlin and Los Angeles, and teaches at the University of Fine Arts, Hamburg.

He is perhaps most well known for making photographs of three-dimensional models that look like real images of rooms and other spaces. His work is included in numerous worldwide collections including New York’s MoMA and Guggenheim and the Tate Collection, London.

Opposite page: “Computerwelt” still from Kraftwerk’s 3D video installation. © Kraftwerk, 2011

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Whenever you talk about art, you have to consider that one of its main goals is to create a form for a given content, and that the content might actually have been integrated into the work while conceiving of the form. A critic has to ask himself, “What kind of process led to the result?” Posing that question is far more important than trying to interpret the “meaning” of the work. Of course, this applies to music too. So when talking about Kraftwerk, I think it’s important to describe how they actually do what they do. By staging their live show in a visually stunning 3D format, the band have introduced a new dimension to live entertainment. The question is: how did they do it? One thing’s for sure: they’ve successfully transposed their classic video projections into 3D with the same intellectual and aesthetic precision with which they initially converted their music to image.

In the last issue of Electronic Beats Magazine, Brian Eno does a great job of describing the importance of artists sticking to specific ideas and themes: “You see it over and over again that good artists end up coming back to the same ideas they’ve always worked with. And with every year that goes by, they get better and better at understanding the chemistry between these ideas.” The real progress in Kraftwerk’s body of work lies in their unwavering focus. For example, when they played “Trans Europa Express” during the first live 3D performance for the opening of the exhibition in Munich, they left out the verse about David Bowie and Iggy Pop. You could call that a maximal reduction. By leaving out what’s “dated”, Ralf

Hütter successfully updated a classic tune with minimum effort.

Spectators often wonder why artists work on variations of previous pieces instead of coming up with new stuff all the time. I think they don’t understand that artists probably aren’t interested in constantly jumping from subject to subject. Exploring the details and patterns of a world you’ve created yourself can be much more satisfying than creating entirely new ones and then leaving them shortly afterwards. And if you’re paying attention, you’ll notice the progress that comes with an artist’s focus over the course of time.

Personally, I’ve always mistrusted artists whose erratic shifts in direction become so predictable—perhaps with the exception of David Bowie, Marcel Broodthaers and Konstantin Grcic. True mastery comes from working with a given motif over years and years, if not decades. And Kraftwerk shows why that’s so important.

In my opinion, their focus was an important factor in their first five albums becoming part of the canon of pop and electronic music.

Kraftwerk 3D documents both the exhibition and the preparation for the live shows in Munich, and it’s surely a must-have for die-hard Kraftwerk fans. But it’s also interesting for the rest of us, because the artwork presented here is timeless.

On paper, some of my favorite images are those that have yet to reach iconic status—unlike the Autobahn cover or the radioactivity symbol. For example, I particularly like Kraftwerk’s visualization of the song “Showroom Dummies”.

There’s one double page image of a cracked showroom window, followed by another double page of the showroom dummies escaping to freedom—all dressed in beautiful black shoes and black suits. Or take the imagery for the song “Computerwelt”, almost all of which has a numerical background layer of code. In the foreground sits a very old-fashioned pc, visually disconnected to the numbers and without any characters on the keyboard. Even though it looks stiff, it has impressive depth in 3D. Which brings me to my next point: In 3D reproduction, the book’s most intriguing images are those that move away from a certain photo-realism. It sounds paradoxical, but the more graphic and twodimensional the images are, the more effective they become in 3D— not only on the page, but also live.

At the concert this was especially impressive during the performance of the track “Numbers”, when the various patterns of pixelated numbers race from the stage’s backdrop right up to the spectators’ faces.

Kraftwerk have definitively set a visual benchmark with the programming of their 3D sequences, and even though the book is more like a roadmap than the real landscape, it remains an important documentation of the band’s reclamation of their cutting-edge status and role as musical and visual pioneers. This is a picture book in its purest form, and the particular charm of Kraftwerk 3D lies in its visual details: its complete lack of text, intentionally clumsy 3D renderings and pale coloring—as if less saturation lowered production costs. In that sense, it’s also an excellent example of “German humor”. ~ EB 4/2011

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recommEndations “An excellent example of German humor” Thomas Demand recommends Kraftwerk 3D (Kling Klang Konsumprodukt)

Thomas Demand is a German sculptor and photographer. He currently lives and works in Berlin and Los Angeles, and teaches at the University of Fine Arts, Hamburg.

He is perhaps most well known for making photographs of three-dimensional models that look like real images of rooms and other spaces. His work is included in numerous worldwide collections including New York’s MoMA and Guggenheim and the Tate Collection, London.

Opposite page: “Computerwelt” still from Kraftwerk’s 3D video installation. © Kraftwerk, 2011

18

EB 4/2011

Whenever you talk about art, you have to consider that one of its main goals is to create a form for a given content, and that the content might actually have been integrated into the work while conceiving of the form. A critic has to ask himself, “What kind of process led to the result?” Posing that question is far more important than trying to interpret the “meaning” of the work. Of course, this applies to music too. So when talking about Kraftwerk, I think it’s important to describe how they actually do what they do. By staging their live show in a visually stunning 3D format, the band have introduced a new dimension to live entertainment. The question is: how did they do it? One thing’s for sure: they’ve successfully transposed their classic video projections into 3D with the same intellectual and aesthetic precision with which they initially converted their music to image.

In the last issue of Electronic Beats Magazine, Brian Eno does a great job of describing the importance of artists sticking to specific ideas and themes: “You see it over and over again that good artists end up coming back to the same ideas they’ve always worked with. And with every year that goes by, they get better and better at understanding the chemistry between these ideas.” The real progress in Kraftwerk’s body of work lies in their unwavering focus. For example, when they played “Trans Europa Express” during the first live 3D performance for the opening of the exhibition in Munich, they left out the verse about David Bowie and Iggy Pop. You could call that a maximal reduction. By leaving out what’s “dated”, Ralf

Hütter successfully updated a classic tune with minimum effort.

Spectators often wonder why artists work on variations of previous pieces instead of coming up with new stuff all the time. I think they don’t understand that artists probably aren’t interested in constantly jumping from subject to subject. Exploring the details and patterns of a world you’ve created yourself can be much more satisfying than creating entirely new ones and then leaving them shortly afterwards. And if you’re paying attention, you’ll notice the progress that comes with an artist’s focus over the course of time.

Personally, I’ve always mistrusted artists whose erratic shifts in direction become so predictable—perhaps with the exception of David Bowie, Marcel Broodthaers and Konstantin Grcic. True mastery comes from working with a given motif over years and years, if not decades. And Kraftwerk shows why that’s so important.

In my opinion, their focus was an important factor in their first five albums becoming part of the canon of pop and electronic music.

Kraftwerk 3D documents both the exhibition and the preparation for the live shows in Munich, and it’s surely a must-have for die-hard Kraftwerk fans. But it’s also interesting for the rest of us, because the artwork presented here is timeless.

On paper, some of my favorite images are those that have yet to reach iconic status—unlike the Autobahn cover or the radioactivity symbol. For example, I particularly like Kraftwerk’s visualization of the song “Showroom Dummies”.

There’s one double page image of a cracked showroom window, followed by another double page of the showroom dummies escaping to freedom—all dressed in beautiful black shoes and black suits. Or take the imagery for the song “Computerwelt”, almost all of which has a numerical background layer of code. In the foreground sits a very old-fashioned pc, visually disconnected to the numbers and without any characters on the keyboard. Even though it looks stiff, it has impressive depth in 3D. Which brings me to my next point: In 3D reproduction, the book’s most intriguing images are those that move away from a certain photo-realism. It sounds paradoxical, but the more graphic and twodimensional the images are, the more effective they become in 3D— not only on the page, but also live.

At the concert this was especially impressive during the performance of the track “Numbers”, when the various patterns of pixelated numbers race from the stage’s backdrop right up to the spectators’ faces.

Kraftwerk have definitively set a visual benchmark with the programming of their 3D sequences, and even though the book is more like a roadmap than the real landscape, it remains an important documentation of the band’s reclamation of their cutting-edge status and role as musical and visual pioneers. This is a picture book in its purest form, and the particular charm of Kraftwerk 3D lies in its visual details: its complete lack of text, intentionally clumsy 3D renderings and pale coloring—as if less saturation lowered production costs. In that sense, it’s also an excellent example of “German humor”. ~ EB 4/2011

19

“The muzzle is usually a metaphor for concealing truth” Alexandra Droener on Gonjasufi’s MU.ZZ.LE (Warp Records) If I had to describe Gonjasufi’s output over the last year in a single phrase—his music, appearance, quotes and so on—I would probably go for “under the influence”.

And I’m not just refering to drugs but also to his mishmash of spiritual ideas and musical styles. From what I understand the guy is an ex-user, even though the music still sounds very stoned. For me, his almost dialectical take on drugs is an indication of some kind of inner struggle—one that clearly manifests itself on MU.ZZ.LE. It’s hard not to have the impression that this is a score to something semi-auto biographical; a would-be spiritual quest involving lots and lots of crate digging and various forms of psychedelicism.

“But the sound always stays warm . . . ” Gudrun Gut recommends The Field’s Looping State of Mind (Kompakt)

Gudrun Gut is a musician, DJ and owner of the label Monika Enterprise. An early member of Einstürzende Neubauten, Gut also cofounded the legendary German bands Malaria! and Mania D. She lives in Berlin where she co-hosts the weekly radio show Oceanclub together with Thomas Fehlmann.

20

EB 4/2011

Even though I listen to loads of music, I don’t usually listen to a new record every week. I’m more the type to get attached to a specific artist and then follow him or her intensely. I’ve been a big fan of The Field since the very first twelve inch he released on Kompakt in 2005 and needless to say, I was anticipating big things from Looping State of Mind.

The album has surpassed all my expectations. It’s very much in line with The Field’s previous releases, which are very loop-based. But these aren’t your normal loops: they’re incredibly precise and brilliantly cut and spliced moments of sound that immediately draw

you in to the music. It’s hard to describe the difference between the average loop and what The Field does, but I would say it’s a difference in emotional quality. The repetition—often a spoken phrase or syllable—is embedded into the rest of the music in a way that makes it kind of like the song’s motor— something that drives or propels the music forward. Of course, there’s more than one sound being looped and the smallest non-vocal micro-samples are like cogs in the machine of a bigger, syncopated push . . . which is partially due to the fact that some of the songs were written with a band and played with a live drummer.

But the sound always stays warm, which is why it has a kind of krautrock feel to it, even though it’s undeniably techno. I think you can categorize it as a form of serial music, because he’s clearly operating from within some sort of compositional system—mostly based in the framework of his loops. Maybe my description sounds intellectual, but honestly the music just makes me happy.

It’s a deep, deep joy that I get from listening to Looping State of Mind, which also comes from the organic way in which the songs build and turn and explode— totally different from your average techno album.

Personally, I’m not so much into techno. I don’t hate it or anything, but straight techno bores me. I think the difference between The Field and some normal techno producer is that you can really hear that here there’s an artist at work.

On my last album I even included an ode to him entitled “The Land”. I wrote the song immediately after seeing him perform live and did my best to copy his style.

The result doesn’t really sound very much like him at all . . . but at least I tried. For me, Looping State of Mind is a lesson in how to make understated electronic music—both in terms of texture and structural simplicity. ~

But every album has—or at least should have—a story to tell. And sometimes that story is rooted in a mythical backstory, which is the artist’s persona as marketed by professional labels. My approximation of Warp’s biographical selling point for Gonjasufi’s first album is: “If Gonjasufi wouldn’t be making music, he’d be a killer.” In the past, appealing to listeners by scaring them has proven lucrative. MU.ZZ. LE marks the next chapter in the Gonjasufi story and is a vehicle for the artist’s intoxicated “wisdom”.

The muzzle is usually a metaphor for concealing truth, which, of course, Gonjasufi cannot do. But “truth” certainly isn’t what the album conjures up for me.

Gonjasufi says that he doesn’t judge music by when it’s from or who made it—which explains his

foundational eclecticism, combining golden age hip-hop with ragadriven Hindu music and Persian sounds. But African-American musical traditions seem to be at the album’s core: Sun Ra, Rammellzee, and On the Corner-era Miles Davis are maybe the best examples of the kind of retro afro-futurism MU.ZZ.LE radiates. Drexciya, Dopplereffekt, and Underground Resistance are also good comparisons—less because of the music and more because of the ideology. But I get the impression that even though he wants to follow in the footsteps of the great African-American truth tellers, his vanity and drug use somehow get in the way.

Alexandra Droener is editor-in-chief of electronicbeats.net

Gonjasufi produced MU.ZZ.LE on his own, which is maybe why it doesn’t sound as light on its feet and advanced as A Sufi and a Killer. As the title suggests, the latter was produced by friend and collaborator The Gaslamp Killer and had more lo-fi rock in it, as well as aspects of dubstep and hiphop. It also placed greater emphasis on sound design. With MU.ZZ. LE Gonjasufi plays with all of these aesthetics but generally gives them a rougher finish. It often feels like he’s preaching, which is underscored by the “street riot” megaphone effect on his voice.

Word has it that yoga brought Gonjasufi to a permanently higher state of mind. Born a Coptic Christian, he began studying the teachings of Islam before eventually turning to Sufism. Clearly, the man is on a journey. But he still seems to have a ways to go. ~

Above left: “Autobahn” still from Kraftwerk’s 3D video installation. © Kraftwerk, 2011 EB 4/2011

21

“The muzzle is usually a metaphor for concealing truth” Alexandra Droener on Gonjasufi’s MU.ZZ.LE (Warp Records) If I had to describe Gonjasufi’s output over the last year in a single phrase—his music, appearance, quotes and so on—I would probably go for “under the influence”.

And I’m not just refering to drugs but also to his mishmash of spiritual ideas and musical styles. From what I understand the guy is an ex-user, even though the music still sounds very stoned. For me, his almost dialectical take on drugs is an indication of some kind of inner struggle—one that clearly manifests itself on MU.ZZ.LE. It’s hard not to have the impression that this is a score to something semi-auto biographical; a would-be spiritual quest involving lots and lots of crate digging and various forms of psychedelicism.

“But the sound always stays warm . . . ” Gudrun Gut recommends The Field’s Looping State of Mind (Kompakt)

Gudrun Gut is a musician, DJ and owner of the label Monika Enterprise. An early member of Einstürzende Neubauten, Gut also cofounded the legendary German bands Malaria! and Mania D. She lives in Berlin where she co-hosts the weekly radio show Oceanclub together with Thomas Fehlmann.

20

EB 4/2011

Even though I listen to loads of music, I don’t usually listen to a new record every week. I’m more the type to get attached to a specific artist and then follow him or her intensely. I’ve been a big fan of The Field since the very first twelve inch he released on Kompakt in 2005 and needless to say, I was anticipating big things from Looping State of Mind.

The album has surpassed all my expectations. It’s very much in line with The Field’s previous releases, which are very loop-based. But these aren’t your normal loops: they’re incredibly precise and brilliantly cut and spliced moments of sound that immediately draw

you in to the music. It’s hard to describe the difference between the average loop and what The Field does, but I would say it’s a difference in emotional quality. The repetition—often a spoken phrase or syllable—is embedded into the rest of the music in a way that makes it kind of like the song’s motor— something that drives or propels the music forward. Of course, there’s more than one sound being looped and the smallest non-vocal micro-samples are like cogs in the machine of a bigger, syncopated push . . . which is partially due to the fact that some of the songs were written with a band and played with a live drummer.

But the sound always stays warm, which is why it has a kind of krautrock feel to it, even though it’s undeniably techno. I think you can categorize it as a form of serial music, because he’s clearly operating from within some sort of compositional system—mostly based in the framework of his loops. Maybe my description sounds intellectual, but honestly the music just makes me happy.

It’s a deep, deep joy that I get from listening to Looping State of Mind, which also comes from the organic way in which the songs build and turn and explode— totally different from your average techno album.

Personally, I’m not so much into techno. I don’t hate it or anything, but straight techno bores me. I think the difference between The Field and some normal techno producer is that you can really hear that here there’s an artist at work.

On my last album I even included an ode to him entitled “The Land”. I wrote the song immediately after seeing him perform live and did my best to copy his style.

The result doesn’t really sound very much like him at all . . . but at least I tried. For me, Looping State of Mind is a lesson in how to make understated electronic music—both in terms of texture and structural simplicity. ~

But every album has—or at least should have—a story to tell. And sometimes that story is rooted in a mythical backstory, which is the artist’s persona as marketed by professional labels. My approximation of Warp’s biographical selling point for Gonjasufi’s first album is: “If Gonjasufi wouldn’t be making music, he’d be a killer.” In the past, appealing to listeners by scaring them has proven lucrative. MU.ZZ. LE marks the next chapter in the Gonjasufi story and is a vehicle for the artist’s intoxicated “wisdom”.

The muzzle is usually a metaphor for concealing truth, which, of course, Gonjasufi cannot do. But “truth” certainly isn’t what the album conjures up for me.

Gonjasufi says that he doesn’t judge music by when it’s from or who made it—which explains his

foundational eclecticism, combining golden age hip-hop with ragadriven Hindu music and Persian sounds. But African-American musical traditions seem to be at the album’s core: Sun Ra, Rammellzee, and On the Corner-era Miles Davis are maybe the best examples of the kind of retro afro-futurism MU.ZZ.LE radiates. Drexciya, Dopplereffekt, and Underground Resistance are also good comparisons—less because of the music and more because of the ideology. But I get the impression that even though he wants to follow in the footsteps of the great African-American truth tellers, his vanity and drug use somehow get in the way.

Alexandra Droener is editor-in-chief of electronicbeats.net

Gonjasufi produced MU.ZZ.LE on his own, which is maybe why it doesn’t sound as light on its feet and advanced as A Sufi and a Killer. As the title suggests, the latter was produced by friend and collaborator The Gaslamp Killer and had more lo-fi rock in it, as well as aspects of dubstep and hiphop. It also placed greater emphasis on sound design. With MU.ZZ. LE Gonjasufi plays with all of these aesthetics but generally gives them a rougher finish. It often feels like he’s preaching, which is underscored by the “street riot” megaphone effect on his voice.

Word has it that yoga brought Gonjasufi to a permanently higher state of mind. Born a Coptic Christian, he began studying the teachings of Islam before eventually turning to Sufism. Clearly, the man is on a journey. But he still seems to have a ways to go. ~

Above left: “Autobahn” still from Kraftwerk’s 3D video installation. © Kraftwerk, 2011 EB 4/2011

21

recommEndations

“You really have no idea what’s coming next” Andreas Reihse recommends Conrad Schnitzler’s Endtime (m=minimal)

Andreas Reihse is a Berlin-based musician, producer, blogger and founding member of the post-krautrock band Kreidler. He recently released his first solo album Romantic Comedy.

Conrad Schnitzler isn’t a household name, and in many ways, I’d consider him an outside artist. He was certainly never able to live large from the music he made and the ideas he developed, even though he had an enormous influence on the musicians and artists around him. I guess you could say that influencing your peers is one of the most important things you can do in his line of work—certainly more than making money. But artists shouldn’t have to worry about financial and bureaucratic bullshit.

It’s not only boring; it’s also bad for your health. I think worrying about things like that is one of the reasons why people, and artists especially, die young. And saying great art is only made by those who suffer is complete bullshit.

Schnitzler wasn’t really young anymore when he passed away last August, but he still should have lived much much longer.

He knew he didn’t have long to live, which is why he worked so hard to finish his last “album”, if you can call it that. It’s no secret that Schnitzler’s known for despising catchy melodies. The closest he ever came to making pop was in the early eighties when he released

“Auf dem schwarzen Kanal”, which fit well to the whole punk and new wave thing in Germany at the time. But even that wasn’t the same as other pop music of the era.

You could hum to “Los Niños Del Parque” by Liaisons Dangereuses and you could hum to DAF, but you couldn’t hum to Schnitzler.

But you still wanted to listen to it again and again.

Schnitzler had an incredible archive of his music and he was adamant about putting all of his old cassette tapes onto CD-R. Most of these recordings—and there are hundreds, if not thousands—are a mix of various soundscapes and individual synth lines that sound distinctly like Schnitzler. The amazing thing was that he made these “raw” CD-Rs available to the public, with all these interesting little musical vignettes that sound sort of unfinished. You don’t even really know what’s on the CDs before you buy them—they’re usually not dated or explicitly labeled.

Occasionally the disc will have a name, but you don’t know if you’re getting synth parts or drum parts or whatever. He liked the idea that people would have one-offs of his, and he also liked people mixing

these various tracks together live, like a Schnitzler concert without the man himself, which happened quite often. It makes sense when you consider that Schnitzler was a student of Joseph Beuys and very into communication-related ideas of performance and recording, even though he often liked to work alone.

Endtime is like Schnitzler’s other self-released CD-Rs in that the tracks are short and, at first glance, you don’t really see a larger narrative. However, the album is made to be consumed as a whole, because the tracks do seamlessly float into each other. I know that he finished the album four days before he died when he already knew the end was coming. But it’s definitely not a bombastic epitaph, and it’s not depressing or euphoric or “transcendent”-sounding in any sense. Endtime retains the same sort of explorative character of Schnitzler’s other releases.

The music is typically unpredictable—you really have no idea what’s coming next. Ultimately, it’s experimental electronics at its most explorative—within a musical cosmos that Schnitzler created for himself. ~

“Reintegrating that mastery back into dance music” Peter Kruder on Elektro Guzzi’s Parquet (Macro) It’s fascinating to me how far some musicians will go to get away from the stock, generic sounds of electronic presets and plugins. These days, sound design and sound architecture for electronic musicians has replaced melody and 22

EB 4/2011

harmony as the backbone of writing music. It’s not like people don’t write catchy melodies anymore, but these aren’t really considered predictable factors of success or popularity. As somebody who’s well acquainted with the pre-

set sounds of both software and hardware, one of the first things I noticed when listening to Parquet is how hard Elektro Guzzi have worked to modify their instruments—guitar, drums, and bass— in order to find sounds that are

music just needs a pulse

recommEndations

“You really have no idea what’s coming next” Andreas Reihse recommends Conrad Schnitzler’s Endtime (m=minimal)

Andreas Reihse is a Berlin-based musician, producer, blogger and founding member of the post-krautrock band Kreidler. He recently released his first solo album Romantic Comedy.

Conrad Schnitzler isn’t a household name, and in many ways, I’d consider him an outside artist. He was certainly never able to live large from the music he made and the ideas he developed, even though he had an enormous influence on the musicians and artists around him. I guess you could say that influencing your peers is one of the most important things you can do in his line of work—certainly more than making money. But artists shouldn’t have to worry about financial and bureaucratic bullshit.

It’s not only boring; it’s also bad for your health. I think worrying about things like that is one of the reasons why people, and artists especially, die young. And saying great art is only made by those who suffer is complete bullshit.

Schnitzler wasn’t really young anymore when he passed away last August, but he still should have lived much much longer.

He knew he didn’t have long to live, which is why he worked so hard to finish his last “album”, if you can call it that. It’s no secret that Schnitzler’s known for despising catchy melodies. The closest he ever came to making pop was in the early eighties when he released

“Auf dem schwarzen Kanal”, which fit well to the whole punk and new wave thing in Germany at the time. But even that wasn’t the same as other pop music of the era.

You could hum to “Los Niños Del Parque” by Liaisons Dangereuses and you could hum to DAF, but you couldn’t hum to Schnitzler.

But you still wanted to listen to it again and again.

Schnitzler had an incredible archive of his music and he was adamant about putting all of his old cassette tapes onto CD-R. Most of these recordings—and there are hundreds, if not thousands—are a mix of various soundscapes and individual synth lines that sound distinctly like Schnitzler. The amazing thing was that he made these “raw” CD-Rs available to the public, with all these interesting little musical vignettes that sound sort of unfinished. You don’t even really know what’s on the CDs before you buy them—they’re usually not dated or explicitly labeled.

Occasionally the disc will have a name, but you don’t know if you’re getting synth parts or drum parts or whatever. He liked the idea that people would have one-offs of his, and he also liked people mixing

these various tracks together live, like a Schnitzler concert without the man himself, which happened quite often. It makes sense when you consider that Schnitzler was a student of Joseph Beuys and very into communication-related ideas of performance and recording, even though he often liked to work alone.

Endtime is like Schnitzler’s other self-released CD-Rs in that the tracks are short and, at first glance, you don’t really see a larger narrative. However, the album is made to be consumed as a whole, because the tracks do seamlessly float into each other. I know that he finished the album four days before he died when he already knew the end was coming. But it’s definitely not a bombastic epitaph, and it’s not depressing or euphoric or “transcendent”-sounding in any sense. Endtime retains the same sort of explorative character of Schnitzler’s other releases.

The music is typically unpredictable—you really have no idea what’s coming next. Ultimately, it’s experimental electronics at its most explorative—within a musical cosmos that Schnitzler created for himself. ~

“Reintegrating that mastery back into dance music” Peter Kruder on Elektro Guzzi’s Parquet (Macro) It’s fascinating to me how far some musicians will go to get away from the stock, generic sounds of electronic presets and plugins. These days, sound design and sound architecture for electronic musicians has replaced melody and 22

EB 4/2011

harmony as the backbone of writing music. It’s not like people don’t write catchy melodies anymore, but these aren’t really considered predictable factors of success or popularity. As somebody who’s well acquainted with the pre-

set sounds of both software and hardware, one of the first things I noticed when listening to Parquet is how hard Elektro Guzzi have worked to modify their instruments—guitar, drums, and bass— in order to find sounds that are

music just needs a pulse

recommEndations

Peter Kruder is a Vienna-based musician, producer and co-owner of the label G-Stone Recordings together with longtime collaborator Richard Dorfmeister.

As a duo, Kruder and Dorfmeister’s downbeat sound­ scapes and inventive continental trip-hop would become some of most celebrated electronic music of the late nineties and early noughties.

their own. That effort has paid off, because this record simply sounds different than the rest . . . even though it still operates within the context of a very specific style of techno; a kind of reduced BerlinDetroit “minimalism”, if you can call it that. “Minimalism” here is maybe a misnomer, because most of the tracks—from the opener “Affumicato” to the pulsing “Moskito”—build into full, charging tunes. Nevertheless, you can still clearly hear all parts of the machine working individually, and in superb sonic clarity.

I would guess that’s also the result of working together with producer Patrick Pulsinger, whose contribution to this album shouldn’t be overlooked. I always especially liked the music Pulsinger did that was heavily influenced by Detroit and Berlin techno. But he’s really done so much. Like with Easy to Assemble. Hard to Take Apart, he re-processed and reinterpreted

tracks that he had recorded with these incredible Viennese jazz musicians. For me, the album was proof of the size of his musical vocabulary. But one of the most important things a producer can do is to adapt to a band’s musical impulses. When I was helping to produce DJ Hell’s Teufelswerk, it was no different. Instead of trying to squeeze and force him into my own scheme, I decided just to add my touches to Hell’s own ideas.

And not only as a sign of respect, but also because what you end up with is usually better. Knowing Patrick’s work in the past and his affinity for jazz, it seems to me that he was able to rein in and direct Elektro Guzzi’s instrumental virtuosity towards ultra-straight, unwavering results, while still giving them space to breathe and improvise. And everything on this record just sounds really good, with the gates and compressors used to maximum pumping and breathing effect.

Twenty-five years ago, almost all music was played by people who had mastered their instruments— electronic or otherwise. Today, people have become fascinated by electronic musicians reintegrating that mastery back into dance music, especially through live instruments—from Hercules and Love Affair to Brandt Brauer Frick. But with Elektro Guzzi, maybe even more than other artists, you hear a band that refuses to rely on the “novelty” of their musicianship. In fact, they do quite the opposite: instead of dwelling on the uniqueness of playing live electronics, they’ve decided to get busy with experimentation, pushing both the boundaries of their instruments and, in the process, techno as a genre . . . or should I say rock? Rhythmically, most of what you’re hearing is machinelike four-to-the-floor, but the songs were played live. Parquet reallymade me wonder if man is not the better machine. ~

TURN ON!

E L EC T RO N IC B E ATS SLICES

“It feels hypnotic and circular” Kuedo recommends Oneohtrix Point Never’s Replica (Software)

Jamie Teasdale, aka Kuedo, is an electronic musician based in Berlin. As one half of the duo Vex’d, he helped usher in a golden age of creative exploration in British dubstep. Kuedo’s most recent solo album, Severant, was released on Planet Mu.

24

EB 4/2011

Over the span of his previous two or three albums, Oneohtrix has been able to develop his own musical language—one which most obviously consisted of various arpeggios and Juno synth sounds.

Those were also the elements people would use to describe his music in reviews and whatnot. You don’t really hear these sounds on Replica, but you do hear a unique musical voice and a continuing narrative to Oneohtrix’s exploration—and therefore a language that can’t be pinned down to instruments or individual sounds alone. For that reason, it’s hard to describe his voice exactly, so I think I’ll try and describe more

the emotions the record invokes.

At its core, Replica maintains a tension between elements that are pleasantly static and things that are constantly changing. It’s almost like watching something really immersive on television or on YouTube, being pulled into a certain world, but also being aware of yourself watching. It’s a two-fold presence of the work itself and it’s something I constantly feel when listening to this album. Replica is not just about what you’re hearing; it’s also about being aware of what you’re hearing, about the gulf between your reality and the one he’s presenting. This isn’t an intellectual awareness but more of

an emotional one. It’s music that, for me, describes the flaws of escapism.

He achieves that, in my opinion, through an emphasis on elements of bittersweetness: the music oscillates back and forth between imagination and reality and the difference between the two becomes its emotion. Because Replica is loop-based, it feels hypnotic and circular—but in a very specific way, because the loops aren’t clean.

Instead, they’re imperfectly interrupted by these abrupt events and sonic artifacts like small clips and digital distortion, which make it sound all the more homespun.

Electronic Beats SLICES – The Electronic Music Magazine.

Presents insights into the electronic music world through portraits, interviews, features and videos.

Reports on electronica and dubstep via house to techno.

WATCH NOW! WWW.ELECTRONICBEATS.NET / T V / SLICES

recommEndations

Peter Kruder is a Vienna-based musician, producer and co-owner of the label G-Stone Recordings together with longtime collaborator Richard Dorfmeister.

As a duo, Kruder and Dorfmeister’s downbeat sound­ scapes and inventive continental trip-hop would become some of most celebrated electronic music of the late nineties and early noughties.

their own. That effort has paid off, because this record simply sounds different than the rest . . . even though it still operates within the context of a very specific style of techno; a kind of reduced BerlinDetroit “minimalism”, if you can call it that. “Minimalism” here is maybe a misnomer, because most of the tracks—from the opener “Affumicato” to the pulsing “Moskito”—build into full, charging tunes. Nevertheless, you can still clearly hear all parts of the machine working individually, and in superb sonic clarity.

I would guess that’s also the result of working together with producer Patrick Pulsinger, whose contribution to this album shouldn’t be overlooked. I always especially liked the music Pulsinger did that was heavily influenced by Detroit and Berlin techno. But he’s really done so much. Like with Easy to Assemble. Hard to Take Apart, he re-processed and reinterpreted

tracks that he had recorded with these incredible Viennese jazz musicians. For me, the album was proof of the size of his musical vocabulary. But one of the most important things a producer can do is to adapt to a band’s musical impulses. When I was helping to produce DJ Hell’s Teufelswerk, it was no different. Instead of trying to squeeze and force him into my own scheme, I decided just to add my touches to Hell’s own ideas.

And not only as a sign of respect, but also because what you end up with is usually better. Knowing Patrick’s work in the past and his affinity for jazz, it seems to me that he was able to rein in and direct Elektro Guzzi’s instrumental virtuosity towards ultra-straight, unwavering results, while still giving them space to breathe and improvise. And everything on this record just sounds really good, with the gates and compressors used to maximum pumping and breathing effect.

Twenty-five years ago, almost all music was played by people who had mastered their instruments— electronic or otherwise. Today, people have become fascinated by electronic musicians reintegrating that mastery back into dance music, especially through live instruments—from Hercules and Love Affair to Brandt Brauer Frick. But with Elektro Guzzi, maybe even more than other artists, you hear a band that refuses to rely on the “novelty” of their musicianship. In fact, they do quite the opposite: instead of dwelling on the uniqueness of playing live electronics, they’ve decided to get busy with experimentation, pushing both the boundaries of their instruments and, in the process, techno as a genre . . . or should I say rock? Rhythmically, most of what you’re hearing is machinelike four-to-the-floor, but the songs were played live. Parquet reallymade me wonder if man is not the better machine. ~

TURN ON!

E L EC T RO N IC B E ATS SLICES

“It feels hypnotic and circular” Kuedo recommends Oneohtrix Point Never’s Replica (Software)

Jamie Teasdale, aka Kuedo, is an electronic musician based in Berlin. As one half of the duo Vex’d, he helped usher in a golden age of creative exploration in British dubstep. Kuedo’s most recent solo album, Severant, was released on Planet Mu.

24

EB 4/2011

Over the span of his previous two or three albums, Oneohtrix has been able to develop his own musical language—one which most obviously consisted of various arpeggios and Juno synth sounds.

Those were also the elements people would use to describe his music in reviews and whatnot. You don’t really hear these sounds on Replica, but you do hear a unique musical voice and a continuing narrative to Oneohtrix’s exploration—and therefore a language that can’t be pinned down to instruments or individual sounds alone. For that reason, it’s hard to describe his voice exactly, so I think I’ll try and describe more

the emotions the record invokes.

At its core, Replica maintains a tension between elements that are pleasantly static and things that are constantly changing. It’s almost like watching something really immersive on television or on YouTube, being pulled into a certain world, but also being aware of yourself watching. It’s a two-fold presence of the work itself and it’s something I constantly feel when listening to this album. Replica is not just about what you’re hearing; it’s also about being aware of what you’re hearing, about the gulf between your reality and the one he’s presenting. This isn’t an intellectual awareness but more of

an emotional one. It’s music that, for me, describes the flaws of escapism.

He achieves that, in my opinion, through an emphasis on elements of bittersweetness: the music oscillates back and forth between imagination and reality and the difference between the two becomes its emotion. Because Replica is loop-based, it feels hypnotic and circular—but in a very specific way, because the loops aren’t clean.

Instead, they’re imperfectly interrupted by these abrupt events and sonic artifacts like small clips and digital distortion, which make it sound all the more homespun.

Electronic Beats SLICES – The Electronic Music Magazine.

Presents insights into the electronic music world through portraits, interviews, features and videos.

Reports on electronica and dubstep via house to techno.

WATCH NOW! WWW.ELECTRONICBEATS.NET / T V / SLICES

Above: “Taschenrechner” still from Kraftwerk’s 3D video installation. © Kraftwerk, 2011

26

EB 4/2011

Clearly, this album has nothing to do with over-glossed perfection.

The samples themselves are often taken from eighties commercials and TV shows and are kept rough, but deployed in really brave ways, musically speaking. Often you’ll

hear a sample appear completely naked, without any real tail or embedding or reverb or whatever.

To me, these are the elements which establish the distance between the listener and the track at hand. This music isn’t escapist;

it admits the flaws of this world and the utopian alternatives.

I admire Oneohtrix for his fearless use of samples and his ability to embrace flaws. It’s something that I feel I tried to do on my last album,

Severant, but not enough. People describe Severant as futuristic and grand, but my original intention was for it to sound homespun and flawed in its grandeur, even though I’m not really sure it gets that point across. Replica un­doubtedly

achieves that. These days electronic music is often judged by its level of technical prowess—people have certain expectations about how well rendered things are supposed to sound . . . at least compared to other forms of music. To ignore

those norms and expectations requires strength of mind and purpose, which is maybe the thing I respect most about this record. It‘s also just beautiful and can wonderfully envelop any space in which it’s played. ~

No, it’s not an iPhone.

EB 4/2011

27

Above: “Taschenrechner” still from Kraftwerk’s 3D video installation. © Kraftwerk, 2011

26

EB 4/2011

Clearly, this album has nothing to do with over-glossed perfection.

The samples themselves are often taken from eighties commercials and TV shows and are kept rough, but deployed in really brave ways, musically speaking. Often you’ll

hear a sample appear completely naked, without any real tail or embedding or reverb or whatever.

To me, these are the elements which establish the distance between the listener and the track at hand. This music isn’t escapist;

it admits the flaws of this world and the utopian alternatives.

I admire Oneohtrix for his fearless use of samples and his ability to embrace flaws. It’s something that I feel I tried to do on my last album,

Severant, but not enough. People describe Severant as futuristic and grand, but my original intention was for it to sound homespun and flawed in its grandeur, even though I’m not really sure it gets that point across. Replica un­doubtedly

achieves that. These days electronic music is often judged by its level of technical prowess—people have certain expectations about how well rendered things are supposed to sound . . . at least compared to other forms of music. To ignore

those norms and expectations requires strength of mind and purpose, which is maybe the thing I respect most about this record. It‘s also just beautiful and can wonderfully envelop any space in which it’s played. ~

No, it’s not an iPhone.

EB 4/2011

27

s n o i tad n E m m o c e r

“We’re dealing with one of the best improvisational bands in the history of rock and roll” Chris Bohn on The Grateful Dead’s Europe ’72: The Complete Recordings (Rhino)

Above: New Orleanians persevere after the destruction of Hurricane Katrina in David Simon’s Treme.

Christoph Dreher is a German musician, filmmaker, television producer and professor for film and video at the Merz Akademie in Stuttgart. Dreher’s postpunk/postrock band Die Haut was highly influential for a number of musicians, including Arto Lindsay, Nick Cave, Kim Gordon and Jeffrey Lee Pierce.

28

EB 4/2011

“You want the music to be heard” Christoph Dreher recommends David Simon’s Treme (HBO) Since 2008, fans of HBO’s The Wire have been eagerly awaiting writer and producer David Simon’s next series. When he announced the news about Treme in 2009, expectations were high. Now, after two seasons, I can say with confidence that there are very few narrative similarities between the two series’, except that both are portraits of cities. While The Wire introduced the world to Baltimore’s drug culture and political and medial infrastructure, Treme examines New Orleans’ music scene in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. In both cases, the urban environment marks the starting point of all narration, and frames the shows’ plots.

Of course, the people of New Orleans have other stories to tell than those living in Baltimore, and you couldn’t imagine a more visually powerful and media-relevant setting than in Treme. The makers certainly didn’t have to look too hard to scout locations—they just set up amidst the destruction and started filming. Already in the first episode, David Simon makes

it clear that it wasn’t the “natural disaster” hurricane Katrina that destroyed America’s funk, jazz and Cajun capital, but rather the “man-made disaster” of gross incompetence—which eventually becomes Treme’s main framework.

But just as important to the series is music—brass music in particular, and to my knowledge, Treme is the first TV series ever to make it almost its entire focus. As a director, I know that integrating music into a narrative film is never easy. You want to show those performing and you want the music to be heard, but you don’t want to kill the story or bore the audience. It’s a delicate balance. Treme does a brilliant job of explaining the historical background of the music that’s being shown, as well as the general workings of Cajun, jazz and other originally southern American genres.

The protagonists in Treme are musicians, radio DJs, waitresses, political activists, bar owners and Mardi Gras staples and are played

by a familiar cast. From The Wire we have the brilliant Clarke Peters and Wendell Pierce, but there are also a whole slew of famous actors and musicians involved such as John Goodman, Elvis Costello, Dr. John or Allen Toussaint. And because the music is so key to the plot, the viewer is both intently watching and listening.

With every episode, we follow the struggles of a handful of musicians—how they fight for money and gigs, and how they play every last funeral, dive, gin joint and Mardi Gras parade. But mostly the focus is on the perseverence of two main characters: Antoine Batiste (Wendell Pierce)—a gig-hungry musician and music teacher who also gives lessons to young kids— and Creighton Bernette (John Goodman)—a blogger who wants the world to know that the drowning of the Big Easy was caused by man. Through the eyes of his protagonists, Simon expertly tells the story of a city that’s refused to sacrifice its dignity, and where the level of live music is still far above anywhere else in the world. ~

Like Bob Dylan, The Grateful Dead are not the sort of group you impose on people. I know that when Jerry Garcia was confronted about how inaccessible The Dead’s recorded output was, he would just tell them that their music wasn’t for everybody. It’s understandable that people would have problems with the “social” or “cultural” aspect of what The Dead appear to represent. But when it comes to the actual music, I think it’s much harder to deny that we’re dealing with one of the best improvisational bands in the history of rock and roll—with CAN perhaps sharing the crown.

But first to the misconceptions: The Dead’s presumed position as one of the ultimate icons of peaceloving, edgeless hippy culture is, in many ways, a total fallacy—and that’s exactly what the Europe 72 box set brings out. From very early on in their career, The Dead were an outsider band. Their connections to The Hells Angels established their affinity for outlaw culture and their inextricable link to drugs of all sorts—although acid was perhaps the most important element in their creative venture. And I’m not talking about the “Hello tree, hello sky” style, carefree utopian trip experience— I’m talking about the dark, cold, frightening, permanently mindaltering influence of LSD that defined the band’s explorative vein.

Throughout the box set, you can hear how deeply the acid experience has penetrated the fabric of

their music and transformed the way they improvise and relate to each other—not to mention affect the length of the songs. The Dead were really the first band to play for hours and hours on end and develop an entirely different concept of time—resulting also in an incredibly original sense of rhythm, melody, and build.

Europe ’72 shows the band at the very height of their powers, and in my opinion, captures nothing less than the infancy of rave culture, with the separation between the band and the audience dissolving amidst the music’s lengthy and unpredictable direction. While The Dead’s pioneering ballroom rave was born in the mid-sixties during Ken Kesey and The Merry Pranksters’ acid tests, it wasn’t until the late sixties and early seventies that the endless improvisation and song stretching reached its creative peak.

The box set is clearly also an archival feat enabled by digital technology, which makes it not only ultra-modern, but also a key factor in understanding The Dead’s progression and the evolution of their live show. Included are seventy-two CDs with around sixty hours of music—essentially every single note of the band’s twenty-two European dates. For those who aren’t already fans, the box set might be a somewhat difficult place to start. But for those who know and like The Dead, this tour is maybe the best example I know of the sonic melting pot that was the band’s varied influences:

Pigpen’s R&B, Bob Weir’s rock and roll, Jerry Garcia’s blues and bluegrass and the whole band’s overall psychedelic, avant-garde wall of sound. Also, The Dead’s reported “discovery” of cocaine on the European tour gives the playing a euphoric sheen—especially noticeable on the various versions of “Dark Star”, “The Other One” and “Turn on Your Love Light”. Not to overstate the point, but the influence of drugs on The Dead is not to be underestimated.

People like to say that the atmosphere of raves or clubs is more egalitarian than the average rock show, because the DJ isn’t always the focus of attention.

There’s some truth to that, of course, but there are also plenty of club-goers who love staring at somebody work the turntables or even a laptop—as there were plenty of Deadheads who paid little attention to what was happening onstage.

That’s why the Europe ’72 box set sounds like a pre-computer age blueprint of a rave future—especially in terms of the length of the music, its chemical foundation and the atmosphere that spawned these brave, seemingly endless musical voyages. And by brave, I mean that The Dead are entirely unafraid of taking risks—not just because they’re proficient musicians, but rather because they have an entirely different approach to making music. Some might say that in the past that’s resulted in unnecessarily sloppy output. This box set is exactly the opposite. ~

Above: Europe, lysergic. Three of the twenty-two acid tinged covers included in The Grateful Dead’s Europe ’72 box set.

Chris Bohn is a long-time editor of London-based avant garde music magazine The Wire. Bohn, who sometimes writes under the pseudonym Biba Kopf, is also an expert on improvisation in pop music.

EB 4/2011

29

s n o i tad n E m m o c e r

“We’re dealing with one of the best improvisational bands in the history of rock and roll” Chris Bohn on The Grateful Dead’s Europe ’72: The Complete Recordings (Rhino)

Above: New Orleanians persevere after the destruction of Hurricane Katrina in David Simon’s Treme.

Christoph Dreher is a German musician, filmmaker, television producer and professor for film and video at the Merz Akademie in Stuttgart. Dreher’s postpunk/postrock band Die Haut was highly influential for a number of musicians, including Arto Lindsay, Nick Cave, Kim Gordon and Jeffrey Lee Pierce.

28

EB 4/2011

“You want the music to be heard” Christoph Dreher recommends David Simon’s Treme (HBO) Since 2008, fans of HBO’s The Wire have been eagerly awaiting writer and producer David Simon’s next series. When he announced the news about Treme in 2009, expectations were high. Now, after two seasons, I can say with confidence that there are very few narrative similarities between the two series’, except that both are portraits of cities. While The Wire introduced the world to Baltimore’s drug culture and political and medial infrastructure, Treme examines New Orleans’ music scene in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. In both cases, the urban environment marks the starting point of all narration, and frames the shows’ plots.

Of course, the people of New Orleans have other stories to tell than those living in Baltimore, and you couldn’t imagine a more visually powerful and media-relevant setting than in Treme. The makers certainly didn’t have to look too hard to scout locations—they just set up amidst the destruction and started filming. Already in the first episode, David Simon makes

it clear that it wasn’t the “natural disaster” hurricane Katrina that destroyed America’s funk, jazz and Cajun capital, but rather the “man-made disaster” of gross incompetence—which eventually becomes Treme’s main framework.

But just as important to the series is music—brass music in particular, and to my knowledge, Treme is the first TV series ever to make it almost its entire focus. As a director, I know that integrating music into a narrative film is never easy. You want to show those performing and you want the music to be heard, but you don’t want to kill the story or bore the audience. It’s a delicate balance. Treme does a brilliant job of explaining the historical background of the music that’s being shown, as well as the general workings of Cajun, jazz and other originally southern American genres.

The protagonists in Treme are musicians, radio DJs, waitresses, political activists, bar owners and Mardi Gras staples and are played

by a familiar cast. From The Wire we have the brilliant Clarke Peters and Wendell Pierce, but there are also a whole slew of famous actors and musicians involved such as John Goodman, Elvis Costello, Dr. John or Allen Toussaint. And because the music is so key to the plot, the viewer is both intently watching and listening.

With every episode, we follow the struggles of a handful of musicians—how they fight for money and gigs, and how they play every last funeral, dive, gin joint and Mardi Gras parade. But mostly the focus is on the perseverence of two main characters: Antoine Batiste (Wendell Pierce)—a gig-hungry musician and music teacher who also gives lessons to young kids— and Creighton Bernette (John Goodman)—a blogger who wants the world to know that the drowning of the Big Easy was caused by man. Through the eyes of his protagonists, Simon expertly tells the story of a city that’s refused to sacrifice its dignity, and where the level of live music is still far above anywhere else in the world. ~

Like Bob Dylan, The Grateful Dead are not the sort of group you impose on people. I know that when Jerry Garcia was confronted about how inaccessible The Dead’s recorded output was, he would just tell them that their music wasn’t for everybody. It’s understandable that people would have problems with the “social” or “cultural” aspect of what The Dead appear to represent. But when it comes to the actual music, I think it’s much harder to deny that we’re dealing with one of the best improvisational bands in the history of rock and roll—with CAN perhaps sharing the crown.

But first to the misconceptions: The Dead’s presumed position as one of the ultimate icons of peaceloving, edgeless hippy culture is, in many ways, a total fallacy—and that’s exactly what the Europe 72 box set brings out. From very early on in their career, The Dead were an outsider band. Their connections to The Hells Angels established their affinity for outlaw culture and their inextricable link to drugs of all sorts—although acid was perhaps the most important element in their creative venture. And I’m not talking about the “Hello tree, hello sky” style, carefree utopian trip experience— I’m talking about the dark, cold, frightening, permanently mindaltering influence of LSD that defined the band’s explorative vein.

Throughout the box set, you can hear how deeply the acid experience has penetrated the fabric of

their music and transformed the way they improvise and relate to each other—not to mention affect the length of the songs. The Dead were really the first band to play for hours and hours on end and develop an entirely different concept of time—resulting also in an incredibly original sense of rhythm, melody, and build.

Europe ’72 shows the band at the very height of their powers, and in my opinion, captures nothing less than the infancy of rave culture, with the separation between the band and the audience dissolving amidst the music’s lengthy and unpredictable direction. While The Dead’s pioneering ballroom rave was born in the mid-sixties during Ken Kesey and The Merry Pranksters’ acid tests, it wasn’t until the late sixties and early seventies that the endless improvisation and song stretching reached its creative peak.

The box set is clearly also an archival feat enabled by digital technology, which makes it not only ultra-modern, but also a key factor in understanding The Dead’s progression and the evolution of their live show. Included are seventy-two CDs with around sixty hours of music—essentially every single note of the band’s twenty-two European dates. For those who aren’t already fans, the box set might be a somewhat difficult place to start. But for those who know and like The Dead, this tour is maybe the best example I know of the sonic melting pot that was the band’s varied influences:

Pigpen’s R&B, Bob Weir’s rock and roll, Jerry Garcia’s blues and bluegrass and the whole band’s overall psychedelic, avant-garde wall of sound. Also, The Dead’s reported “discovery” of cocaine on the European tour gives the playing a euphoric sheen—especially noticeable on the various versions of “Dark Star”, “The Other One” and “Turn on Your Love Light”. Not to overstate the point, but the influence of drugs on The Dead is not to be underestimated.

People like to say that the atmosphere of raves or clubs is more egalitarian than the average rock show, because the DJ isn’t always the focus of attention.

There’s some truth to that, of course, but there are also plenty of club-goers who love staring at somebody work the turntables or even a laptop—as there were plenty of Deadheads who paid little attention to what was happening onstage.

That’s why the Europe ’72 box set sounds like a pre-computer age blueprint of a rave future—especially in terms of the length of the music, its chemical foundation and the atmosphere that spawned these brave, seemingly endless musical voyages. And by brave, I mean that The Dead are entirely unafraid of taking risks—not just because they’re proficient musicians, but rather because they have an entirely different approach to making music. Some might say that in the past that’s resulted in unnecessarily sloppy output. This box set is exactly the opposite. ~

Above: Europe, lysergic. Three of the twenty-two acid tinged covers included in The Grateful Dead’s Europe ’72 box set.

Chris Bohn is a long-time editor of London-based avant garde music magazine The Wire. Bohn, who sometimes writes under the pseudonym Biba Kopf, is also an expert on improvisation in pop music.

EB 4/2011

29

ABC

The alphabet according to Brandt Brauer Frick

as in Arab Spring: A new beginning can’t take place without dealing with the ghosts of the past. Still, we see the Arab Spring as a big chance and it’s good for set political structures to be rearranged—at least we hope it is.

as in Johann Sebastian Bach: On the ensemble version of “Bop” we include a hidden B-AC-H melody. (Think H as in B and B as in B-flat, like in the German system. And be aware that the melody may be transposed.)

Whoever can figure out where it happens and which instrument plays it gets put on the guest list (plus two) for a Brandt Brauer Frick show.

Brandt Brauer Frick successfully fuse electronic and acoustic sounds without the end product sounding like a forced marriage. And that’s no small accomplishment, considering the sheer number of mismatched electroacoustic failures we’ve had to endure in the noughties. Instead of attempting to recreate the conventional rhythms and sounds of electronic music, the trio has reinterpreted them with (predominantly) classical instrumentation to startlingly danceable results. But don’t call their music functional ...

Opposite page (left to right): Jan Brauer, Paul Frick, and Daniel Brandt, photographed

by Hans Martin Sewcz in Berlin.

Read more ABCs at electronicbeats.net

Scuba release. Watch out for a Brandt Brauer Frick mix in a year or two . . . or three.

as in Counterculture: Counterculture can’t mean a culture that’s always more authentic or more “real” than established or mainstream culture. Culture is all about expressing ideas and emotions, and people can find many different contexts to do that—also within established “high culture”. We’re very into pop music and would avoid calling ourselves countercultural. However, with our ensemble, we’ve created something you’d normally only find in wellestablished, state-run institutions, like symphony halls or opera houses (at least in Europe). This year, we’ve really had to learn a lot of things the hard way.

as in DJ-Kicks: All in all, a great series. We’re on !K7, so we’re lucky to always be able to steal a new DJ-Kicks from their office when we swing by. Recently, we’ve been enjoying the Motor City Drum Ensemble, as well as the new

as in Ego: We have big ones—we love what we do.

as in Form follows function: We’re not the best musicians to ask about functional music. We love things that are unpredictable and go beyond mere functionality.

We also believe that most people on the dance floor want drama and surprises, not just something that serves a predictable musical function—at least in the techno sense.

3/2011 EB 4/2011

29 31

ABC

The alphabet according to Brandt Brauer Frick

as in Arab Spring: A new beginning can’t take place without dealing with the ghosts of the past. Still, we see the Arab Spring as a big chance and it’s good for set political structures to be rearranged—at least we hope it is.

as in Johann Sebastian Bach: On the ensemble version of “Bop” we include a hidden B-AC-H melody. (Think H as in B and B as in B-flat, like in the German system. And be aware that the melody may be transposed.)

Whoever can figure out where it happens and which instrument plays it gets put on the guest list (plus two) for a Brandt Brauer Frick show.

Brandt Brauer Frick successfully fuse electronic and acoustic sounds without the end product sounding like a forced marriage. And that’s no small accomplishment, considering the sheer number of mismatched electroacoustic failures we’ve had to endure in the noughties. Instead of attempting to recreate the conventional rhythms and sounds of electronic music, the trio has reinterpreted them with (predominantly) classical instrumentation to startlingly danceable results. But don’t call their music functional ...

Opposite page (left to right): Jan Brauer, Paul Frick, and Daniel Brandt, photographed

by Hans Martin Sewcz in Berlin.

Read more ABCs at electronicbeats.net

Scuba release. Watch out for a Brandt Brauer Frick mix in a year or two . . . or three.

as in Counterculture: Counterculture can’t mean a culture that’s always more authentic or more “real” than established or mainstream culture. Culture is all about expressing ideas and emotions, and people can find many different contexts to do that—also within established “high culture”. We’re very into pop music and would avoid calling ourselves countercultural. However, with our ensemble, we’ve created something you’d normally only find in wellestablished, state-run institutions, like symphony halls or opera houses (at least in Europe). This year, we’ve really had to learn a lot of things the hard way.

as in DJ-Kicks: All in all, a great series. We’re on !K7, so we’re lucky to always be able to steal a new DJ-Kicks from their office when we swing by. Recently, we’ve been enjoying the Motor City Drum Ensemble, as well as the new

as in Ego: We have big ones—we love what we do.

as in Form follows function: We’re not the best musicians to ask about functional music. We love things that are unpredictable and go beyond mere functionality.

We also believe that most people on the dance floor want drama and surprises, not just something that serves a predictable musical function—at least in the techno sense.

3/2011 EB 4/2011

29 31

Brandt Brauer Frick can play more instruments than you.

as in Growing up: . . . is probably the most fundamental part of life. If you actually feel like growing up when you get old, you’ll have more fun in life (partly taken from The Teachings of Buddha found in our hotel). as in Kling Klang: Kraftwerk’s studio. Their pioneering use of electronic instruments is impressive. We have probably a tenth of the equipment they have, but we don’t feel like there’s anything missing from our collection. Musically it seems like we pretty much do the exact opposite of Kraftwerk: we make electronic music that’s warm and dirty instead of cold and clean.

as in Wimps: . . . should leave us alone.

as in New world order: Who are we to know what the future holds? We only want a world with great music.

as in Quo vadis, CLASSICAL MUSIC?: Obviously, some amazing classical music will be around for a long time and remain relevant. Unfortunately, very few people are aware of the music that’s written for classical instruments these days. Most of it is trapped in academia or stuffy old institutions, so it’s hard not to be pessimistic about its future. There are only a few composers living today that still inspire us.

as in Terror: If you really want to freak out, listen to Rotterdam Terror Corps! Certainly better than real terror, but still hard to take.

Brandt Brauer Frick cherish the wisdom of the holy books they find in hotel rooms.

as in Heroes: Steve Reich, Iannis Xenakis, Theo Parrish, Matthew Herbert, Jeff Mills, Robert Hood, Herbie Hancock, John Coltrane, 4Hero . . .

as in ID: We appreciate the idea of a world in which no identification papers are needed.

as in Live electronics: We only use basic electronics in our live set as a trio: a Nord Wave keyboard, Roland V-Drums and a Korg ESX-1. We don’t know much about live electronics—it’s much easier for us to explore mic’d acoustic instruments.

EB 4/2011

as in Remixes: Technically speaking, we tend to “reinterpret” instead of remix because we use little or nothing of a track’s original samples. It’s a cool process, because sometimes confronting foreign musical ideas lead us to things we otherwise would never have explored. Often it shows us where our own music could go in the future.

as in Underwear: We wear it. Right now things aren’t easy because we’re on tour in the U.S., playing up to ten gigs in a row, and flying almost every day. We need fast laundry service . . . but it doesn’t always work out. as in Yawn . . . : We yawn when we’re asked whether we make a fusion of techno and classical music. Who cares? as in Zen: Watch out for our upcoming Ninja Tune release, catalogue number beginning with ZEN . . . It’s a remix we did for Amon Tobin. ~

as in Mr. Machine: We found his bones in our garden. It appears that he was some sort of pre-industrial robot. Our experts are still not sure whether he was originally a man or a machine.

as in John Cage: No need to talk too much about Cage; everybody else does so enough already. But unlike to many twentieth century composers, he had a great sense of entertainment.

32

as in Open source: When it comes to the basics, we consider music history to be open source.

New music is never about inventing something from nothing, but rather about composing it from certain preexisting elements.

Playing a chord on a piano is not essentially different than sampling; it’s all been brought to you culturally and historically. Nobody should consider their music their own “property”—and that’s the great thing about music.

as in Xylophones: We especially love the xylophone’s big brother, the marimba, although its character is so strong that we can’t use it for every piece. Also, it takes up a lot of space. But when used correctly, it’s magic. We probably have one of the best marimba players in the world in our ensemble, the fantastic Mr. Matthias Engler.

as in Pornography: A guy and a girl are having sex. Suddenly, the guy freezes while they’re doing it doggy. The girl’s like, “What’s up? Keep going, I need more!” He responds: “This is a new technique I found online—it’s called ‘buffering’!”

as in Supernatural: We usually experience the supernatural onstage. Not like ghosts and spirits, but rather like a single unifying feeling that brings together the whole room and everybody in it. One of the best moments of being onstage is when our entire ensemble feels like one big machine.

as in The Velvet Underground: The Velvet Underground was an amazing band and show that you don‘t need much technique when you have something to express. Rock and roll! Heroin!

EB 4/2011

33

Brandt Brauer Frick can play more instruments than you.

as in Growing up: . . . is probably the most fundamental part of life. If you actually feel like growing up when you get old, you’ll have more fun in life (partly taken from The Teachings of Buddha found in our hotel). as in Kling Klang: Kraftwerk’s studio. Their pioneering use of electronic instruments is impressive. We have probably a tenth of the equipment they have, but we don’t feel like there’s anything missing from our collection. Musically it seems like we pretty much do the exact opposite of Kraftwerk: we make electronic music that’s warm and dirty instead of cold and clean.

as in Wimps: . . . should leave us alone.

as in New world order: Who are we to know what the future holds? We only want a world with great music.

as in Quo vadis, CLASSICAL MUSIC?: Obviously, some amazing classical music will be around for a long time and remain relevant. Unfortunately, very few people are aware of the music that’s written for classical instruments these days. Most of it is trapped in academia or stuffy old institutions, so it’s hard not to be pessimistic about its future. There are only a few composers living today that still inspire us.

as in Terror: If you really want to freak out, listen to Rotterdam Terror Corps! Certainly better than real terror, but still hard to take.

Brandt Brauer Frick cherish the wisdom of the holy books they find in hotel rooms.

as in Heroes: Steve Reich, Iannis Xenakis, Theo Parrish, Matthew Herbert, Jeff Mills, Robert Hood, Herbie Hancock, John Coltrane, 4Hero . . .

as in ID: We appreciate the idea of a world in which no identification papers are needed.

as in Live electronics: We only use basic electronics in our live set as a trio: a Nord Wave keyboard, Roland V-Drums and a Korg ESX-1. We don’t know much about live electronics—it’s much easier for us to explore mic’d acoustic instruments.

EB 4/2011

as in Remixes: Technically speaking, we tend to “reinterpret” instead of remix because we use little or nothing of a track’s original samples. It’s a cool process, because sometimes confronting foreign musical ideas lead us to things we otherwise would never have explored. Often it shows us where our own music could go in the future.

as in Underwear: We wear it. Right now things aren’t easy because we’re on tour in the U.S., playing up to ten gigs in a row, and flying almost every day. We need fast laundry service . . . but it doesn’t always work out. as in Yawn . . . : We yawn when we’re asked whether we make a fusion of techno and classical music. Who cares? as in Zen: Watch out for our upcoming Ninja Tune release, catalogue number beginning with ZEN . . . It’s a remix we did for Amon Tobin. ~

as in Mr. Machine: We found his bones in our garden. It appears that he was some sort of pre-industrial robot. Our experts are still not sure whether he was originally a man or a machine.

as in John Cage: No need to talk too much about Cage; everybody else does so enough already. But unlike to many twentieth century composers, he had a great sense of entertainment.

32

as in Open source: When it comes to the basics, we consider music history to be open source.

New music is never about inventing something from nothing, but rather about composing it from certain preexisting elements.

Playing a chord on a piano is not essentially different than sampling; it’s all been brought to you culturally and historically. Nobody should consider their music their own “property”—and that’s the great thing about music.

as in Xylophones: We especially love the xylophone’s big brother, the marimba, although its character is so strong that we can’t use it for every piece. Also, it takes up a lot of space. But when used correctly, it’s magic. We probably have one of the best marimba players in the world in our ensemble, the fantastic Mr. Matthias Engler.

as in Pornography: A guy and a girl are having sex. Suddenly, the guy freezes while they’re doing it doggy. The girl’s like, “What’s up? Keep going, I need more!” He responds: “This is a new technique I found online—it’s called ‘buffering’!”

as in Supernatural: We usually experience the supernatural onstage. Not like ghosts and spirits, but rather like a single unifying feeling that brings together the whole room and everybody in it. One of the best moments of being onstage is when our entire ensemble feels like one big machine.

as in The Velvet Underground: The Velvet Underground was an amazing band and show that you don‘t need much technique when you have something to express. Rock and roll! Heroin!

EB 4/2011

33

Zola Jesus on David Cronenberg

Mr. Style Icon Nika Roza Danilova grew up a loner in rural Wisconsin.

Having musicians and artists she could identify with was her link to a world beyond the farmland of the American Midwest. Here, the proudly and immodestly renamed Zola Jesus explains how her icon, David Cronenberg, exposes the alien in the concept of alienation, and how understanding horror takes sensitivity.

I’m a perfectionist and a controlfreak, but I know what I do isn’t perfect, because music can’t be perfect. Nevertheless, I still find myself confronting fears of imperfection—mostly in art, but also in controlling life’s general parameters. Being a perfectionist has been alienating for me in the past and David Cronenberg’s films offer some of the most insightful interpretations of solitude, alienation, and human behavior around. The concept of alienation itself always has some physical manifestation in his work—usually a really visceral one; characters who feel alienated literally become aliens; or they remain human but are surrounded by dripping, slimy, and threatening creatures.

My first Cronenberg film was Videodrome, and I can honestly say it forced me to view the world and myself differently. Musically, almost everything I do is influenced by a Cronenberg-lens of recognizing the alien in the everyday. You see, when you’re alone, you’re free from the influence of society. And when you really insulate yourself, you become a society of one. I’m a bit of a loner, and that’s what helps me maintain a healthy skepticism to my surroundings—which, at the moment, are constantly changing. This skepticism is something I’ve learned from Cronenberg, especially from the films he’s both written and directed, like Scanners or eXistenZ. His 34

EB 4/2011

So sah das vorher aus.

Und so sieht es jetzt aus. Wem das nicht gefaellt, der soll sich doch bitte bei mir melden.

surreality exposes how animalistic everyday rituals can be, and there’s always some thinly veiled philosophical motive or ambition embedded in the story. These are also the stories I like to tell.

Sometimes when I mention how much I respect Cronenberg, people go, “Oh, he’s OK, I guess . . .” I think most people don’t understand how sensitive you have to be to communicate such multifaceted ideas of horror and estrangement, which is something I personally relate to performing onstage—on a heightened platform. I often ask myself, “What do I do with this power?” Sometimes I wish I could direct it more.

I studied classical voice and thought about pursuing a career in opera, but I think that would have meant giving in to a perfectionism that doesn’t allow for error or messiness. Studying opera nearly destroyed me mentally. At a certain point I had to admit to myself that I’d never be the best opera singer in the world. Instead, I had to combine the naturalist in me—Zola— with the spiritualist in me—Jesus.

It’s a dichotomy between mind and body, reality and illusion that I embrace and that Cronenberg showed me. ~ David Cronenberg, photographed by Kevin Scanlon at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills.

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35

Zola Jesus on David Cronenberg

Mr. Style Icon Nika Roza Danilova grew up a loner in rural Wisconsin.

Having musicians and artists she could identify with was her link to a world beyond the farmland of the American Midwest. Here, the proudly and immodestly renamed Zola Jesus explains how her icon, David Cronenberg, exposes the alien in the concept of alienation, and how understanding horror takes sensitivity.

I’m a perfectionist and a controlfreak, but I know what I do isn’t perfect, because music can’t be perfect. Nevertheless, I still find myself confronting fears of imperfection—mostly in art, but also in controlling life’s general parameters. Being a perfectionist has been alienating for me in the past and David Cronenberg’s films offer some of the most insightful interpretations of solitude, alienation, and human behavior around. The concept of alienation itself always has some physical manifestation in his work—usually a really visceral one; characters who feel alienated literally become aliens; or they remain human but are surrounded by dripping, slimy, and threatening creatures.

My first Cronenberg film was Videodrome, and I can honestly say it forced me to view the world and myself differently. Musically, almost everything I do is influenced by a Cronenberg-lens of recognizing the alien in the everyday. You see, when you’re alone, you’re free from the influence of society. And when you really insulate yourself, you become a society of one. I’m a bit of a loner, and that’s what helps me maintain a healthy skepticism to my surroundings—which, at the moment, are constantly changing. This skepticism is something I’ve learned from Cronenberg, especially from the films he’s both written and directed, like Scanners or eXistenZ. His 34

EB 4/2011

So sah das vorher aus.

Und so sieht es jetzt aus. Wem das nicht gefaellt, der soll sich doch bitte bei mir melden.

surreality exposes how animalistic everyday rituals can be, and there’s always some thinly veiled philosophical motive or ambition embedded in the story. These are also the stories I like to tell.

Sometimes when I mention how much I respect Cronenberg, people go, “Oh, he’s OK, I guess . . .” I think most people don’t understand how sensitive you have to be to communicate such multifaceted ideas of horror and estrangement, which is something I personally relate to performing onstage—on a heightened platform. I often ask myself, “What do I do with this power?” Sometimes I wish I could direct it more.

I studied classical voice and thought about pursuing a career in opera, but I think that would have meant giving in to a perfectionism that doesn’t allow for error or messiness. Studying opera nearly destroyed me mentally. At a certain point I had to admit to myself that I’d never be the best opera singer in the world. Instead, I had to combine the naturalist in me—Zola— with the spiritualist in me—Jesus.

It’s a dichotomy between mind and body, reality and illusion that I embrace and that Cronenberg showed me. ~ David Cronenberg, photographed by Kevin Scanlon at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills.

EB 4/2011

35

Counting with

Christian Farley

aka Dinamo Azari of

Azari & III memorable line in a film or song:

“Please, Sir, I want some more.”

(Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist— Roman Polanski version)

nice guys can finish first!

- If it feels good, do it.

- I used to believe in crime and punishment. Now I believe in karma instead.

decisions I regret: So, you‘re assuming there are actually two things I regret? Well, I should have been a good boy and not cheated on an ex a while ago . . .

That was unfortunate, but I only got busted because I left my phone at somebody else‘s house. I think that‘s my only real regret.

people that should collaborate: Rihanna, Peter Gabriel and Grover from Sesame Street . . . produced by Azari & III.

things I haven’t done yet: -

hours ago . . . . . . I was bleaching my hair in the bathroom with peroxide.

records everyone should own: Chris & Cosey - Songs Of Love & Lust Depeche Mode - Music for the Masses Minnie Riperton - Adventures in Paradise My Bloody Valentine - Loveless Ministry - The Land of Rape and Honey Public Enemy - It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back Fela Kuti - Complete Boxset

After

Died Gone scuba diving.

Parachuted.

Taken Quaaludes.

p.m. . . .

. . . you should always change out of your jeans into a pair of non-denim pants.

My things I used to believe: - You can make money in the music industry.

- I used to believe in Santa Clause . . . and the Easter Bunny, of course.

- I used to believe that nice guys finish last. That’s actually not true: 36

EB 4/2011

lives . . .

Life one: Burundi / Life two: Rwanda / Life three: Canada / The rest: the world

I wouldn’t touch it with a Yes. ~

SPECTRAL CTM.12 – Festival for Adventurous Music and Related Arts 30.1.– 5.2.2012, Berlin www.ctm-festival.de Berghain, HAU, Kunstraum Kreuzberg / Bethanien, Horst Krzbrg, Gretchen, Kater Holzig, Passionskirche

SPECTRAL

30 years Touch with Hildur Guðnadóttir, Eleh, Eternal Chord, Jana Winderen, Charles Matthews, Marcus Davidson / Cosmo Vitelli / Éliane Radigue performed by Charles Curtis, Carol Robinson, Bruno Martinez / Harmonoius Thelonious / Heatsick / Hieroglyphic Being / CTM.12 – Festival for/ Adventurous Music and/ Morphosis / Pre-Cert Ital / Kettel / Loud-E Mark Fell / Mika Vainio Related Arts, 30.1.– 5.2.2012, Berlin Slant Azimuth, Anworth Kirk / Home Entertainment with Applehead, Roly Porter / Stellar OM Source / Tim Hecker / Zodiak Free Arts www.ctm-festival.de Lab revisited with works and performances by Conrad Schnitzler, Wolfgang Seidel,Kunstraum Qluster (Hans-Joachim Roedelius HAU, Berghain, Kreuzberg and others & Onnen Bock) and many more...

Ein Projekt von:

-foot pole . . .

Gefördert durch:

In Kooperation mit:

Counting with

Christian Farley

aka Dinamo Azari of

Azari & III memorable line in a film or song:

“Please, Sir, I want some more.”

(Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist— Roman Polanski version)

nice guys can finish first!

- If it feels good, do it.

- I used to believe in crime and punishment. Now I believe in karma instead.

decisions I regret: So, you‘re assuming there are actually two things I regret? Well, I should have been a good boy and not cheated on an ex a while ago . . .

That was unfortunate, but I only got busted because I left my phone at somebody else‘s house. I think that‘s my only real regret.

people that should collaborate: Rihanna, Peter Gabriel and Grover from Sesame Street . . . produced by Azari & III.

things I haven’t done yet: -

hours ago . . . . . . I was bleaching my hair in the bathroom with peroxide.

records everyone should own: Chris & Cosey - Songs Of Love & Lust Depeche Mode - Music for the Masses Minnie Riperton - Adventures in Paradise My Bloody Valentine - Loveless Ministry - The Land of Rape and Honey Public Enemy - It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back Fela Kuti - Complete Boxset

After

Died Gone scuba diving.

Parachuted.

Taken Quaaludes.

p.m. . . .

. . . you should always change out of your jeans into a pair of non-denim pants.

My things I used to believe: - You can make money in the music industry.

- I used to believe in Santa Clause . . . and the Easter Bunny, of course.

- I used to believe that nice guys finish last. That’s actually not true: 36

EB 4/2011

lives . . .

Life one: Burundi / Life two: Rwanda / Life three: Canada / The rest: the world

I wouldn’t touch it with a Yes. ~

SPECTRAL CTM.12 – Festival for Adventurous Music and Related Arts 30.1.– 5.2.2012, Berlin www.ctm-festival.de Berghain, HAU, Kunstraum Kreuzberg / Bethanien, Horst Krzbrg, Gretchen, Kater Holzig, Passionskirche

SPECTRAL

30 years Touch with Hildur Guðnadóttir, Eleh, Eternal Chord, Jana Winderen, Charles Matthews, Marcus Davidson / Cosmo Vitelli / Éliane Radigue performed by Charles Curtis, Carol Robinson, Bruno Martinez / Harmonoius Thelonious / Heatsick / Hieroglyphic Being / CTM.12 – Festival for/ Adventurous Music and/ Morphosis / Pre-Cert Ital / Kettel / Loud-E Mark Fell / Mika Vainio Related Arts, 30.1.– 5.2.2012, Berlin Slant Azimuth, Anworth Kirk / Home Entertainment with Applehead, Roly Porter / Stellar OM Source / Tim Hecker / Zodiak Free Arts www.ctm-festival.de Lab revisited with works and performances by Conrad Schnitzler, Wolfgang Seidel,Kunstraum Qluster (Hans-Joachim Roedelius HAU, Berghain, Kreuzberg and others & Onnen Bock) and many more...

Ein Projekt von:

-foot pole . . .

Gefördert durch:

In Kooperation mit:

38

EB 4/2011

EB 4/2011

39

38

EB 4/2011

EB 4/2011

39

max dax ON THE Phone WITH ANIKA

“That song changed the world”

British-Born Annika Henderson, aka Anika, subverts the music industry’s dominant paradigms in unexpected ways. The twentyfour-year-old singer recently released her debut long player—a mélange of dubby, rough-around-the-edges protest music with monotone vocals that sounds like Nico for the post-post-rave generation.

Good morning Anika. I know you’re on tour—where have I managed to reach you?

Yeah, all the time.

Vinyl only?

I just woke up in Detroit where we played last night. It was pretty wild; we did kind of a punk show. I’m actually still half asleep. The only problem with the U.S. seems to be the quality of the coffee.

So you prefer Italian espresso to filter coffee?

It doesn’t matter as long as it’s strong. But the American stuff is just too watered-down.

You’re currently touring the U.S. with Beak>—the same band with which you recorded your debut album, right?

Yeah, only Geoff Barrow is missing. As the “leader” of Portishead, he had to choose between them and us, and understandably, he went with them. But he made it clear from the beginning that Portishead is his priority, so I don’t blame him. We’ve managed to substitute him with two new musicians, but it’s all good. On top of that, Beak> and Portishead have tried to coordinate tours through the US, so we’d be able to catch some of their shows and vice versa. Only recently, Beak> had to do a TV show for a U.S. cable network—without me, but with Geoff. It always works out one way or another.

Do you DJ when you’re not playing shows?

Not in the States . . . Vinyl is just too heavy to carry around.

I used to spin vinyl only, but then I moved to Cardiff for a couple of years and when I went back to Germany to check on my record collection, it had strangely disappeared. I took it as a sign and stopped buying records. It took Geoff to bring me back into the game. He also introduced me to a lot of stuff from the eighties, which was largely unknown musical territory for me. But I suppose that’s typical for people who grew up in the nineties. Digging around for interesting music from the eighties became an obsession: I wanted to share what I’d found with people my age. I loved it all: Einstürzende Neubauten, all the New York stuff . . . It was probably a similar thing for DJs who grew up in the eighties to mine stuff from the seventies, I would imagine.

Since you know so much music from DJing, I’d be interested to find out who you’d like to collaborate with.

Yoko Ono, for sure. She’s a real artist, you know? You should check out her twitter feed . . . that’s what I call inspiring! Also, as a general matter, the artistic symbiosis of Yoko Ono and John Lennon is still so relevant today. We can all learn from them.

Anika, photographed by Georg Gatsas in Berlin.

EB 4/2011

41

max dax ON THE Phone WITH ANIKA

“That song changed the world”

British-Born Annika Henderson, aka Anika, subverts the music industry’s dominant paradigms in unexpected ways. The twentyfour-year-old singer recently released her debut long player—a mélange of dubby, rough-around-the-edges protest music with monotone vocals that sounds like Nico for the post-post-rave generation.

Good morning Anika. I know you’re on tour—where have I managed to reach you?

Yeah, all the time.

Vinyl only?

I just woke up in Detroit where we played last night. It was pretty wild; we did kind of a punk show. I’m actually still half asleep. The only problem with the U.S. seems to be the quality of the coffee.

So you prefer Italian espresso to filter coffee?

It doesn’t matter as long as it’s strong. But the American stuff is just too watered-down.

You’re currently touring the U.S. with Beak>—the same band with which you recorded your debut album, right?

Yeah, only Geoff Barrow is missing. As the “leader” of Portishead, he had to choose between them and us, and understandably, he went with them. But he made it clear from the beginning that Portishead is his priority, so I don’t blame him. We’ve managed to substitute him with two new musicians, but it’s all good. On top of that, Beak> and Portishead have tried to coordinate tours through the US, so we’d be able to catch some of their shows and vice versa. Only recently, Beak> had to do a TV show for a U.S. cable network—without me, but with Geoff. It always works out one way or another.

Do you DJ when you’re not playing shows?

Not in the States . . . Vinyl is just too heavy to carry around.

I used to spin vinyl only, but then I moved to Cardiff for a couple of years and when I went back to Germany to check on my record collection, it had strangely disappeared. I took it as a sign and stopped buying records. It took Geoff to bring me back into the game. He also introduced me to a lot of stuff from the eighties, which was largely unknown musical territory for me. But I suppose that’s typical for people who grew up in the nineties. Digging around for interesting music from the eighties became an obsession: I wanted to share what I’d found with people my age. I loved it all: Einstürzende Neubauten, all the New York stuff . . . It was probably a similar thing for DJs who grew up in the eighties to mine stuff from the seventies, I would imagine.

Since you know so much music from DJing, I’d be interested to find out who you’d like to collaborate with.

Yoko Ono, for sure. She’s a real artist, you know? You should check out her twitter feed . . . that’s what I call inspiring! Also, as a general matter, the artistic symbiosis of Yoko Ono and John Lennon is still so relevant today. We can all learn from them.

Anika, photographed by Georg Gatsas in Berlin.

EB 4/2011

41

Did you ever have the chance to meet Yoko Ono?

I could have gone to one of the shows she played with the Plastic Ono Band at South by Southwest, but I was booked the same night to DJ. It was the first time that I actually cursed DJing.

“War is over, if you want it.” I’ve never seen more convincing proof of the private becoming political. And of course, Yoko Ono wasn’t the first to pick intimacy or personal pain as her central theme. But she revolutionized music by doing it the way she did it.

What other examples come to mind?

Does Yoko Ono serve as a role model for you?

Honestly, I don’t know enough about her to claim that. I always tell myself: I’ll find out more when I know I’m going to meet her.

Sometimes it’s good not to know very much about someone that you admire. It can be really inconvenient, you know? If I would try

Digging around for interesting music from the eighties became an obsession. to study everything she ever did, I might lose my confidence in my own work. I mean, Yoko Ono didn’t only do a few great things— she’s really prolific.

You’re now twenty-four years old. How did you become so interested in the music and art of the past?

You know, I grew up in the countryside almost exclusively with people of my parent’s generation. They knew everything about The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Yoko Ono, Jimi Hendrix, The Grateful Dead . . . and that’s how I learned to love it. Of course, I don’t feel limited to older stuff, but growing up with it was just inspiring.

Would you agree that one of Yoko Ono’s biggest merits was to insist that the private is always political?

Are you talking about the Bed-Ins for Peace?

Not only—Yoko and John celebrated their love on the albums they recorded together by addressing each other publicly, and Yoko’s frankness underscored the strength of her voice as a woman.

In contrast, Dylan did this only once in his career, on the song “Sarah”.

Absolutely. Yoko Ono knew exactly that her voice would be heard— she knew that women all over the world would listen to what she was saying. I think that’s one of the reasons why she stood up with so much self-confidence. One of her greatest slogans was and is: 42

EB 4/2011

Take Billie Holiday’s version of “Strange Fruit”. It’s about the lynching of blacks in the South—people hanging on poplar trees as “strange fruit”. Holiday sings the song with such heartfelt emotion that it also becomes personal. That song changed the world.

“Strange Fruit” is often considered the first protest song.

“Sister Suffragette”, the famous women’s lib song from Mary Poppins, is pretty early too.

But the “protest” isn’t only in the song itself—it’s also in the singer and place it gets sung. Billie Holiday sang “Strange Fruit” at the Café Society in New York, as a black woman in the late thirties . . .

I get the point. It’s also fascinating to realize that this song has become an integral part of the mainstream culture. Hang around Starbucks for a couple hours—sooner or later, you’ll hear it amidst the hissing of the coffee machines. Even though that’s an odd development, it still makes me happy that these songs exist the way they do. And of course, there are so many more women in the worlds of art and literature who taught us how to tear down walls—from Simone de Beauvoir to Patti Smith.

Who continues to carry the torch today in your opinion?

No Bra from Berlin comes to mind. She performs bare chested. In the sixties it was almost commonplace. Today, it’s become a statement again. But I doubt that she will become part of the mainstream culture with her message.

Who knows? It’s hard to say what will come out of times of crisis.

That’s true. I also think that crises change our habits—how we receive information or how we consume art. When if not now does it make sense to become political again, to question authority? If you ask me, songs have always been a primary medium to articulate protest and political statements.

How do you see your own role in this context? On your debut album you include a number of covers, among them Bob Dylan’s “Masters of War”, which is perhaps the prototypical protest song.

I’ll tell you the main reason why I recorded that song: I was sick to death of all these nice and gentle people who have nothing better

to do than reassure themselves of the seriously uninteresting music that makes up the “indie” canon. It’s like people have completely forgotten how political music can catapult your thinking into new territory. So many people I know say that Bob Dylan is the best singer-songwriter in the world. The funny thing is: they don’t even listen to the lyrics! I did “Masters of War” to wake people up. First of all, this is a song about another song. The original was “Nottamun Town”, which is a British folk tune. By rewriting the text, Dylan already establishes a really important connection to the past. In the process, he describes the guilt and sin of the “masters of war”—those attempting to guide the so-called military-industrial complex—and, of course, the Vietnam War. The song had such a huge impact on the American anti-war movement, which was important, because war was and is one of the biggest American exports. People who ignore the words and just celebrate the beauty of the song’s form make me sick.

It’s the industry’s own fault that audiences nowadays understand music as something to “listen” to in the background—and that people want it for free.

It’s difficult to recognize Dylan’s melody in your version. If you wouldn’t have included the original title, people would have problems identifying the song.

That’s why I recorded two versions of it . . .

The second one is a dub version. Dub is more a vision than a genre, because dub songs don’t really have a beginning or an end—which makes the music infinite in a way. Also the idea of an “original” in dub becomes obsolete because there’s an endless amount of versions. Some people go so far as to claim that dub provides a kind of answer to questions of copyright and ownership—which again makes it political.

My whole album was recorded spontaneously in Geoff Barrow’s studio. We were four musicians who are all into dub. It’s a wellknown fact that Bristol and its reggae-infused music scene is considered an outpost of Kingston, Jamaica. There’s a long tradition of bands doing dub versions of songs produced here. Bristol is where pop music is produced like reggae, including strategies to disorient the listener, collective work processes, and lots of debate about the copyright. It’s all a very Jamaican way to produce and experiment with the results. Personally, I am totally fascinated by our two versions of “Masters of War” and it makes me so happy to feel that we were able to retain the gravity of the original in both.

Actually, playing around with it, we were really forced to listen carefully. And at the end of the day, Dylan did the same when he took “Nottamun Town” and squeezed a new song out of it.

Your debut album can be seen as a musical commentary on a number of songs made famous by other singers. Were you afraid that your own songwriting would get swallowed in the process?

Appropriating music and lyrics from other singers is an excellent way of raising new questions about music.

You say this with such authority.

Our approach is the opposite of what Simon Reynolds calls “retromania” or nostalgia. When we do a dub version of Dylan, we’ll also play with the emptiness and purity of the dub sound. Ever since people have been able to record in their bedrooms on the computer, we’ve been losing a sense of measure and proportion, sonically speaking. Everything has become overproduced. Before I joined the band, Beak> made it clear on their debut that they have mastered the art of reduction. And since I joined the band, we’ve been really keen on taking other people’s music—songs we truly liked—and purifying and simplifying it. It didn’t take long until we all agreed on doing that consistently, like as a method.

How important is the influence of Geoff Barrow? As the sonic architect of Portishead, he’s been a real innovator when it comes to creating atmosphere.

It was Geoff’s idea to try out Beak> with a guest singer. Even though Geoff sings on and off on the first Beak> record, the band is thought of as an instrumental trio. When I joined the band, it soon became clear that we had a whole new group. But to answer your question: Geoff plays a key role, but the idea behind Beak> is that nobody gives any directions. We usually all pick a song the day before we meet for rehearsals or recordings and then try to play them the next day. In the studio, we’d listen only once to a song that one of us had found on YouTube or whatever and then we’d try to play it from memory. We wouldn’t write down chords or arrangements. And since we always would record everything we played, we had lots of recordings in a very short time. Almost all the songs you hear on our first album were done like that.

So you really stuck to a certain method . . .

Yes. However, I printed out the lyrics because I couldn’t memorize everything in such a short amount of time. But otherwise, everybody took care of their own parts from memory. Maybe that’s why all the songs feel like they’re held together by some EB 4/2011

43

Did you ever have the chance to meet Yoko Ono?

I could have gone to one of the shows she played with the Plastic Ono Band at South by Southwest, but I was booked the same night to DJ. It was the first time that I actually cursed DJing.

“War is over, if you want it.” I’ve never seen more convincing proof of the private becoming political. And of course, Yoko Ono wasn’t the first to pick intimacy or personal pain as her central theme. But she revolutionized music by doing it the way she did it.

What other examples come to mind?

Does Yoko Ono serve as a role model for you?

Honestly, I don’t know enough about her to claim that. I always tell myself: I’ll find out more when I know I’m going to meet her.

Sometimes it’s good not to know very much about someone that you admire. It can be really inconvenient, you know? If I would try

Digging around for interesting music from the eighties became an obsession. to study everything she ever did, I might lose my confidence in my own work. I mean, Yoko Ono didn’t only do a few great things— she’s really prolific.

You’re now twenty-four years old. How did you become so interested in the music and art of the past?

You know, I grew up in the countryside almost exclusively with people of my parent’s generation. They knew everything about The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Yoko Ono, Jimi Hendrix, The Grateful Dead . . . and that’s how I learned to love it. Of course, I don’t feel limited to older stuff, but growing up with it was just inspiring.

Would you agree that one of Yoko Ono’s biggest merits was to insist that the private is always political?

Are you talking about the Bed-Ins for Peace?

Not only—Yoko and John celebrated their love on the albums they recorded together by addressing each other publicly, and Yoko’s frankness underscored the strength of her voice as a woman.

In contrast, Dylan did this only once in his career, on the song “Sarah”.

Absolutely. Yoko Ono knew exactly that her voice would be heard— she knew that women all over the world would listen to what she was saying. I think that’s one of the reasons why she stood up with so much self-confidence. One of her greatest slogans was and is: 42

EB 4/2011

Take Billie Holiday’s version of “Strange Fruit”. It’s about the lynching of blacks in the South—people hanging on poplar trees as “strange fruit”. Holiday sings the song with such heartfelt emotion that it also becomes personal. That song changed the world.

“Strange Fruit” is often considered the first protest song.

“Sister Suffragette”, the famous women’s lib song from Mary Poppins, is pretty early too.

But the “protest” isn’t only in the song itself—it’s also in the singer and place it gets sung. Billie Holiday sang “Strange Fruit” at the Café Society in New York, as a black woman in the late thirties . . .

I get the point. It’s also fascinating to realize that this song has become an integral part of the mainstream culture. Hang around Starbucks for a couple hours—sooner or later, you’ll hear it amidst the hissing of the coffee machines. Even though that’s an odd development, it still makes me happy that these songs exist the way they do. And of course, there are so many more women in the worlds of art and literature who taught us how to tear down walls—from Simone de Beauvoir to Patti Smith.

Who continues to carry the torch today in your opinion?

No Bra from Berlin comes to mind. She performs bare chested. In the sixties it was almost commonplace. Today, it’s become a statement again. But I doubt that she will become part of the mainstream culture with her message.

Who knows? It’s hard to say what will come out of times of crisis.

That’s true. I also think that crises change our habits—how we receive information or how we consume art. When if not now does it make sense to become political again, to question authority? If you ask me, songs have always been a primary medium to articulate protest and political statements.

How do you see your own role in this context? On your debut album you include a number of covers, among them Bob Dylan’s “Masters of War”, which is perhaps the prototypical protest song.

I’ll tell you the main reason why I recorded that song: I was sick to death of all these nice and gentle people who have nothing better

to do than reassure themselves of the seriously uninteresting music that makes up the “indie” canon. It’s like people have completely forgotten how political music can catapult your thinking into new territory. So many people I know say that Bob Dylan is the best singer-songwriter in the world. The funny thing is: they don’t even listen to the lyrics! I did “Masters of War” to wake people up. First of all, this is a song about another song. The original was “Nottamun Town”, which is a British folk tune. By rewriting the text, Dylan already establishes a really important connection to the past. In the process, he describes the guilt and sin of the “masters of war”—those attempting to guide the so-called military-industrial complex—and, of course, the Vietnam War. The song had such a huge impact on the American anti-war movement, which was important, because war was and is one of the biggest American exports. People who ignore the words and just celebrate the beauty of the song’s form make me sick.

It’s the industry’s own fault that audiences nowadays understand music as something to “listen” to in the background—and that people want it for free.

It’s difficult to recognize Dylan’s melody in your version. If you wouldn’t have included the original title, people would have problems identifying the song.

That’s why I recorded two versions of it . . .

The second one is a dub version. Dub is more a vision than a genre, because dub songs don’t really have a beginning or an end—which makes the music infinite in a way. Also the idea of an “original” in dub becomes obsolete because there’s an endless amount of versions. Some people go so far as to claim that dub provides a kind of answer to questions of copyright and ownership—which again makes it political.

My whole album was recorded spontaneously in Geoff Barrow’s studio. We were four musicians who are all into dub. It’s a wellknown fact that Bristol and its reggae-infused music scene is considered an outpost of Kingston, Jamaica. There’s a long tradition of bands doing dub versions of songs produced here. Bristol is where pop music is produced like reggae, including strategies to disorient the listener, collective work processes, and lots of debate about the copyright. It’s all a very Jamaican way to produce and experiment with the results. Personally, I am totally fascinated by our two versions of “Masters of War” and it makes me so happy to feel that we were able to retain the gravity of the original in both.

Actually, playing around with it, we were really forced to listen carefully. And at the end of the day, Dylan did the same when he took “Nottamun Town” and squeezed a new song out of it.

Your debut album can be seen as a musical commentary on a number of songs made famous by other singers. Were you afraid that your own songwriting would get swallowed in the process?

Appropriating music and lyrics from other singers is an excellent way of raising new questions about music.

You say this with such authority.

Our approach is the opposite of what Simon Reynolds calls “retromania” or nostalgia. When we do a dub version of Dylan, we’ll also play with the emptiness and purity of the dub sound. Ever since people have been able to record in their bedrooms on the computer, we’ve been losing a sense of measure and proportion, sonically speaking. Everything has become overproduced. Before I joined the band, Beak> made it clear on their debut that they have mastered the art of reduction. And since I joined the band, we’ve been really keen on taking other people’s music—songs we truly liked—and purifying and simplifying it. It didn’t take long until we all agreed on doing that consistently, like as a method.

How important is the influence of Geoff Barrow? As the sonic architect of Portishead, he’s been a real innovator when it comes to creating atmosphere.

It was Geoff’s idea to try out Beak> with a guest singer. Even though Geoff sings on and off on the first Beak> record, the band is thought of as an instrumental trio. When I joined the band, it soon became clear that we had a whole new group. But to answer your question: Geoff plays a key role, but the idea behind Beak> is that nobody gives any directions. We usually all pick a song the day before we meet for rehearsals or recordings and then try to play them the next day. In the studio, we’d listen only once to a song that one of us had found on YouTube or whatever and then we’d try to play it from memory. We wouldn’t write down chords or arrangements. And since we always would record everything we played, we had lots of recordings in a very short time. Almost all the songs you hear on our first album were done like that.

So you really stuck to a certain method . . .

Yes. However, I printed out the lyrics because I couldn’t memorize everything in such a short amount of time. But otherwise, everybody took care of their own parts from memory. Maybe that’s why all the songs feel like they’re held together by some EB 4/2011

43

centrifugal force. And of course, you can only record like that when all the musicians are really good at what they do. You don’t have to explain anything to anybody. They can turn anything into music—whatever the context.

You know, I never expected that the songs that we were recording from day one would actually get released. I honestly thought of the whole thing as a try-out, because for me, it all wasn’t more than one long, intense jam session . . . at least during the first few days.

Is it true that you didn’t know who Geoff was in the beginning?

I was sick to death of all these nice and gentle people who have nothing better to do than reassure themselves of the seriously uninteresting music that makes up the “indie” canon. It’s like people have completely forgotten how political music can catapult your thinking into new territory. So many people I know say that Bob Dylan is the best singer-songwriter in the world.

The funny thing is: they don’t even listen to the lyrics!

Yup. Nobody mentioned a thing about either Portishead or Beak>. And Geoff introduced himself only as Geoff. After a couple days though, he gave me a copy of the Beak> record. Then I understood.

Do you guys have a lot in common?

I would say we have a common rage against the music industry.

It’s the industry’s own fault that audiences nowadays understand music as something to “listen” to in the background—and that people want it for free. Both the industry and large parts of the club scene serve that need like a fast food chain. Musically, if you want to avoid contributing to that, you need at least two like-minded people in a band. Interestingly enough, it was Geoff who seemed to be searching for a person who shared these views.

I think we found out pretty quickly that we saw key things from a similar point of view. He wanted a critical and political voice in his band, but he wasn’t explicitly looking for a political songwriter.

to correct obvious “mistakes”. I think this is also a way of providing an alternative understanding to all the “perfect” music that’s played and produced according to certain norms and standards— like airplay, for instance. If you consciously reject standards, you’re committing a political act in the true Situationist sense.

How do you integrate that into the daily routine of playing shows?

You mentioned that you played a “punk” show in Detroit. What does that mean? Are you improvising? Is it violent?

That’s a good question, and I think a contradiction in terms of what we do. Beak> are really a bunch of nerds. If you listen to the first album or a record from Portishead, you’ll hear all the patience and concentration that’s invested into a really sophisticated sound architecture. We’re talking here about extraordinarily gifted musicians—and they get especially nerdy when it comes to the tiniest bits of sound.

What do you mean?

That sounds more like perfectionism to me . . .

I mean I think that he didn’t want a songwriter who was so obviously topical or literal about what they do. It’s not about lyrics that I could or couldn’t write, but rather about alternative methods of music production and refusing to write music for the industry.

Giving interviews can also be a part of it. My function is more analytical than anything else.

Well, even if Geoff doesn’t play at a live show, the band can still play “perfect” sets night after night. I would say that like a jazz band, we define a certain framework for our shows, which gives us security. You can’t underestimate the need to have something you can rely on structure-wise when you’re on stage, thousands of miles away from what you know. By having a framework, we’re able to create a temporary home away from home. But sometimes we look at each other and collectively decide to break the routine, which gives the music a totally different spin. Then nobody would recognize us by our sound alone. ~

So, in a sense you’re attempting to create an “alternate” reality?

It’s not by chance that we left the album raw and didn’t attempt

Anika appreciates the “imperfect” results of recording live. Protest music hasn’t sounded this good in years.

32

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45

centrifugal force. And of course, you can only record like that when all the musicians are really good at what they do. You don’t have to explain anything to anybody. They can turn anything into music—whatever the context.

You know, I never expected that the songs that we were recording from day one would actually get released. I honestly thought of the whole thing as a try-out, because for me, it all wasn’t more than one long, intense jam session . . . at least during the first few days.

Is it true that you didn’t know who Geoff was in the beginning?

I was sick to death of all these nice and gentle people who have nothing better to do than reassure themselves of the seriously uninteresting music that makes up the “indie” canon. It’s like people have completely forgotten how political music can catapult your thinking into new territory. So many people I know say that Bob Dylan is the best singer-songwriter in the world.

The funny thing is: they don’t even listen to the lyrics!

Yup. Nobody mentioned a thing about either Portishead or Beak>. And Geoff introduced himself only as Geoff. After a couple days though, he gave me a copy of the Beak> record. Then I understood.

Do you guys have a lot in common?

I would say we have a common rage against the music industry.

It’s the industry’s own fault that audiences nowadays understand music as something to “listen” to in the background—and that people want it for free. Both the industry and large parts of the club scene serve that need like a fast food chain. Musically, if you want to avoid contributing to that, you need at least two like-minded people in a band. Interestingly enough, it was Geoff who seemed to be searching for a person who shared these views.

I think we found out pretty quickly that we saw key things from a similar point of view. He wanted a critical and political voice in his band, but he wasn’t explicitly looking for a political songwriter.

to correct obvious “mistakes”. I think this is also a way of providing an alternative understanding to all the “perfect” music that’s played and produced according to certain norms and standards— like airplay, for instance. If you consciously reject standards, you’re committing a political act in the true Situationist sense.

How do you integrate that into the daily routine of playing shows?

You mentioned that you played a “punk” show in Detroit. What does that mean? Are you improvising? Is it violent?

That’s a good question, and I think a contradiction in terms of what we do. Beak> are really a bunch of nerds. If you listen to the first album or a record from Portishead, you’ll hear all the patience and concentration that’s invested into a really sophisticated sound architecture. We’re talking here about extraordinarily gifted musicians—and they get especially nerdy when it comes to the tiniest bits of sound.

What do you mean?

That sounds more like perfectionism to me . . .

I mean I think that he didn’t want a songwriter who was so obviously topical or literal about what they do. It’s not about lyrics that I could or couldn’t write, but rather about alternative methods of music production and refusing to write music for the industry.

Giving interviews can also be a part of it. My function is more analytical than anything else.

Well, even if Geoff doesn’t play at a live show, the band can still play “perfect” sets night after night. I would say that like a jazz band, we define a certain framework for our shows, which gives us security. You can’t underestimate the need to have something you can rely on structure-wise when you’re on stage, thousands of miles away from what you know. By having a framework, we’re able to create a temporary home away from home. But sometimes we look at each other and collectively decide to break the routine, which gives the music a totally different spin. Then nobody would recognize us by our sound alone. ~

So, in a sense you’re attempting to create an “alternate” reality?

It’s not by chance that we left the album raw and didn’t attempt

Anika appreciates the “imperfect” results of recording live. Protest music hasn’t sounded this good in years.

32

EB 3/2011

EB 4/2011

45

hans ulrich obrist talks to CARSTEN NICOLAI

“In terms of freedom, more was possible”

Across the artificial divide seperating the worlds of music and art, Carsten Nicolai, aka Alva Noto, is known for an aesthetics of precision: the form of the artist’s stripped-down sound and design installations often follows a scientific function, playing with and altering viewers’ audio-visual perceptions—from the documenta in Kassel and the Venice Biennale to the Guggenheim and Tate Modern. As a musician and co-founder of the legendary Raster-Noton label, Alva Noto’s unmistakable brand of glitchy and futuristic groove has also left a lasting mark on both minimal techno and electronic music’s more experimental sub-genres. Unsurprisingly, the artist seems as at home remixing Björk (via Timbaland) as he is collaborating with Ryuichi Sakamoto or Blixa Bargeld.

Curator Hans Ulrich Obrist met Nicolai in his Berlin studio to find out more about the sounds of science, understanding the elegance of machines, and what it meant for a generation of artists from the former East Germany to come of age while the world of their youth dissapeared.

Left: Carsten Nicolai, photographed by Sebastian Meyer in Tokyo.

EB 4/2011

47

hans ulrich obrist talks to CARSTEN NICOLAI

“In terms of freedom, more was possible”

Across the artificial divide seperating the worlds of music and art, Carsten Nicolai, aka Alva Noto, is known for an aesthetics of precision: the form of the artist’s stripped-down sound and design installations often follows a scientific function, playing with and altering viewers’ audio-visual perceptions—from the documenta in Kassel and the Venice Biennale to the Guggenheim and Tate Modern. As a musician and co-founder of the legendary Raster-Noton label, Alva Noto’s unmistakable brand of glitchy and futuristic groove has also left a lasting mark on both minimal techno and electronic music’s more experimental sub-genres. Unsurprisingly, the artist seems as at home remixing Björk (via Timbaland) as he is collaborating with Ryuichi Sakamoto or Blixa Bargeld.

Curator Hans Ulrich Obrist met Nicolai in his Berlin studio to find out more about the sounds of science, understanding the elegance of machines, and what it meant for a generation of artists from the former East Germany to come of age while the world of their youth dissapeared.

Left: Carsten Nicolai, photographed by Sebastian Meyer in Tokyo.

EB 4/2011

47

These are really special speakers produced by a small electronics company from Saxony, who had been making studio monitors even back in the GDR. What’s really amazing about them is that the tweeter, which is responsible for the mid and high range frequencies, is located in the middle of the subwoofer, which produces all of the lower midrange and bass sound. Essentially, all frequencies are then projected on the same axis, creating this incredible sonic transparency; you can hear everything with amazing precision.

That’s why I use them as my reference monitors—to be able to really hone in on the sounds I create. I use another pair of the same speakers for installations as well. In terms of function, they’re completely indispensible for what I do.

Like Beuys’ The secret block for a secret person in Ireland . . .

Yeah, it’s an original Max Beckmann. A friend of mine was actually responsible for doing some of the reprints and he gave me one as a gift—I guess you could call it a bootleg.

They’re beautiful objects.

Yeah, I always have one or two lying around in the studio downstairs.

They usually come with wood paneling, but I’ve had them modified.

And when are they from?

I’ve shown it two or three times. But as is so often the case with installations which have incredibly simple functions but are extremely difficult to control, I’m constantly rethinking its construction and coming up with new ways to improve it. That’s why it’s back in the studio, but I’ll be showing it in New York in September. I’ve already made some small improvements, details really . . .

You don’t hang so much stuff on your walls.

They’re almost like sculptures.

I need my walls empty to be able to work. When there’s too much happening around me, I can’t think. By the way, I’ve prepared some videos for the interview I’d like to show you.

It’s the same process as with an inventor.

And after an explosion the installation is, what, charging?

This is a short film on the syn chron installation I did in the Neue Nationalgalerie here in Berlin in 2005. It’s a piece that reacts to the location it’s exhibited in, and the fact that the Neue Nationalgalerie has glass walls on all sides allowed for it to be perceived differently depending on the time of day. It essentially consists of an automated forty-two minute cycle of light and sound, which is projected onto the skin-like surface of a crystal-shaped architectural body— the whole thing is certainly more impressive when it’s dark outside.

I treat them like sculptures, actually. For one installation in particular, I’m only able to use this specific kind of speaker. In the piece Invertone I experiment with what’s known as “phasing”. It involves a continuous noise emitted from two speakers at inverted wavelengths. The result is that the sounds cancel each other out in the middle of the room, creating an immaterial membrane. In theory, that produces at least one point of completely dead space with no sound at all. I’m particularly interested in the idea of people moving around to find the point where the sound stops.

The drawings themselves were done in the sixties, but I found them in the early nineties.

Yes.

I see.

Have you timed how long it takes for the installation to charge before it can produce the sonic boom?

It takes around four minutes for the tubes to be filled up with gas, and then the explosion itself . . . well, you’ll see. It’ll happen any moment now.

At night, when the museum was closed, the installation reacted to movement and activity outside the museum by means of a microphone trigger attached to the glass window. What you’re seeing here is a white laser, which was a special prototype produced by a company from Jena. It was pretty exciting to be able to use laser technology that very few people have access to.

[A swooshing sonic boom resounds from the glass tubes]

You might call it laser-architecture.

Wow, that’s incredible, just incredible. And it’s over now?

Well, it’s more of an architectural body that becomes an interface of light and sound. It’s a space that’s defined by its surface.

Here we are in your studio at 3:56 a.m. on the eighteenth day of the seventh month in the eleventh year of the third millennium . . .

It is indeed what some people might call an “unchristian” hour to conduct an interview. I’m looking at a flame, which seems to be part of your installation. The whole thing looks like it’s about to explode, but it couldn’t possibly . . .

Yes, it will explode, but it will do so in a controlled fashion. Here’s what you’re looking at: the flame is being sent through two glass pipes which are filled with propane gas. Due to the ratio of gas to oxygen, the flame increases in speed and, eventually, causes a rapid explosion when it has accelerated faster than the speed of sound, which is 334 meters per second. I’m creating a sonic boom—you’re looking at a sonic boom machine.

Have you ever exhibited this piece?

Some works are just never really completed, but instead are constantly being reworked and augmented. I think that’s often a result of being confronted with new conditions for presenting a piece— having to use new materials or a different space.

Yes, but it can be rigged to charge back up and happen over and over again, continuously, on its own.

A cycle, so to speak.

You got it. It operates itself, as long as there’s enough gas.

I can’t imagine a better way to begin an interview than with an experiment.

[Conversation moves upstairs to a more private part of the studio] I see you have lots of books here.

Some—that’s my library I tend to look at regularly. Downstairs in the studio is my research and record archive. The books I’ve amassed over the last twenty years or so: I have a small section for 48

EB 4/2011

architecture, architectural theory, design, visual arts, photography, books on Japan, a science section, and then a couple of shelves of music history and theory. It’s all material I tend to work with on a regular basis.

My archive and library aren’t nearly as organized.

Well, that’s why I try not to acquire everything I see. My library is not just an accumulation of objects and books; I really work with what I have all the time. That’s why it’s so organized . . .

[Pointing to a print] Is this a Beckmann?

Excellent, that’ll allow us to delve deeper into conversation.

I think it’s interesting that the technology you use in your installations is all produced in what was formerly East Germany—lasers from Jena, studio monitors from a small town in Saxony . . . it seems to correspond to a spirit of inventiveness and productivity that’s often associated with the GDR.

Chemnitz, where I grew up, is—or should I say was—known mostly for textile production. It was a real industrial city, and I think it’s had a really strong influence on me as an artist and musician.

Sort of like Ada Lovelace and the analytical engine?

Well, the first textile machines were basically mechanical computers, so in a way, yeah. The cartridge paper is basically a stamped series of patterned holes which function as the schematic representation for the patterns fed into and woven by the textile machines ...

And that reminds you of your childhood?

Your workspace here feels sort of like a recording studio.

It’s important for me to be able to separate the different aspects of my work, to create some physical borders between the label, my music, the publishing company and art—even if they’re occasionally combined in a sort of multi-media amalgamation like with what I just showed you.

This part of your studio in particular feels very hermetic and closed off.

This where I can really be alone. I have no telephone, little connection to the outside world and almost no distractions. [pointing at studio monitors] These speakers look and sound

incredible.

Yes, and early adulthood. I remember sometime after re-unification, I wandered into one of those defunct factories and happened upon a massive collection of cartridge paper. There I found these remarkable patterns drawn onto this really thick paper. These were beautiful, sometimes simple, sometimes highly complex weaving patterns.

Do you still have them?

Yes, there are more than one thousand drawings that I have in my archive. I’m still waiting to incorporate them into my work in the future—it’s sort of like a sketch pad, in a way.

I can imagine making a book out of them. It’s such a huge collection!

And what are the drawings like? Are they geometric?

Yes, very geometric and very beautiful. The industrial weaving machines produced these great abstract motifs—sometimes just huge ovals or other really simple forms. And because they were made bigger, they ended up looking like ornaments.

And you’ve always had them with you?

For me it invokes the history of the digital.

Sure, it’s the history of ones and zeros. But to come back to Chemnitz and Jena: Historically, there’s a huge concentration of patents that were registered in the area, which was the result of industrialization and the importance placed on technological advancement. I mean, in 1923 Chemnitz had the largest streetcar railway system in all of Europe, as well as the largest indoor swimming pool. It truly was the city of inventions and innovations.

So you grew up in an especially inventive atmosphere. When was the first time you went to a museum?

I remember going to the Chemnitz City Museum when I was a small child. I also recall that growing up, the most influential artist for lots of people around town was Karl Schmidt-Rottluff.

Really? An expressionist?

I grew up near Rottluff’s birth house and some of his family still lived in the area near the old mill. I think the house is supposed to be turned into a museum.

And what about other influences when you were young?

I remember being particularly impressed by the hands of Rodin sculptures, as well as by Bauhaus. I lived on the same street as the big Pölzig factory, and across the street was this incredible villa that I only realized years later had been built by Henry van de Velde.

It seems like the twenties were culturally and financially the most prosperous times for Chemnitz, is that right?

Yeah, that’s when Chemnitz grew the most, together with the industrialization. People called it the Manchester of Saxony. But I remember that whenever there was an official visit from a foreign president or when the city hosted any official event for foreign visitors, everything was fixed and renovated, at least superficially. It all became one big Potemkin village. That happened all over East Germany, really.

Next page: Carsten Nicolai, syn chron, 2005. Interior view of installation at Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, Germany.

Photo: © Uwe Walter. Courtesy: Galerie Eigen+Art, Berlin/Leipzig and The Pace Gallery/VG-Bildkunst

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49

These are really special speakers produced by a small electronics company from Saxony, who had been making studio monitors even back in the GDR. What’s really amazing about them is that the tweeter, which is responsible for the mid and high range frequencies, is located in the middle of the subwoofer, which produces all of the lower midrange and bass sound. Essentially, all frequencies are then projected on the same axis, creating this incredible sonic transparency; you can hear everything with amazing precision.

That’s why I use them as my reference monitors—to be able to really hone in on the sounds I create. I use another pair of the same speakers for installations as well. In terms of function, they’re completely indispensible for what I do.

Like Beuys’ The secret block for a secret person in Ireland . . .

Yeah, it’s an original Max Beckmann. A friend of mine was actually responsible for doing some of the reprints and he gave me one as a gift—I guess you could call it a bootleg.

They’re beautiful objects.

Yeah, I always have one or two lying around in the studio downstairs.

They usually come with wood paneling, but I’ve had them modified.

And when are they from?

I’ve shown it two or three times. But as is so often the case with installations which have incredibly simple functions but are extremely difficult to control, I’m constantly rethinking its construction and coming up with new ways to improve it. That’s why it’s back in the studio, but I’ll be showing it in New York in September. I’ve already made some small improvements, details really . . .

You don’t hang so much stuff on your walls.

They’re almost like sculptures.

I need my walls empty to be able to work. When there’s too much happening around me, I can’t think. By the way, I’ve prepared some videos for the interview I’d like to show you.

It’s the same process as with an inventor.

And after an explosion the installation is, what, charging?

This is a short film on the syn chron installation I did in the Neue Nationalgalerie here in Berlin in 2005. It’s a piece that reacts to the location it’s exhibited in, and the fact that the Neue Nationalgalerie has glass walls on all sides allowed for it to be perceived differently depending on the time of day. It essentially consists of an automated forty-two minute cycle of light and sound, which is projected onto the skin-like surface of a crystal-shaped architectural body— the whole thing is certainly more impressive when it’s dark outside.

I treat them like sculptures, actually. For one installation in particular, I’m only able to use this specific kind of speaker. In the piece Invertone I experiment with what’s known as “phasing”. It involves a continuous noise emitted from two speakers at inverted wavelengths. The result is that the sounds cancel each other out in the middle of the room, creating an immaterial membrane. In theory, that produces at least one point of completely dead space with no sound at all. I’m particularly interested in the idea of people moving around to find the point where the sound stops.

The drawings themselves were done in the sixties, but I found them in the early nineties.

Yes.

I see.

Have you timed how long it takes for the installation to charge before it can produce the sonic boom?

It takes around four minutes for the tubes to be filled up with gas, and then the explosion itself . . . well, you’ll see. It’ll happen any moment now.

At night, when the museum was closed, the installation reacted to movement and activity outside the museum by means of a microphone trigger attached to the glass window. What you’re seeing here is a white laser, which was a special prototype produced by a company from Jena. It was pretty exciting to be able to use laser technology that very few people have access to.

[A swooshing sonic boom resounds from the glass tubes]

You might call it laser-architecture.

Wow, that’s incredible, just incredible. And it’s over now?

Well, it’s more of an architectural body that becomes an interface of light and sound. It’s a space that’s defined by its surface.

Here we are in your studio at 3:56 a.m. on the eighteenth day of the seventh month in the eleventh year of the third millennium . . .

It is indeed what some people might call an “unchristian” hour to conduct an interview. I’m looking at a flame, which seems to be part of your installation. The whole thing looks like it’s about to explode, but it couldn’t possibly . . .

Yes, it will explode, but it will do so in a controlled fashion. Here’s what you’re looking at: the flame is being sent through two glass pipes which are filled with propane gas. Due to the ratio of gas to oxygen, the flame increases in speed and, eventually, causes a rapid explosion when it has accelerated faster than the speed of sound, which is 334 meters per second. I’m creating a sonic boom—you’re looking at a sonic boom machine.

Have you ever exhibited this piece?

Some works are just never really completed, but instead are constantly being reworked and augmented. I think that’s often a result of being confronted with new conditions for presenting a piece— having to use new materials or a different space.

Yes, but it can be rigged to charge back up and happen over and over again, continuously, on its own.

A cycle, so to speak.

You got it. It operates itself, as long as there’s enough gas.

I can’t imagine a better way to begin an interview than with an experiment.

[Conversation moves upstairs to a more private part of the studio] I see you have lots of books here.

Some—that’s my library I tend to look at regularly. Downstairs in the studio is my research and record archive. The books I’ve amassed over the last twenty years or so: I have a small section for 48

EB 4/2011

architecture, architectural theory, design, visual arts, photography, books on Japan, a science section, and then a couple of shelves of music history and theory. It’s all material I tend to work with on a regular basis.

My archive and library aren’t nearly as organized.

Well, that’s why I try not to acquire everything I see. My library is not just an accumulation of objects and books; I really work with what I have all the time. That’s why it’s so organized . . .

[Pointing to a print] Is this a Beckmann?

Excellent, that’ll allow us to delve deeper into conversation.

I think it’s interesting that the technology you use in your installations is all produced in what was formerly East Germany—lasers from Jena, studio monitors from a small town in Saxony . . . it seems to correspond to a spirit of inventiveness and productivity that’s often associated with the GDR.

Chemnitz, where I grew up, is—or should I say was—known mostly for textile production. It was a real industrial city, and I think it’s had a really strong influence on me as an artist and musician.

Sort of like Ada Lovelace and the analytical engine?

Well, the first textile machines were basically mechanical computers, so in a way, yeah. The cartridge paper is basically a stamped series of patterned holes which function as the schematic representation for the patterns fed into and woven by the textile machines ...

And that reminds you of your childhood?

Your workspace here feels sort of like a recording studio.

It’s important for me to be able to separate the different aspects of my work, to create some physical borders between the label, my music, the publishing company and art—even if they’re occasionally combined in a sort of multi-media amalgamation like with what I just showed you.

This part of your studio in particular feels very hermetic and closed off.

This where I can really be alone. I have no telephone, little connection to the outside world and almost no distractions. [pointing at studio monitors] These speakers look and sound

incredible.

Yes, and early adulthood. I remember sometime after re-unification, I wandered into one of those defunct factories and happened upon a massive collection of cartridge paper. There I found these remarkable patterns drawn onto this really thick paper. These were beautiful, sometimes simple, sometimes highly complex weaving patterns.

Do you still have them?

Yes, there are more than one thousand drawings that I have in my archive. I’m still waiting to incorporate them into my work in the future—it’s sort of like a sketch pad, in a way.

I can imagine making a book out of them. It’s such a huge collection!

And what are the drawings like? Are they geometric?

Yes, very geometric and very beautiful. The industrial weaving machines produced these great abstract motifs—sometimes just huge ovals or other really simple forms. And because they were made bigger, they ended up looking like ornaments.

And you’ve always had them with you?

For me it invokes the history of the digital.

Sure, it’s the history of ones and zeros. But to come back to Chemnitz and Jena: Historically, there’s a huge concentration of patents that were registered in the area, which was the result of industrialization and the importance placed on technological advancement. I mean, in 1923 Chemnitz had the largest streetcar railway system in all of Europe, as well as the largest indoor swimming pool. It truly was the city of inventions and innovations.

So you grew up in an especially inventive atmosphere. When was the first time you went to a museum?

I remember going to the Chemnitz City Museum when I was a small child. I also recall that growing up, the most influential artist for lots of people around town was Karl Schmidt-Rottluff.

Really? An expressionist?

I grew up near Rottluff’s birth house and some of his family still lived in the area near the old mill. I think the house is supposed to be turned into a museum.

And what about other influences when you were young?

I remember being particularly impressed by the hands of Rodin sculptures, as well as by Bauhaus. I lived on the same street as the big Pölzig factory, and across the street was this incredible villa that I only realized years later had been built by Henry van de Velde.

It seems like the twenties were culturally and financially the most prosperous times for Chemnitz, is that right?

Yeah, that’s when Chemnitz grew the most, together with the industrialization. People called it the Manchester of Saxony. But I remember that whenever there was an official visit from a foreign president or when the city hosted any official event for foreign visitors, everything was fixed and renovated, at least superficially. It all became one big Potemkin village. That happened all over East Germany, really.

Next page: Carsten Nicolai, syn chron, 2005. Interior view of installation at Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, Germany.

Photo: © Uwe Walter. Courtesy: Galerie Eigen+Art, Berlin/Leipzig and The Pace Gallery/VG-Bildkunst

EB 4/2011

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32

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I conducted an interview with Ai Weiwei not too long ago and he told me that when the Olympics were held in Beijing, the government repainted entire parts of the city at night while everybody was sleeping. It also happened to Ai’s mother’s house—which he then took to repainting in the original colors.

century in Germany, for example, only really grew into maturity and reached its true manifestation in the thirties, interestingly enough. You have to be able to think and design beyond the limits of your own lifespan.

CONVERSATIONS ON ESSENTIAL ISSUES

Have you ever designed a park or garden like that?

Bold move.

When you mentioned Manchester before, I had to think of music.

What was the music scene like in Chemnitz?

Well, there wasn’t any state-sponsored music academy and you couldn’t study it at university . . . But when I was growing up, the city was a real meeting place for autodidacts and creative types, plenty of “genius dilettantes”; basically artists and musicians who didn’t care about reading notes or classical training. The local band AG Geige was maybe the best example—they really represented the avant-garde even though they were on a label . . . which was pretty rare for anything that strange coming from East Germany. I actually co-run the Raster-Noton label with two of the band’s former members, Frank Bretschneider and Olaf Bender. AG Geige was probably the first multi-media project that I was aware of, which is pretty important if you consider the nature of my work. Back then, most of the bands in the area were playing punk.

I’ve designed plenty of things as a student but was only involved in the realization of one project, a so-called tree pyramid, where one tree is planted on top of a grassy, pyramid-shaped hill and then other trees are successively planted around it. Eventually the pyramid gets bigger and bigger while at the same time actually growing inwards.

And that got built—or rather, planted?

Yes, on the grounds of an old castle in Mecklenburg, not too far from Berlin.

Let’s talk about your new album Univrs for a moment. The music is simply remarkable; the level of precision involved in crafting the individual sounds and arranging the rhythms is astounding.

There’s something unrelentingly futuristic about what you do, and even though the blips and noises you use are unconventional, the tracks still manage to groove so heavily.

But eventually you ended up in Leipzig, right?

My brother was living there, and at the time, there were very few alternative exhibition spaces, and next to none where people who never formally studied art could show. Leipzig was an incredibly exciting place to be—almost more exciting than Berlin in some ways. There wasn’t the same sort of subcultural phobia that there was in Berlin, no extreme fear of the fringe on the part of the authorities. In terms of freedom, it just seemed like more was possible.

Talking about the past from the vantage point of the present reminds me of a piece you’ve been working on for years now, called Future Past Perfect.

This is a long-term film project and screenplay composed of single scenes shot one at a time, one each year. Conceptually speaking, each film is composed independently without any explicit connection between them. Ultimately, I’m interested in what kind of larger picture these films produce when I actually do put them together; what kind of story gets told when you have no consciously overarching narrative.

It seems like you expect something to be revealed. What do you think the larger picture will be?

I think it’ll only be possible to know when it’s done. It’s a bit like building a sculpture without having access to it in its entirety.

That reminds me of Borges’ description of a collection of disparate pieces of his own work as a form of self-portrait, like in Dreamtigers.

I think there’s lots of truth in that idea. I’m fascinated by the idea of pieces that are made over a really long period of time. I originally studied landscape architecture and the things I learned how to design were never things I would end up getting to see to completion. As a landscape architect, when you’re designing parks or gardens with special tree arrangements, you never actually get to see the finished product. The park and garden craze of the nineteenth 52

EB 4/2011

The album is the follow-up to my Transall series, along with Transform, Transvision, Transspray, and Transrapid. It was released in late October this year. One of the basic ideas behind my identity as a musician and producer under the pseudonym Alva Noto is the concept of transformation. I wanted to take the sounds and the scientific knowledge behind audio experiments and combine it with more popular creative musical impulses and rhythms. Essentially, I’m interested in adapting sounds that aren’t just avant-garde but rather exclusively science-related to the popular context. I think combining what I do as a visual artist with what I do as a producer allows me to dig deeper in dealing with technological transformation. It’s a common theme in my work to infuse things, particularly machines, with creative functions they otherwise wouldn’t have . . . Like turning a television into a generator of creative output instead of a mere receiver and transmitter of predetermined content and information.

E SUBSCRIB

!

W NO

*

Like a Samsung refrigerator that tells you what you have to add to your shopping list; a “smart fridge” . . .

Well, that’s the more humorous and classically futuristic version, where the machine works with you on a more personal level, like an assistant or a butler. But I really think that we’re constantly being confronted with two basic tendencies of ontological transformation: On the one hand you have phenomena like synchronized diving, where humans spend incredible amounts of time and energy in order to mechanize a given action. There, the goal is synchronicity, to be as machine-like as possible. On the other hand you have the human desire for machines to become human . . .

It seems like a fundamental desire for us to want inanimate objects to spring to life. Or rather: for robotically animate objects to regulate their own functions.

Yeah, as if we sense the need for the machine to express itself in some way. Clearly, we want machines not only to become human, but also, in doing so, to expose their own imperfections. Those longings go hand in hand—they’re part of the human condition. ~

> WWW.Electronicbeats.net/Magazine

or send an email to electronicbeats@burdadirect.de or call +49 (0)1805-03535 492 (14 ct/min from German landlines; mobile rates may vary up to max. 42 ct/min; additional fees for calls outside of Germany may apply)

Individual Order: 1 Issue € 4 (Germany), € 8 (Rest of the world) / subscription (1 year): 4 Issues € 16 (Germany), € 32 (Rest of the world)

* And choose your Subscription gift! vinyl:

Various Artists electronic beats compilation

Cd:

Elektro Guzzi Parquet

cd:

THE OPIATES Hollywood Under the knife

I conducted an interview with Ai Weiwei not too long ago and he told me that when the Olympics were held in Beijing, the government repainted entire parts of the city at night while everybody was sleeping. It also happened to Ai’s mother’s house—which he then took to repainting in the original colors.

century in Germany, for example, only really grew into maturity and reached its true manifestation in the thirties, interestingly enough. You have to be able to think and design beyond the limits of your own lifespan.

CONVERSATIONS ON ESSENTIAL ISSUES

Have you ever designed a park or garden like that?

Bold move.

When you mentioned Manchester before, I had to think of music.

What was the music scene like in Chemnitz?

Well, there wasn’t any state-sponsored music academy and you couldn’t study it at university . . . But when I was growing up, the city was a real meeting place for autodidacts and creative types, plenty of “genius dilettantes”; basically artists and musicians who didn’t care about reading notes or classical training. The local band AG Geige was maybe the best example—they really represented the avant-garde even though they were on a label . . . which was pretty rare for anything that strange coming from East Germany. I actually co-run the Raster-Noton label with two of the band’s former members, Frank Bretschneider and Olaf Bender. AG Geige was probably the first multi-media project that I was aware of, which is pretty important if you consider the nature of my work. Back then, most of the bands in the area were playing punk.

I’ve designed plenty of things as a student but was only involved in the realization of one project, a so-called tree pyramid, where one tree is planted on top of a grassy, pyramid-shaped hill and then other trees are successively planted around it. Eventually the pyramid gets bigger and bigger while at the same time actually growing inwards.

And that got built—or rather, planted?

Yes, on the grounds of an old castle in Mecklenburg, not too far from Berlin.

Let’s talk about your new album Univrs for a moment. The music is simply remarkable; the level of precision involved in crafting the individual sounds and arranging the rhythms is astounding.

There’s something unrelentingly futuristic about what you do, and even though the blips and noises you use are unconventional, the tracks still manage to groove so heavily.

But eventually you ended up in Leipzig, right?

My brother was living there, and at the time, there were very few alternative exhibition spaces, and next to none where people who never formally studied art could show. Leipzig was an incredibly exciting place to be—almost more exciting than Berlin in some ways. There wasn’t the same sort of subcultural phobia that there was in Berlin, no extreme fear of the fringe on the part of the authorities. In terms of freedom, it just seemed like more was possible.

Talking about the past from the vantage point of the present reminds me of a piece you’ve been working on for years now, called Future Past Perfect.

This is a long-term film project and screenplay composed of single scenes shot one at a time, one each year. Conceptually speaking, each film is composed independently without any explicit connection between them. Ultimately, I’m interested in what kind of larger picture these films produce when I actually do put them together; what kind of story gets told when you have no consciously overarching narrative.

It seems like you expect something to be revealed. What do you think the larger picture will be?

I think it’ll only be possible to know when it’s done. It’s a bit like building a sculpture without having access to it in its entirety.

That reminds me of Borges’ description of a collection of disparate pieces of his own work as a form of self-portrait, like in Dreamtigers.

I think there’s lots of truth in that idea. I’m fascinated by the idea of pieces that are made over a really long period of time. I originally studied landscape architecture and the things I learned how to design were never things I would end up getting to see to completion. As a landscape architect, when you’re designing parks or gardens with special tree arrangements, you never actually get to see the finished product. The park and garden craze of the nineteenth 52

EB 4/2011

The album is the follow-up to my Transall series, along with Transform, Transvision, Transspray, and Transrapid. It was released in late October this year. One of the basic ideas behind my identity as a musician and producer under the pseudonym Alva Noto is the concept of transformation. I wanted to take the sounds and the scientific knowledge behind audio experiments and combine it with more popular creative musical impulses and rhythms. Essentially, I’m interested in adapting sounds that aren’t just avant-garde but rather exclusively science-related to the popular context. I think combining what I do as a visual artist with what I do as a producer allows me to dig deeper in dealing with technological transformation. It’s a common theme in my work to infuse things, particularly machines, with creative functions they otherwise wouldn’t have . . . Like turning a television into a generator of creative output instead of a mere receiver and transmitter of predetermined content and information.

E SUBSCRIB

!

W NO

*

Like a Samsung refrigerator that tells you what you have to add to your shopping list; a “smart fridge” . . .

Well, that’s the more humorous and classically futuristic version, where the machine works with you on a more personal level, like an assistant or a butler. But I really think that we’re constantly being confronted with two basic tendencies of ontological transformation: On the one hand you have phenomena like synchronized diving, where humans spend incredible amounts of time and energy in order to mechanize a given action. There, the goal is synchronicity, to be as machine-like as possible. On the other hand you have the human desire for machines to become human . . .

It seems like a fundamental desire for us to want inanimate objects to spring to life. Or rather: for robotically animate objects to regulate their own functions.

Yeah, as if we sense the need for the machine to express itself in some way. Clearly, we want machines not only to become human, but also, in doing so, to expose their own imperfections. Those longings go hand in hand—they’re part of the human condition. ~

> WWW.Electronicbeats.net/Magazine

or send an email to electronicbeats@burdadirect.de or call +49 (0)1805-03535 492 (14 ct/min from German landlines; mobile rates may vary up to max. 42 ct/min; additional fees for calls outside of Germany may apply)

Individual Order: 1 Issue € 4 (Germany), € 8 (Rest of the world) / subscription (1 year): 4 Issues € 16 (Germany), € 32 (Rest of the world)

* And choose your Subscription gift! vinyl:

Various Artists electronic beats compilation

Cd:

Elektro Guzzi Parquet

cd:

THE OPIATES Hollywood Under the knife

Max Dax And A.J. Samuels talk to Blaine L. Reininger

“I was the last one to leave and I didn’t turn off the lights” As a student of electronic music at San Francisco City College in the late seventies, Tuxedomoon’s Blaine L. Reininger always had an affinity for synthesizers and sequencers. At the time (and place), the then novel electronic instruments were more geared towards experimentation than making pop songs—a distinction for which Reininger, a classically trained violinist, had little use. From this healthy disregard Tuxedomoon’s dark, humorous, and cinematic art rock was born, and with it a massively influential spirit of experimentation that continues to cast a long shadow over post-punk and electronic music today. In Athens, Max Dax and A.J. Samuels caught up with Reininger to find out more about Tuxedomoon’s latest recordings and the pains of rearing the bastard child of pop and musique concrete.

Blaine, you’ve been living in Athens since 1998. Here it seems like markets for music and art function independently from the rest of the crisis—because things are booming. How did you end up here and what made you want to stay?

Even though the crisis has been getting international press for the past two years, the writing has been on the wall for a while now.

But my decision to come to Athens had nothing to do with any of that, and neither did my decision to stay. Before I came here I was living in Brussels, but Brussels just kind of crashed and burned for me. My wife of seventeen years was dying from a heart condition, there was no work for us, and we were being evicted from

our apartment. We just really needed to get out and go somewhere else. We had some contacts in Athens, so we got on a plane and left Belgium without thinking too much about the future. A short time later, my wife died and I was pretty devastated. I didn’t really know how to deal with my life, much less take care of our son. It took a few years, but things have completely turned around. It’s been quite a trip since coming here.

It doesn’t sound like you have such fond memories of Brussels . . .

At the end of my time there I started to believe that what I had achieved in the past was pretty much it for me; that the rest of my

Left: Blaine L. Reininger shedding some light in Athens, Greece. Photo by Luci Lux.

EB 4/2011

55

Max Dax And A.J. Samuels talk to Blaine L. Reininger

“I was the last one to leave and I didn’t turn off the lights” As a student of electronic music at San Francisco City College in the late seventies, Tuxedomoon’s Blaine L. Reininger always had an affinity for synthesizers and sequencers. At the time (and place), the then novel electronic instruments were more geared towards experimentation than making pop songs—a distinction for which Reininger, a classically trained violinist, had little use. From this healthy disregard Tuxedomoon’s dark, humorous, and cinematic art rock was born, and with it a massively influential spirit of experimentation that continues to cast a long shadow over post-punk and electronic music today. In Athens, Max Dax and A.J. Samuels caught up with Reininger to find out more about Tuxedomoon’s latest recordings and the pains of rearing the bastard child of pop and musique concrete.

Blaine, you’ve been living in Athens since 1998. Here it seems like markets for music and art function independently from the rest of the crisis—because things are booming. How did you end up here and what made you want to stay?

Even though the crisis has been getting international press for the past two years, the writing has been on the wall for a while now.

But my decision to come to Athens had nothing to do with any of that, and neither did my decision to stay. Before I came here I was living in Brussels, but Brussels just kind of crashed and burned for me. My wife of seventeen years was dying from a heart condition, there was no work for us, and we were being evicted from

our apartment. We just really needed to get out and go somewhere else. We had some contacts in Athens, so we got on a plane and left Belgium without thinking too much about the future. A short time later, my wife died and I was pretty devastated. I didn’t really know how to deal with my life, much less take care of our son. It took a few years, but things have completely turned around. It’s been quite a trip since coming here.

It doesn’t sound like you have such fond memories of Brussels . . .

At the end of my time there I started to believe that what I had achieved in the past was pretty much it for me; that the rest of my

Left: Blaine L. Reininger shedding some light in Athens, Greece. Photo by Luci Lux.

EB 4/2011

55

life was just postscript. That things didn’t turn out that way is, in a sense, a miracle . . . or at least really unexpected. There was a time in Brussels when all I did was stay inside my apartment, watch TV and take drugs.

When things started picking up again for you after you moved to Athens, it seems like they picked up for Tuxedomoon as well. One can say without any hesitation that the Bardo Hotel Soundtrack from 2006 is one of the great and outstanding Tuxedomoon albums. Some bands age like bread and just get stale—Tuxedomoon seems to age more like wine or whiskey.

I’m glad to hear it. For the Bardo Hotel sessions we actually went back to San Francisco to record, which was a big deal for us because we hadn’t been back there as a band in almost twenty-five years.

We let the city and all of our memories—good and bad—just seep into the music. We tend to improvise endlessly, which means that the real task for recording is collating it later. Our most recent recordings were done in Brussels, so you can imagine that was a really heavy experience for me. The whole band had lived in Brussels for around twelve years, and then one by one, everybody left. I was the last one to leave and I didn’t turn off the lights. When I finally took off, I cursed the place and spit on the ground. I just thought, “Fuck this place, I’m never coming back here again.” But I did, of course.

Was it easier to confront the past in Brussels after you already had the experience in San Francisco?

Well, I think in both cases it was good for the music and it certainly felt therapeutic. It’s important for me to drag my consciousness along to places from my past. I’ve changed, you know? I’m much more “aware” than I was in the old days. I’ve shed different kinds of addictions over the years, and in the process I’ve become much more lucid in my thinking. I would say in general I try to pay more attention to everyday activities, which is a pretty Buddhist approach to the world. Revisiting the past and seeing it with new eyes is important. For me, these aren’t necessarily happy places, because I’m not really a happy guy. I thought I was finished in both San Francisco and Brussels, but I’ve discovered a whole new story . . . and it’s been good for the whole band.

Bardo Hotel includes lots of field recordings. Were these sketches of San Francisco part of a process of reclaiming the city for you?

They are! And talking about this stuff is like psychotherapy for me.

I could just keep yammering away about it forever . . . But really, I think I couldn’t possibly separate my emotions from my intellect, because people like John Cage have affected me in both areas so strongly. I mean, music, sound and silence are emotional . . . although Cage had a much different understanding of the concept of silence. He once described going into an anechoic chamber—a completely soundproof room—and hearing two sounds: a highpitched tone, which was the sound of his own nervous system, and a low-pitched tone, which was the sound of his own blood. That’s when he decided that true silence doesn’t really exist.

Entering an anechoic chamber can almost be painful—initially you feel this strange pressure on your ears, as if the air’s being sucked out.

It’s like diving—or being in an airplane that’s descending too quickly.

John Cage’s experiences with anechoic chambers were what led him to explore the concept of silence—which, in turn, led to exploring the sounds of chance. What role does chance play in the way you think about and write music?

I’ve always felt drawn to chance because of its Buddhist underpinning, you know? Chance as a way of reading the events of the universe . . . It’s like taking a random slice to analyze the whole— like with using the I Ching to figure out where to go in musical situations of your own invention. The funny thing is that when I’ve employed Cagean methods in the past, the result was almost always pop. And I’ve had a lot of success with that over the years. . . as have other people. David Bowie has done similar stuff writing lyrics with cut-ups and whatnot. It’s really good when you’re out of ideas, or when you haven’t played for a while.

So is employing modernist techniques just a way for you to shake things up before you write a pop song?

How do I put it . . . The process of composition is like tuning a radio receiver; it’s like making yourself sensitive—making yourself a conduit for a flow of information. Chance systems help to put you in a state of heightened sensitivity to your own thoughts and actions . . .

As if you’re eavesdropping on yourself . . .

We’ve always used field recordings in Tuxedomoon to incorporate our environment in a lateral way, not in a literal one. You know, we’re not interested in singing something like, “Oh San Francisco!

I’ve come back to you! How pleasant!” but rather to kind of subconsciously allow elements of wherever we are into the music; to just open the channels to the environment and see what filters through. Musique concrete has been an important part of what we do. You know, Tuxedomoon was founded by a bunch of guys who were really steeped in these kinds of methods and a modern aesthetic. This is the stuff I was learning when I went to San Francisco City College. My homework in my electronic music classes was to go and listen to Cage, Fontana Mix—stuff like that.

You describe an intellectual and emotional past that are completely intertwined.

You certainly step outside of yourself. I like to put my personal desires and prejudices aside to get into a kind of instinctive state. Then it feels like I know what I’m doing in some deeper sense. Whenever I set out to write something more literal—something where I can say “This song is about this, that, and the other”—that’s always when I get the worst results. And that goes for whatever medium I’m working in: theater, dance, whatever. To do good work, I need to be in a creative trance.

What’s your definition of pop?

The way I use the word I usually mean music that employs standard harmonies, diatonic composition, chords, melodies, lyrics, a four-four time signature—that kind of thing. Basically, a pop song

Right: Blaine L. Reininger (top) hamming it up for the camera on Glenn O’Brien’s TV Party.

Tuxedomoon (below—left to right): Friedrich Engels, Steven Brown, Reininger and Peter Principle.

56

EB 4/2011

EB 4/2011

51

life was just postscript. That things didn’t turn out that way is, in a sense, a miracle . . . or at least really unexpected. There was a time in Brussels when all I did was stay inside my apartment, watch TV and take drugs.

When things started picking up again for you after you moved to Athens, it seems like they picked up for Tuxedomoon as well. One can say without any hesitation that the Bardo Hotel Soundtrack from 2006 is one of the great and outstanding Tuxedomoon albums. Some bands age like bread and just get stale—Tuxedomoon seems to age more like wine or whiskey.

I’m glad to hear it. For the Bardo Hotel sessions we actually went back to San Francisco to record, which was a big deal for us because we hadn’t been back there as a band in almost twenty-five years.

We let the city and all of our memories—good and bad—just seep into the music. We tend to improvise endlessly, which means that the real task for recording is collating it later. Our most recent recordings were done in Brussels, so you can imagine that was a really heavy experience for me. The whole band had lived in Brussels for around twelve years, and then one by one, everybody left. I was the last one to leave and I didn’t turn off the lights. When I finally took off, I cursed the place and spit on the ground. I just thought, “Fuck this place, I’m never coming back here again.” But I did, of course.

Was it easier to confront the past in Brussels after you already had the experience in San Francisco?

Well, I think in both cases it was good for the music and it certainly felt therapeutic. It’s important for me to drag my consciousness along to places from my past. I’ve changed, you know? I’m much more “aware” than I was in the old days. I’ve shed different kinds of addictions over the years, and in the process I’ve become much more lucid in my thinking. I would say in general I try to pay more attention to everyday activities, which is a pretty Buddhist approach to the world. Revisiting the past and seeing it with new eyes is important. For me, these aren’t necessarily happy places, because I’m not really a happy guy. I thought I was finished in both San Francisco and Brussels, but I’ve discovered a whole new story . . . and it’s been good for the whole band.

Bardo Hotel includes lots of field recordings. Were these sketches of San Francisco part of a process of reclaiming the city for you?

They are! And talking about this stuff is like psychotherapy for me.

I could just keep yammering away about it forever . . . But really, I think I couldn’t possibly separate my emotions from my intellect, because people like John Cage have affected me in both areas so strongly. I mean, music, sound and silence are emotional . . . although Cage had a much different understanding of the concept of silence. He once described going into an anechoic chamber—a completely soundproof room—and hearing two sounds: a highpitched tone, which was the sound of his own nervous system, and a low-pitched tone, which was the sound of his own blood. That’s when he decided that true silence doesn’t really exist.

Entering an anechoic chamber can almost be painful—initially you feel this strange pressure on your ears, as if the air’s being sucked out.

It’s like diving—or being in an airplane that’s descending too quickly.

John Cage’s experiences with anechoic chambers were what led him to explore the concept of silence—which, in turn, led to exploring the sounds of chance. What role does chance play in the way you think about and write music?

I’ve always felt drawn to chance because of its Buddhist underpinning, you know? Chance as a way of reading the events of the universe . . . It’s like taking a random slice to analyze the whole— like with using the I Ching to figure out where to go in musical situations of your own invention. The funny thing is that when I’ve employed Cagean methods in the past, the result was almost always pop. And I’ve had a lot of success with that over the years. . . as have other people. David Bowie has done similar stuff writing lyrics with cut-ups and whatnot. It’s really good when you’re out of ideas, or when you haven’t played for a while.

So is employing modernist techniques just a way for you to shake things up before you write a pop song?

How do I put it . . . The process of composition is like tuning a radio receiver; it’s like making yourself sensitive—making yourself a conduit for a flow of information. Chance systems help to put you in a state of heightened sensitivity to your own thoughts and actions . . .

As if you’re eavesdropping on yourself . . .

We’ve always used field recordings in Tuxedomoon to incorporate our environment in a lateral way, not in a literal one. You know, we’re not interested in singing something like, “Oh San Francisco!

I’ve come back to you! How pleasant!” but rather to kind of subconsciously allow elements of wherever we are into the music; to just open the channels to the environment and see what filters through. Musique concrete has been an important part of what we do. You know, Tuxedomoon was founded by a bunch of guys who were really steeped in these kinds of methods and a modern aesthetic. This is the stuff I was learning when I went to San Francisco City College. My homework in my electronic music classes was to go and listen to Cage, Fontana Mix—stuff like that.

You describe an intellectual and emotional past that are completely intertwined.

You certainly step outside of yourself. I like to put my personal desires and prejudices aside to get into a kind of instinctive state. Then it feels like I know what I’m doing in some deeper sense. Whenever I set out to write something more literal—something where I can say “This song is about this, that, and the other”—that’s always when I get the worst results. And that goes for whatever medium I’m working in: theater, dance, whatever. To do good work, I need to be in a creative trance.

What’s your definition of pop?

The way I use the word I usually mean music that employs standard harmonies, diatonic composition, chords, melodies, lyrics, a four-four time signature—that kind of thing. Basically, a pop song

Right: Blaine L. Reininger (top) hamming it up for the camera on Glenn O’Brien’s TV Party.

Tuxedomoon (below—left to right): Friedrich Engels, Steven Brown, Reininger and Peter Principle.

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EB 4/2011

51

is something that’s recognizable as a “song”, as opposed to simply organizing sounds.

Do you see the hybrid of these two aspects in your own music as a natural evolution?

I think modernist methods in all the arts have widened the field, which definitely should be a normal and natural thing. Modernist painters were the first to use photographs and collage and found objects in art to produce something other than painterly renditions of the “real” world. In the same way, that’s what happened to music. And it started pretty early on—like with Satie using a typewriter in his compositions. That stuff broadened the field of what constituted music and eventually became part of pop music through bands like The Beatles, who were digging composers like Stockhausen. It also helped that they were using drugs . . . But that’s what I grew up with—the notion that nothing’s forbidden in music. If it makes sense and goes with the internal logic of the music, no sounds are off limits.

These days, it seems like noise, atmosphere and field recordings are a permanent fixture of pop music. Does it bother you at all that some bands have gotten rich using techniques that Tuxedomoon pioneered, while you guys never really got your due in terms of fame and fortune?

Not really.

Because that wasn’t really your ambition?

Actually it was, but we got over it. These days I don’t really have any ambitions. My ambition is to stay alive. I guess back in the day we were all much more arrogant and thought we’d be enormous rock stars. But I think everybody does when they start out—everybody thinks they’re going to be David Bowie or something. At this point I’m content to do what I do and that I’m given opportunities to do it. I consider myself fortunate. You know, I think this whole avant-garde thing, starting from the second half of the twentieth century, needs to continuously be repeated. It has to be told again and again because people forget what’s been done! And there’s always reactionary elements that kind of erase or whitewash those influences. Especially in America, people want to undo all of the progress that was made in the sixties. It amazes me today that so many Americans don’t know what happened in the fifties and sixties with Cage or The Living Theater or Ginsberg . . . People should know this stuff!

Do you see it as an obligation to constantly revisit and reintroduce these figures and ideas?

Well, the recordings Tuxedomoon recently did in Brussels were for the soundtrack of this iconic queer film from the sixties, Pink Narcissus, by James Bidgood. I guess you could call that revisiting the past. I mean, it’s not something I personally feel a connection to, though it’s brilliant stuff and has been hugely influential. I don’t feel any obligation to teach anybody about a given era of music, but I think that’s sometimes the result. I would say our new material is sort of jazz-like—at least the process of playing for hours and hours on end.

Wading through massive sessions was a popular way for jazz musicians like Miles Davis to record. He and his producer Teo Macero used the studio as an instrument, taking material—the nuggets of longer jams—and splicing them together.

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EB 4/2011

The jazz association is funny for us, because there’s certainly a part of our audience that’s more like, uh, jazz fans . . . We played Sofia recently and up in the front rows where the tickets were more expensive were the jazz guys, while the back rows were all goths.

Our fans are a real motley crew.

You performed in an early episode of Glenn O’Brien’s TV Party.

It was interesting how early Tuxedomoon—which could be associated more with a West Coast, Residents-like San Francisco avant-garde—mixed in with New York’s downtown punk and art elite, people like Chris Stein, Debbie Harry, Basquiat . . . Did you guys feel at all intimidated when you performed there?

We were just thrilled that they were so welcoming to us, you know? They really treated us like we were one of their own—like a “New York” band. All those dudes had this junkie disdain for the whole flower-power thing, which they carried on from the Velvet Underground and stuff. But I think we were despairing and dark enough to be acceptable. On the tape you can see I had this big, goofy grin on my face while playing my violin. Everybody else in the band looks really serious . . .

So does the crowd.

Yeah, but Glenn looks real happy introducing us in the end. He was a huge booster for Tuxedomoon on the East Coast. He wrote about us in his column for Andy Warhol’s Interview and said something like, “If you can’t find The B-52’s in your local record store, then Tuxedomoon’s Pinheads on the Move will serve as a fine temporary substitute.” I guess our sound and our shtick was a little goofier back then . . . But not so long after that, there was a palace coup and the rest of the guys in the band stood me up against a wall and said, “We’re going to get serious now!”, and we did. We shed the Residents- and Devo-style postmodern humor real quick.

Glenn O’Brien is a pretty discerning critic, so it actually means something when he offers his praise.

That’s true, and the whole band feels indebted to him for all his support. But I have to say that as renowned as all those people are today, at the time they were completely unintimidating because they were so stoned and drunk. TV Party was just that: a party.

Debbie Harry and all those people sat around like royalty, but they were beyond trashed.

What was Debbie Harry like?

Really nice . . . and unintimidating! Aside from being totally hammered, she was also in between dye jobs, so you could see her roots and stuff. And she also had the craziest dandruff . . . not that she gave a shit though. I remember before and after filming we went around to this chain of bars they have in New York called the Blarney Stone. The drinks were insanely cheap—a gin-tonic or whiskey soda cost, like, fifty cents. For three or four bucks you could get totally blitzed. And Tuxedomoon fit right in with the rest of the drunks. I remember somebody interviewing Bruce Geduldig and asking him where he liked to go on vacation. He was like, “I just like to stay at home and take a lot of drugs.”

In Germany, we call a stay-at-home vacation a “holiday in Balconia”.

Nothing beats a good staycation. ~

is something that’s recognizable as a “song”, as opposed to simply organizing sounds.

Do you see the hybrid of these two aspects in your own music as a natural evolution?

I think modernist methods in all the arts have widened the field, which definitely should be a normal and natural thing. Modernist painters were the first to use photographs and collage and found objects in art to produce something other than painterly renditions of the “real” world. In the same way, that’s what happened to music. And it started pretty early on—like with Satie using a typewriter in his compositions. That stuff broadened the field of what constituted music and eventually became part of pop music through bands like The Beatles, who were digging composers like Stockhausen. It also helped that they were using drugs . . . But that’s what I grew up with—the notion that nothing’s forbidden in music. If it makes sense and goes with the internal logic of the music, no sounds are off limits.

These days, it seems like noise, atmosphere and field recordings are a permanent fixture of pop music. Does it bother you at all that some bands have gotten rich using techniques that Tuxedomoon pioneered, while you guys never really got your due in terms of fame and fortune?

Not really.

Because that wasn’t really your ambition?

Actually it was, but we got over it. These days I don’t really have any ambitions. My ambition is to stay alive. I guess back in the day we were all much more arrogant and thought we’d be enormous rock stars. But I think everybody does when they start out—everybody thinks they’re going to be David Bowie or something. At this point I’m content to do what I do and that I’m given opportunities to do it. I consider myself fortunate. You know, I think this whole avant-garde thing, starting from the second half of the twentieth century, needs to continuously be repeated. It has to be told again and again because people forget what’s been done! And there’s always reactionary elements that kind of erase or whitewash those influences. Especially in America, people want to undo all of the progress that was made in the sixties. It amazes me today that so many Americans don’t know what happened in the fifties and sixties with Cage or The Living Theater or Ginsberg . . . People should know this stuff!

Do you see it as an obligation to constantly revisit and reintroduce these figures and ideas?

Well, the recordings Tuxedomoon recently did in Brussels were for the soundtrack of this iconic queer film from the sixties, Pink Narcissus, by James Bidgood. I guess you could call that revisiting the past. I mean, it’s not something I personally feel a connection to, though it’s brilliant stuff and has been hugely influential. I don’t feel any obligation to teach anybody about a given era of music, but I think that’s sometimes the result. I would say our new material is sort of jazz-like—at least the process of playing for hours and hours on end.

Wading through massive sessions was a popular way for jazz musicians like Miles Davis to record. He and his producer Teo Macero used the studio as an instrument, taking material—the nuggets of longer jams—and splicing them together.

58

EB 4/2011

The jazz association is funny for us, because there’s certainly a part of our audience that’s more like, uh, jazz fans . . . We played Sofia recently and up in the front rows where the tickets were more expensive were the jazz guys, while the back rows were all goths.

Our fans are a real motley crew.

You performed in an early episode of Glenn O’Brien’s TV Party.

It was interesting how early Tuxedomoon—which could be associated more with a West Coast, Residents-like San Francisco avant-garde—mixed in with New York’s downtown punk and art elite, people like Chris Stein, Debbie Harry, Basquiat . . . Did you guys feel at all intimidated when you performed there?

We were just thrilled that they were so welcoming to us, you know? They really treated us like we were one of their own—like a “New York” band. All those dudes had this junkie disdain for the whole flower-power thing, which they carried on from the Velvet Underground and stuff. But I think we were despairing and dark enough to be acceptable. On the tape you can see I had this big, goofy grin on my face while playing my violin. Everybody else in the band looks really serious . . .

So does the crowd.

Yeah, but Glenn looks real happy introducing us in the end. He was a huge booster for Tuxedomoon on the East Coast. He wrote about us in his column for Andy Warhol’s Interview and said something like, “If you can’t find The B-52’s in your local record store, then Tuxedomoon’s Pinheads on the Move will serve as a fine temporary substitute.” I guess our sound and our shtick was a little goofier back then . . . But not so long after that, there was a palace coup and the rest of the guys in the band stood me up against a wall and said, “We’re going to get serious now!”, and we did. We shed the Residents- and Devo-style postmodern humor real quick.

Glenn O’Brien is a pretty discerning critic, so it actually means something when he offers his praise.

That’s true, and the whole band feels indebted to him for all his support. But I have to say that as renowned as all those people are today, at the time they were completely unintimidating because they were so stoned and drunk. TV Party was just that: a party.

Debbie Harry and all those people sat around like royalty, but they were beyond trashed.

What was Debbie Harry like?

Really nice . . . and unintimidating! Aside from being totally hammered, she was also in between dye jobs, so you could see her roots and stuff. And she also had the craziest dandruff . . . not that she gave a shit though. I remember before and after filming we went around to this chain of bars they have in New York called the Blarney Stone. The drinks were insanely cheap—a gin-tonic or whiskey soda cost, like, fifty cents. For three or four bucks you could get totally blitzed. And Tuxedomoon fit right in with the rest of the drunks. I remember somebody interviewing Bruce Geduldig and asking him where he liked to go on vacation. He was like, “I just like to stay at home and take a lot of drugs.”

In Germany, we call a stay-at-home vacation a “holiday in Balconia”.

Nothing beats a good staycation. ~

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Bryan Ferry TALKS TO Dieter meier

BF: We started in Miami and then

“So, playing polo — that’s what you do these days?”— “I wanted to ask you the same question.”

traveled along the East Coast up to New York, passing through Atlanta and Washington DC. Then we went to Cleveland and Chicago.

Of all the North American cities, I probably love Chicago most— a beautiful place with so many impressive buildings. And the museums especially are worth visiting. Chicago is real America to me. From there we went west to finish the tour in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

DM: When did he become inter-

ested?

BF: He went to live in Ireland after

Roxy Music’s Bryan Ferry is one of the most iconic singers in the history of pop music and the picture of sartorial elegance. For Electronic Beats Magazine, Yello frontman and raconteur Dieter Meier visited Ferry in his London studio to talk about—what else?—the finer things in life.

whole slew of my albums here. It took me more than twenty years to build it though. It actually consisted of six different spaces, and I had to buy section after section from various owners until I finally had the whole complex together.

out, and I was quite impressed that she had made the Batman costume for Tim Burton’s version in 1989.

You know, some of these things are done in England, not in America . . . probably because Tim Burton has lived in London for some time.

Anyways, when I went through her studio, I recognized so many costumes from films that I’d seen over the years.

DM: Who lived and worked here

DM: It’s really cozy—do you also

Dieter Meier: Bryan, you have a

marvellous studio.

Bryan Ferry: Yeah, I’ve recorded a

before?

BF: The actual studio space in the

cellar used to be the workshop of a theater costume designer. I remember coming here to check the place

hang out here when you’re not working, or do you try to spend as much time as possible in the countryside?

BF: Occasionally I’ll spend my

free time in the studio—I mean, it’s in central London. But I love quiet country life, too. It’s just the opposite of all the hectic and stress involved in touring or recording.

DM: Do you do any gardening?

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EB 4/2011

BF: Oh, no! I’m not like you—all I

have is a small apple orchard. But it’s not enough apples to sell commercially or anything.

DM: Isn’t one of your sons into

farming and gardening?

BF: No, Otis hunts foxes. He’s

become a master of foxhounds at the South Shropshire Hunt on the Welsh border. They’re beautiful, the Welsh mountains. Otis kind of lives in the eighteenth century—it’s a lovely life.

DM: But how has he been able to

school with this old guy who was a horse trader. Otis cultivated an almost gipsy lifestyle, very romantic stuff. He loved nature from a very young age—birds and animals and trees . . . Unlike me, he doesn’t like cities. Isaac, my second son, likes the country, but he’s very much into the world we live in. He’s quite a good filmmaker too. He worked together with Mario Testino for three years.

Mario’s a good teacher—he always has a huge team of young English apprentices.

DM: Your recording studio is quite

old-fashioned . . . lots of analogue gear.

BF: Yeah, I’ve had this lovely old

continue after the new law against fox hunting?

mixing desk for some time. We also have computers now, which is both good and bad.

BF: Basically, they don’t kill the

DM: We used to own one of these

foxes they hunt. But sometimes accidents happen. The whole thing has become much more popular since the ban—it’s suddenly become cool, because nobody wants to be told what to do.

Especially not country folk.

sixty-four track consoles too, but my partner Boris always wants to work with the most advanced digital technology available, so we got rid of it. Now we’re working with a mixing desk that fits in a suitcase.

It’s a laptop, actually.

DM: Fox hunting can be quite dangerous, right?

BF: Everything is getting so tiny

BF: In Ireland it can be quite wild.

DM: It’s not good to spend your

That’s actually where he learned to hunt.

these days.

entire life in the studio. Whenever I can, I try to see the world. I do

odd things, too. For example, I play polo—hopelessly but nevertheless. It’s starting to become more enjoyable since I figured out how not to fall from the horse anymore.

The last time I played, there was a lovely lady who tried hard to make me into a proper polo player. She used to yell at me like a sergeant from an Oliver Stone movie.

Previous page: Bryan Ferry and Dieter Meier, photographed in London by Frank Bauer.

DM: Do you still get a kick out of

playing so many shows back to back?

BF: Yeah. Some nights kick more

than others, of course. But that’s natural. As a singer it’s sometimes hard, because your body is the instrument. Some days the instrument is better than others, you know? Occasionally I suffer from sore throats. But apart from that, I love being on the road and BF: I think I might know her . . .

I really enjoyed last year. We’ve been touring with a big show and DM: As you know, I farm in Argentina, and I bought a few acres a cinema screen behind us. We’ve created visuals—films and collages of land down south in Patagonia. and stuff—which we project onto I have a lot of friends there who the screen. These cinematographic all play polo, but none of them are snippets help to bring the mood capable of teaching me even the most remedial rules or skills. If you of each song across, and they also want to play with them, you have to help take some of the pressure off of me. In my opinion, they’re cerlearn it elsewhere . . . tainly more interesting than what I’m doing—I’m only the singer!

BF: So, playing polo—that’s what The films are my visual input into you do these days? the show. Don’t forget: I studied art. Of course, I didn’t put the DM: I wanted to ask you the same films together by myself—I have question . . . brilliant people around me to help with the technical aspects.

BF: This year, I’ve played seventyfive shows, so far. That’s quite a lot DM: You’re constantly changing for me. your set-lists every night. Not only do you play different songs, you DM: That’s a lot for anybody, I also play them in a different order. guess. We’ve barely done any How do you manage to improvise shows with Yello—only a handful on such a sophisticated level of over the years . . . production?

BF: It’s not a lot for some of the BF: Everybody hates me for that. blues guys, though . . . Look at B.B. King: He plays more than two My people always have these two hundred shows a year, and he’s far hours between sound-check and the start of the show to reprogram older than me. But he sits down when he plays. That makes it a lot everything according to the new set-list. It’s pretty tough for them to easier, I suppose . . . adjust to the changes in time. But as far as I’m concerned, it’s good DM: Where did you tour?

Next page: The epitome of chauffeur cool.

Bryan Ferry leaning on a Cadillac and Amanda Lear pouting pretty during the now classic photo shoot for Roxy Music’s 1972 album For Your Pleasure.

Photograph by Karl Stoecker.

EB 4/2011

65

Bryan Ferry TALKS TO Dieter meier

BF: We started in Miami and then

“So, playing polo — that’s what you do these days?”— “I wanted to ask you the same question.”

traveled along the East Coast up to New York, passing through Atlanta and Washington DC. Then we went to Cleveland and Chicago.

Of all the North American cities, I probably love Chicago most— a beautiful place with so many impressive buildings. And the museums especially are worth visiting. Chicago is real America to me. From there we went west to finish the tour in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

DM: When did he become inter-

ested?

BF: He went to live in Ireland after

Roxy Music’s Bryan Ferry is one of the most iconic singers in the history of pop music and the picture of sartorial elegance. For Electronic Beats Magazine, Yello frontman and raconteur Dieter Meier visited Ferry in his London studio to talk about—what else?—the finer things in life.

whole slew of my albums here. It took me more than twenty years to build it though. It actually consisted of six different spaces, and I had to buy section after section from various owners until I finally had the whole complex together.

out, and I was quite impressed that she had made the Batman costume for Tim Burton’s version in 1989.

You know, some of these things are done in England, not in America . . . probably because Tim Burton has lived in London for some time.

Anyways, when I went through her studio, I recognized so many costumes from films that I’d seen over the years.

DM: Who lived and worked here

DM: It’s really cozy—do you also

Dieter Meier: Bryan, you have a

marvellous studio.

Bryan Ferry: Yeah, I’ve recorded a

before?

BF: The actual studio space in the

cellar used to be the workshop of a theater costume designer. I remember coming here to check the place

hang out here when you’re not working, or do you try to spend as much time as possible in the countryside?

BF: Occasionally I’ll spend my

free time in the studio—I mean, it’s in central London. But I love quiet country life, too. It’s just the opposite of all the hectic and stress involved in touring or recording.

DM: Do you do any gardening?

64

EB 4/2011

BF: Oh, no! I’m not like you—all I

have is a small apple orchard. But it’s not enough apples to sell commercially or anything.

DM: Isn’t one of your sons into

farming and gardening?

BF: No, Otis hunts foxes. He’s

become a master of foxhounds at the South Shropshire Hunt on the Welsh border. They’re beautiful, the Welsh mountains. Otis kind of lives in the eighteenth century—it’s a lovely life.

DM: But how has he been able to

school with this old guy who was a horse trader. Otis cultivated an almost gipsy lifestyle, very romantic stuff. He loved nature from a very young age—birds and animals and trees . . . Unlike me, he doesn’t like cities. Isaac, my second son, likes the country, but he’s very much into the world we live in. He’s quite a good filmmaker too. He worked together with Mario Testino for three years.

Mario’s a good teacher—he always has a huge team of young English apprentices.

DM: Your recording studio is quite

old-fashioned . . . lots of analogue gear.

BF: Yeah, I’ve had this lovely old

continue after the new law against fox hunting?

mixing desk for some time. We also have computers now, which is both good and bad.

BF: Basically, they don’t kill the

DM: We used to own one of these

foxes they hunt. But sometimes accidents happen. The whole thing has become much more popular since the ban—it’s suddenly become cool, because nobody wants to be told what to do.

Especially not country folk.

sixty-four track consoles too, but my partner Boris always wants to work with the most advanced digital technology available, so we got rid of it. Now we’re working with a mixing desk that fits in a suitcase.

It’s a laptop, actually.

DM: Fox hunting can be quite dangerous, right?

BF: Everything is getting so tiny

BF: In Ireland it can be quite wild.

DM: It’s not good to spend your

That’s actually where he learned to hunt.

these days.

entire life in the studio. Whenever I can, I try to see the world. I do

odd things, too. For example, I play polo—hopelessly but nevertheless. It’s starting to become more enjoyable since I figured out how not to fall from the horse anymore.

The last time I played, there was a lovely lady who tried hard to make me into a proper polo player. She used to yell at me like a sergeant from an Oliver Stone movie.

Previous page: Bryan Ferry and Dieter Meier, photographed in London by Frank Bauer.

DM: Do you still get a kick out of

playing so many shows back to back?

BF: Yeah. Some nights kick more

than others, of course. But that’s natural. As a singer it’s sometimes hard, because your body is the instrument. Some days the instrument is better than others, you know? Occasionally I suffer from sore throats. But apart from that, I love being on the road and BF: I think I might know her . . .

I really enjoyed last year. We’ve been touring with a big show and DM: As you know, I farm in Argentina, and I bought a few acres a cinema screen behind us. We’ve created visuals—films and collages of land down south in Patagonia. and stuff—which we project onto I have a lot of friends there who the screen. These cinematographic all play polo, but none of them are snippets help to bring the mood capable of teaching me even the most remedial rules or skills. If you of each song across, and they also want to play with them, you have to help take some of the pressure off of me. In my opinion, they’re cerlearn it elsewhere . . . tainly more interesting than what I’m doing—I’m only the singer!

BF: So, playing polo—that’s what The films are my visual input into you do these days? the show. Don’t forget: I studied art. Of course, I didn’t put the DM: I wanted to ask you the same films together by myself—I have question . . . brilliant people around me to help with the technical aspects.

BF: This year, I’ve played seventyfive shows, so far. That’s quite a lot DM: You’re constantly changing for me. your set-lists every night. Not only do you play different songs, you DM: That’s a lot for anybody, I also play them in a different order. guess. We’ve barely done any How do you manage to improvise shows with Yello—only a handful on such a sophisticated level of over the years . . . production?

BF: It’s not a lot for some of the BF: Everybody hates me for that. blues guys, though . . . Look at B.B. King: He plays more than two My people always have these two hundred shows a year, and he’s far hours between sound-check and the start of the show to reprogram older than me. But he sits down when he plays. That makes it a lot everything according to the new set-list. It’s pretty tough for them to easier, I suppose . . . adjust to the changes in time. But as far as I’m concerned, it’s good DM: Where did you tour?

Next page: The epitome of chauffeur cool.

Bryan Ferry leaning on a Cadillac and Amanda Lear pouting pretty during the now classic photo shoot for Roxy Music’s 1972 album For Your Pleasure.

Photograph by Karl Stoecker.

EB 4/2011

65

to keep it different each night. I’d say Bob Dylan has been kind of a role model with his ever-changing set-lists. Financially, though, it wasn’t the greatest idea. I mean, we play mid-sized theaters of three to four thousand people . . . sometimes only two thousand. The biggest shows we did were the Greek Theater in L.A. and the Beacon in New York. But we have to take thirty people with us on the road, which is really expensive. But artistically speaking, it’s a great show—certainly as good as I could possibly present. We’ve got dancers and singers, some older musicians and some young ones too. One of my guitar players is only 21 years old! The other guitarist, Chris Spedding, is a real veteran. He’s seen it all. And the saxophone player is a girl, very glamorous. It’s great to have women in the band— we’ve got seven in total.

DM: I envy you a bit for that. I love

playing live, but my partner Boris won’t let me do Yello shows on my own.

BF: How unfair!

DM: He’s a very hardheaded guy.

But don’t get me wrong: I like him for that. As a result, I started to do my own Dieter Meier shows with a guitar player and a violinist. I love being on the road with such a stripped-down set-up. I travel light—I can improvise with the songs.

BF: But you still have to stick to

some kind of pattern, don’t you?

Something that repeats every sixteen or thirty-two bars? Otherwise, your violinist and guitar player get lost.

DM: Of course, but with less people,

we’re always able to immediately react to the audience. It’s just easier.

BF: You’re a man who likes to

entertain a crowd. You’re a natural raconteur, unlike myself. You seem to have plenty of stories to tell.

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EB 4/2011

What I do is almost the opposite.

My show isn’t acoustic—it’s a big production. Maybe I could do an acoustic thing after I’ve taken it all over the world. But I’d really have to be ready for it, because the audience knows when you’re left to your own devices, when you are improvising. That’s when you can hit or miss.

DM: Indeed. You’re pretty naked on

stage with an accoustic set-up.

BF: The thought is scary to me.

The closest I ever came to doing something acoustic was playing together with a huge symphonic orchestra.

DM: You should give it a try some-

day—you’ll get used to it sooner than you think.

BF: Maybe . . . For me it’s interest-

ing enough to see how the interaction with the audience can lead to different concerts night after night.

In my opinion, the audience is fifty percent of the show.

DM: The audience is like the cho-

rus in the Greek tragedy . . . who, of course, plays an incredibly important role. These days I’m much more disciplined, compared to when I was doing improvised Fluxus-like art performances, screaming at the audience . . .

That’s when every night really was totally different. It’s a huge thrill not to know what the outcome of a performance will be, at least for me. Do you like to talk to your audiences?

BF: No, I don’t really. First, I’m

not skilled enough. Second, what should I say? “Hello Berlin!

I’ve had a great day at the Bode Museum. How are you?” It doesn’t make any sense to me. And still, in some countries, people seem to expect it from you. I’ve always felt uncomfortable doing that. I like the music to speak for itself.

DM: I always tell stories. For me,

it’s an impromptu sharing experi-

ence. Sometimes I’ll talk a whole five minutes to the audience before starting the next song.

BF: I would certainly spoil the magic of the moment if I would start talking in between songs. I can see it now: twelve musicians onstage bored to death as I tell the same story to the audience over and over again, night after night. Of course, everything changes as soon as I’m offstage talking to people after the show. Then I’m relaxed.

Somehow I just don’t feel comfortable talking to a larger audience.

DM: I know what you mean. I’ve

played gigs with Yello at huge raves in major sports arenas where I felt really alone on stage, really disconnected. Everybody felt so far away. The first time we did this, it was actually quite shocking.

BF: Where was that?

DM: It was in Dortmund in the

Westfalenhalle. I went on stage and everything was so calm. I couldn’t believe it—I could make mistakes and nobody would notice. It was frighteningly anonymous. But when you’re singing with a piano player in a bar, it can be tough.

BF: The standout show of my current tour was in Vienna. We played at the opera house . . .

DM: I would say that’s somewhere

in between the two extremes.

BF: I felt so proud performing in

that historical venue. Opera houses seem to really affect people. I like it when audiences are quiet when they should be quiet.

DM: I used to live in Vienna.

BF: Did you study there?

DM: Actually, I was a professional

gambler.

BF: Of course!

DM: It’s a great place to gamble.

BF: Why? DM: Because the Jewish-Austro-

EB 4/2011

67

to keep it different each night. I’d say Bob Dylan has been kind of a role model with his ever-changing set-lists. Financially, though, it wasn’t the greatest idea. I mean, we play mid-sized theaters of three to four thousand people . . . sometimes only two thousand. The biggest shows we did were the Greek Theater in L.A. and the Beacon in New York. But we have to take thirty people with us on the road, which is really expensive. But artistically speaking, it’s a great show—certainly as good as I could possibly present. We’ve got dancers and singers, some older musicians and some young ones too. One of my guitar players is only 21 years old! The other guitarist, Chris Spedding, is a real veteran. He’s seen it all. And the saxophone player is a girl, very glamorous. It’s great to have women in the band— we’ve got seven in total.

DM: I envy you a bit for that. I love

playing live, but my partner Boris won’t let me do Yello shows on my own.

BF: How unfair!

DM: He’s a very hardheaded guy.

But don’t get me wrong: I like him for that. As a result, I started to do my own Dieter Meier shows with a guitar player and a violinist. I love being on the road with such a stripped-down set-up. I travel light—I can improvise with the songs.

BF: But you still have to stick to

some kind of pattern, don’t you?

Something that repeats every sixteen or thirty-two bars? Otherwise, your violinist and guitar player get lost.

DM: Of course, but with less people,

we’re always able to immediately react to the audience. It’s just easier.

BF: You’re a man who likes to

entertain a crowd. You’re a natural raconteur, unlike myself. You seem to have plenty of stories to tell.

66

EB 4/2011

What I do is almost the opposite.

My show isn’t acoustic—it’s a big production. Maybe I could do an acoustic thing after I’ve taken it all over the world. But I’d really have to be ready for it, because the audience knows when you’re left to your own devices, when you are improvising. That’s when you can hit or miss.

DM: Indeed. You’re pretty naked on

stage with an accoustic set-up.

BF: The thought is scary to me.

The closest I ever came to doing something acoustic was playing together with a huge symphonic orchestra.

DM: You should give it a try some-

day—you’ll get used to it sooner than you think.

BF: Maybe . . . For me it’s interest-

ing enough to see how the interaction with the audience can lead to different concerts night after night.

In my opinion, the audience is fifty percent of the show.

DM: The audience is like the cho-

rus in the Greek tragedy . . . who, of course, plays an incredibly important role. These days I’m much more disciplined, compared to when I was doing improvised Fluxus-like art performances, screaming at the audience . . .

That’s when every night really was totally different. It’s a huge thrill not to know what the outcome of a performance will be, at least for me. Do you like to talk to your audiences?

BF: No, I don’t really. First, I’m

not skilled enough. Second, what should I say? “Hello Berlin!

I’ve had a great day at the Bode Museum. How are you?” It doesn’t make any sense to me. And still, in some countries, people seem to expect it from you. I’ve always felt uncomfortable doing that. I like the music to speak for itself.

DM: I always tell stories. For me,

it’s an impromptu sharing experi-

ence. Sometimes I’ll talk a whole five minutes to the audience before starting the next song.

BF: I would certainly spoil the magic of the moment if I would start talking in between songs. I can see it now: twelve musicians onstage bored to death as I tell the same story to the audience over and over again, night after night. Of course, everything changes as soon as I’m offstage talking to people after the show. Then I’m relaxed.

Somehow I just don’t feel comfortable talking to a larger audience.

DM: I know what you mean. I’ve

played gigs with Yello at huge raves in major sports arenas where I felt really alone on stage, really disconnected. Everybody felt so far away. The first time we did this, it was actually quite shocking.

BF: Where was that?

DM: It was in Dortmund in the

Westfalenhalle. I went on stage and everything was so calm. I couldn’t believe it—I could make mistakes and nobody would notice. It was frighteningly anonymous. But when you’re singing with a piano player in a bar, it can be tough.

BF: The standout show of my current tour was in Vienna. We played at the opera house . . .

DM: I would say that’s somewhere

in between the two extremes.

BF: I felt so proud performing in

that historical venue. Opera houses seem to really affect people. I like it when audiences are quiet when they should be quiet.

DM: I used to live in Vienna.

BF: Did you study there?

DM: Actually, I was a professional

gambler.

BF: Of course!

DM: It’s a great place to gamble.

BF: Why? DM: Because the Jewish-Austro-

EB 4/2011

67

BF: A day or two, maybe. But

Hungarian gambling tradition is still very alive there, you know?

Dieter—you have to attend the exhibition of the photographs we did for the Olympia album. It’ll be held at the .HBC in Berlin and will feature all the photos we did with Kate Moss, as well as the vintage Roxy Music photos, of course.

BF: I suppose people dress the part

DM: So I’m guessing there will

too?

DM: Unfortunately, they don’t. They actually gamble quite casually.

BF: That’s the pity about gambling

nowadays. I like the idea of wearing a black bow tie and a tuxedo when playing cards.

DM: I was never a casino gambler. I

was more into poker and semi-legal private gambling.

BF: What else did you like about

Vienna?

DM: Certainly the fact that the

working class also goes to the opera. In Vienna, opera isn’t at all an elitist thing for the super-rich or super-educated. That impressed me a lot. They have standing areas high up where tickets don’t cost much. But you’re on your feet the whole, say, three hours—like at the Scala in Milan or Teatro di San Carlo in Naples.

BF: You have cheap general admis-

sion sections high up at the Royal Albert Hall in London as well. Every venue should have areas like that.

DM: Are pop concerts a normal

event for the Vienna opera house?

BF: It was a Sunday night. I think

that’s the opera’s day off in Vienna.

And if they don’t find anything better, they put people like me on the bill. I think during the week I wouldn’t have had a chance. Also, we played there in July.

DM: Fantastic.

BF: The night before, we played

in Waterford in Ireland. And the night before that in Tel Aviv.

DM: What a crazy itinerary! Did

you have breaks in between?

68

EB 4/2011

Right: From cover boys to cover men. Bryan Ferry and Roxy Music make avant-glam collectable.

be photos by Anton Corbijn too, right? He’s actually an old friend of mine. When he was young, he called himself “Ze Famouz”. He was a big fan of Yello and would always travel to wherever we happened to be shooting a video.

Unlike me, Anton’s a very systematic guy. When I shoot a video, I always have a very basic idea of what I want to do, but the rest was always improvised. Anton, who always documented the shoots, used to say over and over again: “Dieter, this is total chaos!”

BF: That sounds just like him. He

left London a while ago and now lives in La Hague. In the meantime he’s become a successful director, hasn’t he. I thought The American with George Clooney was very good. And Control, too.

It’s not that easy to have mainstream success from scratch.

DM: He’s a real character.

BF: Absolutely. He engages me—he

makes me laugh. Some photographers say, “Please laugh”, and I tell you there’s nothing more difficult than doing it on command!

But with Anton, it’s different.

He would stand on one leg and continue a conversation as if this was the most normal way to communicate. Of course, he always gets a reaction—and that’s what he wants. It’s always a pleasure to work with him. Currently, he’s doing portraits of major artists and painters from all over the world.

It’s an archival approach as well as an artistic one, I guess.

DM: So, what’s your next project?

BF: As I said, I’d like to continue

this tour to wherever it will lead us. Sometimes it happens that we do private shows in countries like Azerbaijan or Kazakhstan—or EB 4/2011

69

BF: A day or two, maybe. But

Hungarian gambling tradition is still very alive there, you know?

Dieter—you have to attend the exhibition of the photographs we did for the Olympia album. It’ll be held at the .HBC in Berlin and will feature all the photos we did with Kate Moss, as well as the vintage Roxy Music photos, of course.

BF: I suppose people dress the part

DM: So I’m guessing there will

too?

DM: Unfortunately, they don’t. They actually gamble quite casually.

BF: That’s the pity about gambling

nowadays. I like the idea of wearing a black bow tie and a tuxedo when playing cards.

DM: I was never a casino gambler. I

was more into poker and semi-legal private gambling.

BF: What else did you like about

Vienna?

DM: Certainly the fact that the

working class also goes to the opera. In Vienna, opera isn’t at all an elitist thing for the super-rich or super-educated. That impressed me a lot. They have standing areas high up where tickets don’t cost much. But you’re on your feet the whole, say, three hours—like at the Scala in Milan or Teatro di San Carlo in Naples.

BF: You have cheap general admis-

sion sections high up at the Royal Albert Hall in London as well. Every venue should have areas like that.

DM: Are pop concerts a normal

event for the Vienna opera house?

BF: It was a Sunday night. I think

that’s the opera’s day off in Vienna.

And if they don’t find anything better, they put people like me on the bill. I think during the week I wouldn’t have had a chance. Also, we played there in July.

DM: Fantastic.

BF: The night before, we played

in Waterford in Ireland. And the night before that in Tel Aviv.

DM: What a crazy itinerary! Did

you have breaks in between?

68

EB 4/2011

Right: From cover boys to cover men. Bryan Ferry and Roxy Music make avant-glam collectable.

be photos by Anton Corbijn too, right? He’s actually an old friend of mine. When he was young, he called himself “Ze Famouz”. He was a big fan of Yello and would always travel to wherever we happened to be shooting a video.

Unlike me, Anton’s a very systematic guy. When I shoot a video, I always have a very basic idea of what I want to do, but the rest was always improvised. Anton, who always documented the shoots, used to say over and over again: “Dieter, this is total chaos!”

BF: That sounds just like him. He

left London a while ago and now lives in La Hague. In the meantime he’s become a successful director, hasn’t he. I thought The American with George Clooney was very good. And Control, too.

It’s not that easy to have mainstream success from scratch.

DM: He’s a real character.

BF: Absolutely. He engages me—he

makes me laugh. Some photographers say, “Please laugh”, and I tell you there’s nothing more difficult than doing it on command!

But with Anton, it’s different.

He would stand on one leg and continue a conversation as if this was the most normal way to communicate. Of course, he always gets a reaction—and that’s what he wants. It’s always a pleasure to work with him. Currently, he’s doing portraits of major artists and painters from all over the world.

It’s an archival approach as well as an artistic one, I guess.

DM: So, what’s your next project?

BF: As I said, I’d like to continue

this tour to wherever it will lead us. Sometimes it happens that we do private shows in countries like Azerbaijan or Kazakhstan—or EB 4/2011

69

Read more about Bryan Ferry online at electronicbeats.net

somewhere in the Caribbean.

Usually, it’s rich people who invite us to these kinds of private gigs.

Of course, this means that a lot of people can’t attend. But accepting such invitations is what allows us to play bigger shows for less money in more far out cities. I think these are some of the most interesting places a tour can go. museum in Tbilisi, Georgia, which was the follow-up to one I did at the Deichtorhallen in Hamburg. It was mostly my films and some of the performances.

BF: Would you have gone there

DM: Do you still like to go out

BF: Life wouldn’t be that rich any-

DM: Definitely not. But it’s an

BF: No—I’m simply not that age

DM: I agree.

without the invitation?

incredible place. Everything is totally falling apart, especially in the city center. The funniest thing was that my exhibition was held in a big hall where they usually hang big Georgian painters. I had to hang my pieces on the same nails—meaning that the order of pictures didn’t make any sense at all. It was like trying to orient yourself in London with the map of Rome. This wouldn’t happen to you in any other city on the planet, I imagine. In the end, I liked hanging my pictures in a completely unrelated order . . . on nails intended for other pictures.

BF: I wonder how it would have

been in Baku, because there there’s such big money involved. On my tour, though, I liked Budapest most. It reminded me a bit of Prague and Vienna: elegantly rundown. It had an imperfectness that I always seem to chase.

DM: That’s central Europe for you

...

BF: Absolutely. In America you

couldn’t find places like Baku or Budapest. Even in the UK every city has been destroyed by all the franchises that make cities look the same.

DM: I once was looking to buy a

house in Ireland, but all I could find were old houses that had been terribly rebuilt by the British.

EB 4/2011

BF: My ex-wife’s mother used to

own a beautiful house on the west coast. We used an image from there for the cover of the album Avalon—a gorgeous sunrise on a lake. I love Ireland, and especially Dublin and Cork. The people there are so poetic. They love words.

But they certainly aren’t very good architects.

DM: I just had an exhibition in a

70

Didn’t you once own a house in Ireland? Maybe I’m wrong but . . .

of the album is being replaced by endless iPod playlists. Lots of artists nowadays fancy the idea of managing themselves and even founding their own labels. But they seem to forget that it’s a lot of work, too. To be even more precise, it’s a kind of work that has nothing at all to do with the creative process of making music. I think it’s always better to delegate everything that isn’t part of the music to other people. You wouldn’t be able to do your farming or to learn polo if you had to run your own record company.

when you’re on tour?

anymore. I’m happy if I can get to sleep after a gig.

DM: Of all the cities in the world,

DM: That’s true.

more.

BF: Have you ever done a clothing

line? It would fit you perfectly.

I like the Berlin nightlife most.

It’s a very late-night affair, with a swinging art scene and so many great bars. I don’t know any other city in the world where you can get lost in the night life that easily . . .

DM: No. Have you?

BF: That’s exactly why we’re doing

pen to meet the right people. It’s not like I have a business idea and then go searching for investors. But when I’m sure I have met the right people, I’d do everything—from Swiss watches to farming in Argentina.

the exhibition there.

DM: Did you ever live in Berlin?

BF: Me? No! But I wish I’d made a

record there.

DM: So, you still believe in making

records?

BF: At the moment, I’m out of con-

tract. I have to decide now what to do. But of course, I grew up with the idea that the album is the proper format for a recording artist to release music. I certainly can’t complain at all about the way EMI has marketed my back catalogue over the years. They are very good at doing new things—box sets and all that kind of stuff. Creatively, I never gave up control. I guess that’s pretty important when working together with a label. But I understand that we’re living in times of change. It’s not only that the format

BF: Oh, I don’t do that kind of

thing. But you seem to be more of a businessman than I am.

DM: I only do business when I hap-

BF: So you’re not interested in star-

ting a men’s clothing line?

DM: If I did it would have to cover

the most basic things—the stuff that’s usually the hardest to find— pajamas and such . . . But why don’t you do a clothing line? With your name attached to it, it would be an instant success. You’d just have to make copies of what you already wear.

BF: Well, I do like to design.

DM: You do design your own

clothes—come on, be honest!

BF: I wear suits all the time. But

giving my tailor hints about little details—I wouldn’t call that designing. In the end, it’s still just a suit. ~

info@ikono.tv | www.ikono.org

Read more about Bryan Ferry online at electronicbeats.net

somewhere in the Caribbean.

Usually, it’s rich people who invite us to these kinds of private gigs.

Of course, this means that a lot of people can’t attend. But accepting such invitations is what allows us to play bigger shows for less money in more far out cities. I think these are some of the most interesting places a tour can go. museum in Tbilisi, Georgia, which was the follow-up to one I did at the Deichtorhallen in Hamburg. It was mostly my films and some of the performances.

BF: Would you have gone there

DM: Do you still like to go out

BF: Life wouldn’t be that rich any-

DM: Definitely not. But it’s an

BF: No—I’m simply not that age

DM: I agree.

without the invitation?

incredible place. Everything is totally falling apart, especially in the city center. The funniest thing was that my exhibition was held in a big hall where they usually hang big Georgian painters. I had to hang my pieces on the same nails—meaning that the order of pictures didn’t make any sense at all. It was like trying to orient yourself in London with the map of Rome. This wouldn’t happen to you in any other city on the planet, I imagine. In the end, I liked hanging my pictures in a completely unrelated order . . . on nails intended for other pictures.

BF: I wonder how it would have

been in Baku, because there there’s such big money involved. On my tour, though, I liked Budapest most. It reminded me a bit of Prague and Vienna: elegantly rundown. It had an imperfectness that I always seem to chase.

DM: That’s central Europe for you

...

BF: Absolutely. In America you

couldn’t find places like Baku or Budapest. Even in the UK every city has been destroyed by all the franchises that make cities look the same.

DM: I once was looking to buy a

house in Ireland, but all I could find were old houses that had been terribly rebuilt by the British.

EB 4/2011

BF: My ex-wife’s mother used to

own a beautiful house on the west coast. We used an image from there for the cover of the album Avalon—a gorgeous sunrise on a lake. I love Ireland, and especially Dublin and Cork. The people there are so poetic. They love words.

But they certainly aren’t very good architects.

DM: I just had an exhibition in a

70

Didn’t you once own a house in Ireland? Maybe I’m wrong but . . .

of the album is being replaced by endless iPod playlists. Lots of artists nowadays fancy the idea of managing themselves and even founding their own labels. But they seem to forget that it’s a lot of work, too. To be even more precise, it’s a kind of work that has nothing at all to do with the creative process of making music. I think it’s always better to delegate everything that isn’t part of the music to other people. You wouldn’t be able to do your farming or to learn polo if you had to run your own record company.

when you’re on tour?

anymore. I’m happy if I can get to sleep after a gig.

DM: Of all the cities in the world,

DM: That’s true.

more.

BF: Have you ever done a clothing

line? It would fit you perfectly.

I like the Berlin nightlife most.

It’s a very late-night affair, with a swinging art scene and so many great bars. I don’t know any other city in the world where you can get lost in the night life that easily . . .

DM: No. Have you?

BF: That’s exactly why we’re doing

pen to meet the right people. It’s not like I have a business idea and then go searching for investors. But when I’m sure I have met the right people, I’d do everything—from Swiss watches to farming in Argentina.

the exhibition there.

DM: Did you ever live in Berlin?

BF: Me? No! But I wish I’d made a

record there.

DM: So, you still believe in making

records?

BF: At the moment, I’m out of con-

tract. I have to decide now what to do. But of course, I grew up with the idea that the album is the proper format for a recording artist to release music. I certainly can’t complain at all about the way EMI has marketed my back catalogue over the years. They are very good at doing new things—box sets and all that kind of stuff. Creatively, I never gave up control. I guess that’s pretty important when working together with a label. But I understand that we’re living in times of change. It’s not only that the format

BF: Oh, I don’t do that kind of

thing. But you seem to be more of a businessman than I am.

DM: I only do business when I hap-

BF: So you’re not interested in star-

ting a men’s clothing line?

DM: If I did it would have to cover

the most basic things—the stuff that’s usually the hardest to find— pajamas and such . . . But why don’t you do a clothing line? With your name attached to it, it would be an instant success. You’d just have to make copies of what you already wear.

BF: Well, I do like to design.

DM: You do design your own

clothes—come on, be honest!

BF: I wear suits all the time. But

giving my tailor hints about little details—I wouldn’t call that designing. In the end, it’s still just a suit. ~

info@ikono.tv | www.ikono.org

caribou talks to Pantha du prince

“The concept of the weekend is dated”

Dan Snaith: We’ve never met before, but you know my dear friend Kieran Hebden, better known as Four Tet ...

Hendrik Weber: Yes, we met in Paris

recently—we were booked at the same festival. I played after Aphex Twin who had a comfortable early evening slot. Kieran on the other hand had to wait and wait and wait because everything got delayed.

DS: I heard in the end he only got to

play for twenty minutes . . .

HW: Yeah, because he had to catch a flight to Manchester in the morning for his next show.

DS: Damn!

HW: It’s like everything for us has to be squeezed into the weekend. I honestly think the whole concept of the weekend is dated anyways. I actually don’t know a single person who works nine-to-five, Monday to Friday. Almost all of my friends work on the weekends because they’re all freelancers or musicians. Apart from religious reasons, I wonder if there’s anybody out there who still needs the weekend . . . We should all have

72

EB 4/2011

Hendrik Weber and Dan Snaith are part of a new garde of musicians who’ve helped introduce dancefloororiented listeners to a deeper, more abstract tonality. Using micro sampling, field recordings, and unique sound design, they’ve managed to carve out a special niche for themselves amongst the electronic music elite. At this year’s rainy Club to Club Festival in Turin, the two artists had a chance to sit down, dry off, and wax philosophical about weekend labor.

Left: Hendrik Weber aka Pantha du Prince, dressed for supper.

early parties from ten p.m. to three or four a.m. every night. I don’t like to support industrial working patterns.

DS: But don’t you just support alter-

native working schemes when you accept that everybody’s work shifts have become flexible?

HW: Good point. But nothing speaks against flexibility. I like it when you can decide for yourself when to work and when to spend days off hanging around your apartment. I’m just saying that the weekend is a relict of the past.

DS: I actually like the idea of spending time at home while letting people think I’m not in town.

HW: Of course, you can update your Facebook account every day with random fake snapshots of places you pretend to visit—the leaning tower of Pisa, the Coliseum, the Eiffel tower— all while lying in bed having a late breakfast.

DS: Last year we did, like, two hun-

dred shows and played almost every night. If you do that for three months without a break you certainly yearn

for a vacation. It’s a very North American ethos to play as much as possible. You get a shitty van and just wing it, sleeping on people’s couches until you’ve had enough.

Personally, I like it.

HW: But it means you also don’t see your friends or family. Can you really deal with not having days off?

DS: I enjoy touring for what it is.

And since I don’t drink or do drugs, I sometimes think the consistent way of doing extensive tours is almost healthier than the insanity of a DJ lifestyle—playing exhausting shows on the weekends and staying at home for recovery during the “work” week.

It’s also a pain to constantly be in motion and fly long distances only to play short sets. But hey, if they pay you well . . .

HW: Super short trips are the most draining. I’ll go from Berlin to Helsinki to Porto to Tunis and back to Berlin in three days. If I’d draw a diagram of my travel routes, it would look totally like a bizarre spider web. If you think about it, it’s completely insane.

DS: I sometimes think about whether

it would be more relaxing to spend

EB4/2011

73

caribou talks to Pantha du prince

“The concept of the weekend is dated”

Dan Snaith: We’ve never met before, but you know my dear friend Kieran Hebden, better known as Four Tet ...

Hendrik Weber: Yes, we met in Paris

recently—we were booked at the same festival. I played after Aphex Twin who had a comfortable early evening slot. Kieran on the other hand had to wait and wait and wait because everything got delayed.

DS: I heard in the end he only got to

play for twenty minutes . . .

HW: Yeah, because he had to catch a flight to Manchester in the morning for his next show.

DS: Damn!

HW: It’s like everything for us has to be squeezed into the weekend. I honestly think the whole concept of the weekend is dated anyways. I actually don’t know a single person who works nine-to-five, Monday to Friday. Almost all of my friends work on the weekends because they’re all freelancers or musicians. Apart from religious reasons, I wonder if there’s anybody out there who still needs the weekend . . . We should all have

72

EB 4/2011

Hendrik Weber and Dan Snaith are part of a new garde of musicians who’ve helped introduce dancefloororiented listeners to a deeper, more abstract tonality. Using micro sampling, field recordings, and unique sound design, they’ve managed to carve out a special niche for themselves amongst the electronic music elite. At this year’s rainy Club to Club Festival in Turin, the two artists had a chance to sit down, dry off, and wax philosophical about weekend labor.

Left: Hendrik Weber aka Pantha du Prince, dressed for supper.

early parties from ten p.m. to three or four a.m. every night. I don’t like to support industrial working patterns.

DS: But don’t you just support alter-

native working schemes when you accept that everybody’s work shifts have become flexible?

HW: Good point. But nothing speaks against flexibility. I like it when you can decide for yourself when to work and when to spend days off hanging around your apartment. I’m just saying that the weekend is a relict of the past.

DS: I actually like the idea of spending time at home while letting people think I’m not in town.

HW: Of course, you can update your Facebook account every day with random fake snapshots of places you pretend to visit—the leaning tower of Pisa, the Coliseum, the Eiffel tower— all while lying in bed having a late breakfast.

DS: Last year we did, like, two hun-

dred shows and played almost every night. If you do that for three months without a break you certainly yearn

for a vacation. It’s a very North American ethos to play as much as possible. You get a shitty van and just wing it, sleeping on people’s couches until you’ve had enough.

Personally, I like it.

HW: But it means you also don’t see your friends or family. Can you really deal with not having days off?

DS: I enjoy touring for what it is.

And since I don’t drink or do drugs, I sometimes think the consistent way of doing extensive tours is almost healthier than the insanity of a DJ lifestyle—playing exhausting shows on the weekends and staying at home for recovery during the “work” week.

It’s also a pain to constantly be in motion and fly long distances only to play short sets. But hey, if they pay you well . . .

HW: Super short trips are the most draining. I’ll go from Berlin to Helsinki to Porto to Tunis and back to Berlin in three days. If I’d draw a diagram of my travel routes, it would look totally like a bizarre spider web. If you think about it, it’s completely insane.

DS: I sometimes think about whether

it would be more relaxing to spend

EB4/2011

73

all January in an airplane and then magically appear at all subsequent shows that following year. Or is it better to waste a whole year in the daily grind of accelerating and stopping, traveling and performing?

All photos taken by Luci Lux after desert in Ristoitaly, Turin.

DS: Did you do it?

HW: Of course, the project was too complex to be realized the way I had planned. Instead, I wrote a piece for bells, found an ensemble, and did some shows. Who knows—maybe we’ll take the show around the world ...

or six-minute pieces, and these edits then become the foundation.

those that you actually process and remember. I’d say my limitations are what allow me not to get lost.

DS: When you say “we”, who’s the

other person involved?

DS: It’s interesting how many people

HW: That would be Joachim Schütz of the Arnold Dreyblatt Trio. He’s someone who loves to dive into the sound as a whole—as opposed to diving into individual melodies.

DS: Do you have changing set lists?

say they improvise when they actually don’t.

DS: How important is it for you to

HW: There was a time when not every plug-in worked perfectly on my computer. They didn’t do what they were supposed to do because the software was cracked or because the computer simply lacked memory.

But somehow, I always loved the moment of unpredictability caused by such accidents.

What do you do to feel entertained by your own set night after night?

HW: I think that you always have to

start a new record with something conceptual?

DS: Growing up, I studied jazz piano.

HW: It depends on how you define the

“daily grind”. As long as I can make sure that the music I play won’t bore me, everything’s fine.

HW: I basically play the same songs

every night, but different versions. I can change them while performing, which is what I always do. I’d start a track with the end or mix the different sections. Computer technology allows for this in very intuitive ways.

Plus, I have some percussive objects with contact microphones attached to them. Whenever I play them, I’m improvising—I almost never play the same thing twice.

DS: I always say that too. But in the

end, there usually aren’t that many changes between the shows.

relate in changing ways to fundamental parts of your own music. People come to see you because they probably bought your latest album . . . and because they want to dance. I always have that in mind when it comes to playing “new” stuff or improvising.

I think I probably improvise best at home, in a studio environment . . . under perfect conditions.

DS: When I listen to your latest

album Black Noise, I always wonder whether you improvised all the small little details—or if some fancy algorithms did the job.

HW: When recording, I really allow

HW: Then try to change the set

lists! I know people always say that certain songs can’t be played after other songs, but that’s not true: the challenge is exactly to make that work. And you have to listen to your intuition. Not so long ago, I went to Oslo to play a festival. I was having lunch backstage and I heard the chimes from a nearby church. The bells sounded lovely and I mentioned out loud that it would be such a thrill to write music for a bell tower. So, one of the guys I was having lunch with says, “No problem—I can organize that.” More often than not, you escape the daily grind by keeping everything intuitive.

myself to improvise. For Black Noise, we went out into nature to record some of the acoustic elements. After weeks and weeks of doing that, we ended up not only with hours of recordings—we also had our own sound, our own sonic signature. We were very proud of not having used pre-set sounds. I think it’s important as an electronic musician to define yourself by your sound architecture.

DS: I totally agree.

HW: And then I listened to all the recordings in my studio. Sometimes, when a moment struck me, I’d zoom into the track and work with that little sonic detail.

DS: So, how’d you approach the bell

tower, creatively speaking?

DS: How long are these moments

usually?

HW: After thinking about it for a

while, I became totally fascinated by the idea of creating a digital sonic city map based on different melodies played by different bell towers. I like the idea that you could virtually orient yourself in a city by hearing which steeple plays what melody.

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HW: Sometimes a split second, sometimes one or two. Never ever are they longer than eight to ten seconds. For me, making a track is like solving a jigsaw puzzle. There are all these pieces telling us what to do. We edit down our long improvisations to five-

HW: Not important at all. The con-

cept always comes during the writing process. For instance, the concept for Black Noise came while we were recording instruments in the woods.

But of course I had the idea to leave the studio because I wanted to know how it would sound to record a vibraphone in the open air. But I wouldn’t dare call that kind of curiosity a “concept”.

DS: So, the starting point is more

method than anything else?

HW: What we did was figure out the practical way to collect sounds and material. Maybe you could call it a method, since I almost always start with a fragment, never with a vision of the final result. But one thing’s for sure: without computers, I couldn’t make the music I make. For me, the whole thing started to become really interesting from the moment where I could start recording on my own.

Before that, other people were always in charge of the actual recording process.

DS: I remember my first sampler had a storage space of four seconds. It always took ages to work with that machine.

HW: Musically, our era will be remembered as the time when sampling overcame limitations. Do you ever feel lost in the face of the billions of possibilities your computer offers you?

One day I understood why jazz ensembles like Miles Davis’ groups from the seventies sounded like a single entity: they simply spent all their time playing together—day after day, week after week, year after year. Unlike us, they weren’t producing their own music—they were playing it.

HW: I was always too lazy to properly learn an instrument to the point where I could basically become that instrument—as if it would just be an extension of me.

DS: What instruments did you learn

to play?

HW: Guitar, bass and piano.

Knowing only a little bit helped me a lot to understand how music works though. And with the computer, I never felt the limitations of not having mastered anything. Focusing solely on music was the best decision in my life.

DS: For me, the records of John

Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders and Albert Ayler really shaped my musical mindset. Listen to Interstellar Space—it’s one of the best Coltrane ever did.

HW: I actually don’t hear any jazz influence in Caribou.

DS: I’ve sampled a lot from jazz

records, and some of the samples have certainly found their way onto Caribou recordings.

DS: To be honest, no I don’t. Even if

you have thousands of plug-ins, it’s still always about the idea that drives you. And besides, you can’t really have an overview of all the possibilities anyways. You’re limited to

HW: It’s funny how we take so much care manipulating the tiniest atomic particles of our music, only to have to take planes across entire oceans and continents to play it all live. I’m

the first one in my family to travel around Europe and the world on a regular basis, even though real regular traveling seems to be an American routine. Even when you travel long distances there you still end up in a place where you can speak English. Of course, Europe is different. I mean, not everybody here is as talented as, say, Nana Mouskouri who speaks and sings eight languages . . .

DS: But your music is largely instru-

mental, right?

HW: Yeah—I speak the language of sound. And I could never ever imagine doing a song in German.

DS: Because it’s too specific?

HW: It just wouldn’t feel right. I love the language, and I definitely love some German songs. But it’s not for me to sing in my mother tongue. I just wouldn’t feel comfortable.

DS: Scooter also do extensive tour-

ing, too. They’re from Germany and they’re famous everywhere.

HW: You know H.P. Baxxter?

DS: No, it’s just that somebody men-

tioned them to me recently. I think their music’s funny.

Above: Dan Snaith aka Caribou, dressed for comfort.

HW: Scooter are bizarre—real Dadaists. For years nobody took them seriously. But somehow overnight, they became everybody’s darling.

DS: It’s amazing how something can

all of a sudden become “good” after being “bad” for so long.

HW: If you just keep doing the same thing for a decade or longer, sooner or later someone will find some fascinating aspect to your art. Even the most serious German newspapers write nice, intellectual things about Scooter these days. In one interview, the German painter Albert Oehlen said, “Scooter are pure form, zero content.”

DS: You mean Scooter is held in high

esteem by the German cultural elite?

That’s hilarious . . . It’s even funnier than the fact that they exist. ~

EB 4/2011

75

all January in an airplane and then magically appear at all subsequent shows that following year. Or is it better to waste a whole year in the daily grind of accelerating and stopping, traveling and performing?

All photos taken by Luci Lux after desert in Ristoitaly, Turin.

DS: Did you do it?

HW: Of course, the project was too complex to be realized the way I had planned. Instead, I wrote a piece for bells, found an ensemble, and did some shows. Who knows—maybe we’ll take the show around the world ...

or six-minute pieces, and these edits then become the foundation.

those that you actually process and remember. I’d say my limitations are what allow me not to get lost.

DS: When you say “we”, who’s the

other person involved?

DS: It’s interesting how many people

HW: That would be Joachim Schütz of the Arnold Dreyblatt Trio. He’s someone who loves to dive into the sound as a whole—as opposed to diving into individual melodies.

DS: Do you have changing set lists?

say they improvise when they actually don’t.

DS: How important is it for you to

HW: There was a time when not every plug-in worked perfectly on my computer. They didn’t do what they were supposed to do because the software was cracked or because the computer simply lacked memory.

But somehow, I always loved the moment of unpredictability caused by such accidents.

What do you do to feel entertained by your own set night after night?

HW: I think that you always have to

start a new record with something conceptual?

DS: Growing up, I studied jazz piano.

HW: It depends on how you define the

“daily grind”. As long as I can make sure that the music I play won’t bore me, everything’s fine.

HW: I basically play the same songs

every night, but different versions. I can change them while performing, which is what I always do. I’d start a track with the end or mix the different sections. Computer technology allows for this in very intuitive ways.

Plus, I have some percussive objects with contact microphones attached to them. Whenever I play them, I’m improvising—I almost never play the same thing twice.

DS: I always say that too. But in the

end, there usually aren’t that many changes between the shows.

relate in changing ways to fundamental parts of your own music. People come to see you because they probably bought your latest album . . . and because they want to dance. I always have that in mind when it comes to playing “new” stuff or improvising.

I think I probably improvise best at home, in a studio environment . . . under perfect conditions.

DS: When I listen to your latest

album Black Noise, I always wonder whether you improvised all the small little details—or if some fancy algorithms did the job.

HW: When recording, I really allow

HW: Then try to change the set

lists! I know people always say that certain songs can’t be played after other songs, but that’s not true: the challenge is exactly to make that work. And you have to listen to your intuition. Not so long ago, I went to Oslo to play a festival. I was having lunch backstage and I heard the chimes from a nearby church. The bells sounded lovely and I mentioned out loud that it would be such a thrill to write music for a bell tower. So, one of the guys I was having lunch with says, “No problem—I can organize that.” More often than not, you escape the daily grind by keeping everything intuitive.

myself to improvise. For Black Noise, we went out into nature to record some of the acoustic elements. After weeks and weeks of doing that, we ended up not only with hours of recordings—we also had our own sound, our own sonic signature. We were very proud of not having used pre-set sounds. I think it’s important as an electronic musician to define yourself by your sound architecture.

DS: I totally agree.

HW: And then I listened to all the recordings in my studio. Sometimes, when a moment struck me, I’d zoom into the track and work with that little sonic detail.

DS: So, how’d you approach the bell

tower, creatively speaking?

DS: How long are these moments

usually?

HW: After thinking about it for a

while, I became totally fascinated by the idea of creating a digital sonic city map based on different melodies played by different bell towers. I like the idea that you could virtually orient yourself in a city by hearing which steeple plays what melody.

74

EB 4/2011

HW: Sometimes a split second, sometimes one or two. Never ever are they longer than eight to ten seconds. For me, making a track is like solving a jigsaw puzzle. There are all these pieces telling us what to do. We edit down our long improvisations to five-

HW: Not important at all. The con-

cept always comes during the writing process. For instance, the concept for Black Noise came while we were recording instruments in the woods.

But of course I had the idea to leave the studio because I wanted to know how it would sound to record a vibraphone in the open air. But I wouldn’t dare call that kind of curiosity a “concept”.

DS: So, the starting point is more

method than anything else?

HW: What we did was figure out the practical way to collect sounds and material. Maybe you could call it a method, since I almost always start with a fragment, never with a vision of the final result. But one thing’s for sure: without computers, I couldn’t make the music I make. For me, the whole thing started to become really interesting from the moment where I could start recording on my own.

Before that, other people were always in charge of the actual recording process.

DS: I remember my first sampler had a storage space of four seconds. It always took ages to work with that machine.

HW: Musically, our era will be remembered as the time when sampling overcame limitations. Do you ever feel lost in the face of the billions of possibilities your computer offers you?

One day I understood why jazz ensembles like Miles Davis’ groups from the seventies sounded like a single entity: they simply spent all their time playing together—day after day, week after week, year after year. Unlike us, they weren’t producing their own music—they were playing it.

HW: I was always too lazy to properly learn an instrument to the point where I could basically become that instrument—as if it would just be an extension of me.

DS: What instruments did you learn

to play?

HW: Guitar, bass and piano.

Knowing only a little bit helped me a lot to understand how music works though. And with the computer, I never felt the limitations of not having mastered anything. Focusing solely on music was the best decision in my life.

DS: For me, the records of John

Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders and Albert Ayler really shaped my musical mindset. Listen to Interstellar Space—it’s one of the best Coltrane ever did.

HW: I actually don’t hear any jazz influence in Caribou.

DS: I’ve sampled a lot from jazz

records, and some of the samples have certainly found their way onto Caribou recordings.

DS: To be honest, no I don’t. Even if

you have thousands of plug-ins, it’s still always about the idea that drives you. And besides, you can’t really have an overview of all the possibilities anyways. You’re limited to

HW: It’s funny how we take so much care manipulating the tiniest atomic particles of our music, only to have to take planes across entire oceans and continents to play it all live. I’m

the first one in my family to travel around Europe and the world on a regular basis, even though real regular traveling seems to be an American routine. Even when you travel long distances there you still end up in a place where you can speak English. Of course, Europe is different. I mean, not everybody here is as talented as, say, Nana Mouskouri who speaks and sings eight languages . . .

DS: But your music is largely instru-

mental, right?

HW: Yeah—I speak the language of sound. And I could never ever imagine doing a song in German.

DS: Because it’s too specific?

HW: It just wouldn’t feel right. I love the language, and I definitely love some German songs. But it’s not for me to sing in my mother tongue. I just wouldn’t feel comfortable.

DS: Scooter also do extensive tour-

ing, too. They’re from Germany and they’re famous everywhere.

HW: You know H.P. Baxxter?

DS: No, it’s just that somebody men-

tioned them to me recently. I think their music’s funny.

Above: Dan Snaith aka Caribou, dressed for comfort.

HW: Scooter are bizarre—real Dadaists. For years nobody took them seriously. But somehow overnight, they became everybody’s darling.

DS: It’s amazing how something can

all of a sudden become “good” after being “bad” for so long.

HW: If you just keep doing the same thing for a decade or longer, sooner or later someone will find some fascinating aspect to your art. Even the most serious German newspapers write nice, intellectual things about Scooter these days. In one interview, the German painter Albert Oehlen said, “Scooter are pure form, zero content.”

DS: You mean Scooter is held in high

esteem by the German cultural elite?

That’s hilarious . . . It’s even funnier than the fact that they exist. ~

EB 4/2011

75

Aérea Negrot talks TO Billie Ray Martin

“. . . rawness was part of the concept” Divas have a special place in electronic music. Historically connected to house, vocalists often add soul-tinged sexuality a spirit of liberation to all things four-to-the-floor. Venezuelanborn musician and singer Aérea Negrot of Hercules and Love Affair continues on in that tradition while venturing into decidedly new territory.

Here, Negrot talks to one of the rave generation’s darkest and most celebrated divas, Billie Ray Martin.

Billie Ray Martin: Aérea, both you

and I have pretty big queer followings—even though our music obviously transcends frameworks of gender and sexual orientation. For me, there’s always something that’s remained cutting-edge about the pioneers of gay culture, especially Andy Warhol and his superstars— people like Candy Darling and Holly Woodlawn. Somehow I have the feeling that if they were to do today what they did in the sixties it would be banned because gay culture, by becoming mainstream, has also become so conservative.

Were these characters at all an influence for you?

Aérea Negrot: Not initially—or at

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least not consciously. But recently I was asked to do a three-day shoot with Gerard Malanga . . .

BRM: [bouncing up and down] Oh my God—he’s my hero! Oh my God—did you do it?

AN: But of course! It’s funny because before that I didn’t know all that much about Gerard or about The Factory, even though he and I actually have a friend in common who lives in Berlin. But the shoot made me curious, so I did a bunch of research on Warhol and you’re absolutely right about how ahead of their time that entire scene was . . . totally unafraid of breaking rules. But I think social

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Aérea Negrot talks TO Billie Ray Martin

“. . . rawness was part of the concept” Divas have a special place in electronic music. Historically connected to house, vocalists often add soul-tinged sexuality a spirit of liberation to all things four-to-the-floor. Venezuelanborn musician and singer Aérea Negrot of Hercules and Love Affair continues on in that tradition while venturing into decidedly new territory.

Here, Negrot talks to one of the rave generation’s darkest and most celebrated divas, Billie Ray Martin.

Billie Ray Martin: Aérea, both you

and I have pretty big queer followings—even though our music obviously transcends frameworks of gender and sexual orientation. For me, there’s always something that’s remained cutting-edge about the pioneers of gay culture, especially Andy Warhol and his superstars— people like Candy Darling and Holly Woodlawn. Somehow I have the feeling that if they were to do today what they did in the sixties it would be banned because gay culture, by becoming mainstream, has also become so conservative.

Were these characters at all an influence for you?

Aérea Negrot: Not initially—or at

76

EB 4/2011

least not consciously. But recently I was asked to do a three-day shoot with Gerard Malanga . . .

BRM: [bouncing up and down] Oh my God—he’s my hero! Oh my God—did you do it?

AN: But of course! It’s funny because before that I didn’t know all that much about Gerard or about The Factory, even though he and I actually have a friend in common who lives in Berlin. But the shoot made me curious, so I did a bunch of research on Warhol and you’re absolutely right about how ahead of their time that entire scene was . . . totally unafraid of breaking rules. But I think social

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progress comes in waves and there will always be a back and forth between pushing boundaries and conservatism. But things have been so conservative for so long, I think we’re set to explode again into a major liberation.

Previous page: Billie Ray Martin (left) and Aérea Negrot, photographed in Berlin by Andrej Krementschouk.

BRM: I hope so, because, seriously, New York and London have become like generic episodes of Sex and the City. In New York, all the freaks have moved out of Manhattan and even Brooklyn to make lives for themselves in Queens. When things get so expensive, they become precious and when that happens, they become boring.

drugs. Instead he had them do all that in The Factory and made them stars. I mean how else would Candy Darling have gotten on the cover of Vogue?

AN: But somehow it’s sad that these things also became part of the establishment. Subcultures have always existed, so I’m not worried about the future, even if it’s easier

So sah das vorher aus.

Und so sieht es jetzt aus. Wem das nicht gefaellt, der soll sich doch bitte bei mir melden.

AN: That’s why it’s so important to have artists that shake you out of your comfort zone. For me, conservatism, especially in art, is also a fear of showing true emotion and talking about the reality of your feelings. It actually reminds me of a line from “Anatomy of a Plastic Girl” off the new Opiates record: “I have no enemies, only reality.”

BRM: But for that to happen you need somebody to wake people out of their stupor—or provide an outlet for the freaks to express themselves, give them a voice. I mean, that’s exactly what Andy Warhol did at a time when home appliances and television were making people dumb and uncritical. He gave a voice to the counterculture.

Without him, all of these wonderful freaks would have just been on streets turning tricks and doing

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BRM: Yeah, it’s like I can protest with a mouse, clicking for or against things. But is it the same as going out onto the street?

AN: It’s so easy to be a slave to information. I noticed this recently when my phone was stolen. It was like my whole life—my thoughts, my plans, my bills—were in that machine. But on the other hand, if it weren’t for all of the incredible digital technology we have today, I wouldn’t be able to make the music I make. The plug-ins and software and controllers—that’s my bread and butter. Some people can’t handle all of the possibilities of playing with sound, but I’m swimming in it.

BRM: I hate to admit it, but I usu-

ally feel overwhelmed by the technology. I actually have a bit of a technophobia, to tell you the truth.

But when I do delve into computer stuff, I get really into it. I remember when I started out playing in bands it was just “One, two three four!” and there was the music.

But then you have to deal with all of the egos, so I prefer to just sit in my room and push the buttons myself.

BRM: That’s me speaking in the voice of a young actress who’s had insane amounts of plastic surgery, looks in the mirror and realizes something’s not quite right. But I like your interpretation as well . . .

AN: Liberation and wealth are strange bedfellows. You know, in the fifties in Venezuela, the middle class had lots of money.

They were happy until they realized that material objects pacified them and that true liberation came from freedom of expression. I think today people are starting to also question the “freedom” we’ve gained through technology.

today to do things online in the virtual world instead of in reality.

“Performers who are the same onstage and offstage usually bore the hell out of me. I mean, this is show business!

You have to show something else . . . I guess that always came naturally to me.”

Billie Ray Martin

AN: I actually started making music because of my computer.

When I was growing up, we were one of the few families to actually have a computer—which all of my friends and schoolmates were jealous of at the time. I had a much tougher time learning the basics of music theory.

and analogue effects. I used to be much stricter about using analogue gear—it had to be this mic with this amp . . . but I’ve come around these days. You know, you really can record incredible vocals at home, covered in two or three blankets with a good mic and a good preamp and a good soundcard.

AN: I actually recorded all of Arabxilla at home, but with production by Tobias Freund who really knows what the hell he’s doing. I was kind of nervous about giving him all of my home-recorded vocals and asked him first thing if we should rerecord them in the studio. He was like, “No! Let’s do everything at your house.”

For me, the rawness was part of the concept.

BRM: You know, I’m not the most confident, secure, self-assured person in the world. But somehow onstage or in front of a camera, I become somebody who’s in total control. I might have had some fucked-up situation—a fight or an

Billie Ray Martin’s latest album with The Opiates, Hollywood under the Knife, sounds like a stoned electronic soundtrack to Hollywood Babylon.

AN: With some of the songs I sing in German, there are dozens of grammatical mistakes. But that eventually became part of the idea, you know? It’s real. It’s how I talk. And it’s also part of living in a pluralistic world—embracing accents and different ways of communicating that express personality.

BRM: I also have to say that I was really impressed by how descriptive your lyrics are. I felt like you were just kind of reporting on the absurd reality that you were experiencing. It was really very nonjudgmental, just observational.

AN: That’s true, but the songs are still emotional.

AN: Of course not. I have a background in ballet, so music was always something that came intuitively to me. But if it wasn’t for software, I’d never be able to do what I do.

BRM: I tend to write my lyrics from somebody else’s perspective, but in a similarly reporting style. It’s like documenting the world through the eyes of a certain character, almost always from the perspective of an outsider—at least with Hollywood under the Knife. I think Wolfgang Tillmans’ photographs for the album really capture the scary, haunted, Lynchian side of Los Angeles I was trying to portray.

argument five minutes before show time—but when I put my makeup on and go onstage, I transform.

AN: The actress Rita Hayworth had an interesting take on that kind of transformation . . . and how people project things on performers. You know she became famous for her role in the sexy noir film Gilda, and afterwards she liked to say that men went to bed with Gilda and woke up with Rita. I know that I make a very different impression onstage than offstage.

BRM: Performers who are the same onstage and offstage usually bore the hell out of me. I mean, this is show business! You have to show something else, you know? I guess that always came naturally to me, because growing up in the red-light district of St. Pauli in Hamburg I was surrounded by trannies and prostitutes and gangsters who were always dressed to the nines—people whose professional lives depended on mastering a certain role, playing a certain character. But I also was obsessed with memorizing rock and roll songs as a kid—The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Elvis Presley . . .

BRM: If it sounds good, why not?

When I was listening to your album I kept thinking to myself, “How can I become that spontaneous?”

BRM: Not that you need that to make music . . .

BRM: I think digital technology for music has come a long way in the past few years. Even in, like, 2004, you could still hear this massive difference between plug-ins

AN: Watching you perform these songs live, I thought you channeled these characters perfectly.

AN: Really early musical influences have an interesting effect on personality . . .

“Liberation and wealth are strange bedfellows. You know, in the fifties in Venezuela, the middle class had lots of money. They were happy until they realized that material objects pacified them and that true liberation came from freedom of expression.”

Aérea Negrot

BRM: Yeah, I think my personality is a mix of British and American rock and rollers on the one hand and German strictness on the other. I actually tend to really annoy people with my German stubbornness and perfectionism.

A sound engineer once asked me if I ever had a producer tell me they were going out for a pack of cigarettes and just never come back. I haven’t but it’s not totally outside the realm of possibility.

AN: It’s funny to hear that because a lot of people have moved to Berlin because things here are so much more open and less strict— which doesn’t really fit with the typical cold, unfriendly, German stereotype. When I was a kid, I always thought there was some sort of mistake; that I was actu-

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79

progress comes in waves and there will always be a back and forth between pushing boundaries and conservatism. But things have been so conservative for so long, I think we’re set to explode again into a major liberation.

Previous page: Billie Ray Martin (left) and Aérea Negrot, photographed in Berlin by Andrej Krementschouk.

BRM: I hope so, because, seriously, New York and London have become like generic episodes of Sex and the City. In New York, all the freaks have moved out of Manhattan and even Brooklyn to make lives for themselves in Queens. When things get so expensive, they become precious and when that happens, they become boring.

drugs. Instead he had them do all that in The Factory and made them stars. I mean how else would Candy Darling have gotten on the cover of Vogue?

AN: But somehow it’s sad that these things also became part of the establishment. Subcultures have always existed, so I’m not worried about the future, even if it’s easier

So sah das vorher aus.

Und so sieht es jetzt aus. Wem das nicht gefaellt, der soll sich doch bitte bei mir melden.

AN: That’s why it’s so important to have artists that shake you out of your comfort zone. For me, conservatism, especially in art, is also a fear of showing true emotion and talking about the reality of your feelings. It actually reminds me of a line from “Anatomy of a Plastic Girl” off the new Opiates record: “I have no enemies, only reality.”

BRM: But for that to happen you need somebody to wake people out of their stupor—or provide an outlet for the freaks to express themselves, give them a voice. I mean, that’s exactly what Andy Warhol did at a time when home appliances and television were making people dumb and uncritical. He gave a voice to the counterculture.

Without him, all of these wonderful freaks would have just been on streets turning tricks and doing

78

EB 4/2011

BRM: Yeah, it’s like I can protest with a mouse, clicking for or against things. But is it the same as going out onto the street?

AN: It’s so easy to be a slave to information. I noticed this recently when my phone was stolen. It was like my whole life—my thoughts, my plans, my bills—were in that machine. But on the other hand, if it weren’t for all of the incredible digital technology we have today, I wouldn’t be able to make the music I make. The plug-ins and software and controllers—that’s my bread and butter. Some people can’t handle all of the possibilities of playing with sound, but I’m swimming in it.

BRM: I hate to admit it, but I usu-

ally feel overwhelmed by the technology. I actually have a bit of a technophobia, to tell you the truth.

But when I do delve into computer stuff, I get really into it. I remember when I started out playing in bands it was just “One, two three four!” and there was the music.

But then you have to deal with all of the egos, so I prefer to just sit in my room and push the buttons myself.

BRM: That’s me speaking in the voice of a young actress who’s had insane amounts of plastic surgery, looks in the mirror and realizes something’s not quite right. But I like your interpretation as well . . .

AN: Liberation and wealth are strange bedfellows. You know, in the fifties in Venezuela, the middle class had lots of money.

They were happy until they realized that material objects pacified them and that true liberation came from freedom of expression. I think today people are starting to also question the “freedom” we’ve gained through technology.

today to do things online in the virtual world instead of in reality.

“Performers who are the same onstage and offstage usually bore the hell out of me. I mean, this is show business!

You have to show something else . . . I guess that always came naturally to me.”

Billie Ray Martin

AN: I actually started making music because of my computer.

When I was growing up, we were one of the few families to actually have a computer—which all of my friends and schoolmates were jealous of at the time. I had a much tougher time learning the basics of music theory.

and analogue effects. I used to be much stricter about using analogue gear—it had to be this mic with this amp . . . but I’ve come around these days. You know, you really can record incredible vocals at home, covered in two or three blankets with a good mic and a good preamp and a good soundcard.

AN: I actually recorded all of Arabxilla at home, but with production by Tobias Freund who really knows what the hell he’s doing. I was kind of nervous about giving him all of my home-recorded vocals and asked him first thing if we should rerecord them in the studio. He was like, “No! Let’s do everything at your house.”

For me, the rawness was part of the concept.

BRM: You know, I’m not the most confident, secure, self-assured person in the world. But somehow onstage or in front of a camera, I become somebody who’s in total control. I might have had some fucked-up situation—a fight or an

Billie Ray Martin’s latest album with The Opiates, Hollywood under the Knife, sounds like a stoned electronic soundtrack to Hollywood Babylon.

AN: With some of the songs I sing in German, there are dozens of grammatical mistakes. But that eventually became part of the idea, you know? It’s real. It’s how I talk. And it’s also part of living in a pluralistic world—embracing accents and different ways of communicating that express personality.

BRM: I also have to say that I was really impressed by how descriptive your lyrics are. I felt like you were just kind of reporting on the absurd reality that you were experiencing. It was really very nonjudgmental, just observational.

AN: That’s true, but the songs are still emotional.

AN: Of course not. I have a background in ballet, so music was always something that came intuitively to me. But if it wasn’t for software, I’d never be able to do what I do.

BRM: I tend to write my lyrics from somebody else’s perspective, but in a similarly reporting style. It’s like documenting the world through the eyes of a certain character, almost always from the perspective of an outsider—at least with Hollywood under the Knife. I think Wolfgang Tillmans’ photographs for the album really capture the scary, haunted, Lynchian side of Los Angeles I was trying to portray.

argument five minutes before show time—but when I put my makeup on and go onstage, I transform.

AN: The actress Rita Hayworth had an interesting take on that kind of transformation . . . and how people project things on performers. You know she became famous for her role in the sexy noir film Gilda, and afterwards she liked to say that men went to bed with Gilda and woke up with Rita. I know that I make a very different impression onstage than offstage.

BRM: Performers who are the same onstage and offstage usually bore the hell out of me. I mean, this is show business! You have to show something else, you know? I guess that always came naturally to me, because growing up in the red-light district of St. Pauli in Hamburg I was surrounded by trannies and prostitutes and gangsters who were always dressed to the nines—people whose professional lives depended on mastering a certain role, playing a certain character. But I also was obsessed with memorizing rock and roll songs as a kid—The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Elvis Presley . . .

BRM: If it sounds good, why not?

When I was listening to your album I kept thinking to myself, “How can I become that spontaneous?”

BRM: Not that you need that to make music . . .

BRM: I think digital technology for music has come a long way in the past few years. Even in, like, 2004, you could still hear this massive difference between plug-ins

AN: Watching you perform these songs live, I thought you channeled these characters perfectly.

AN: Really early musical influences have an interesting effect on personality . . .

“Liberation and wealth are strange bedfellows. You know, in the fifties in Venezuela, the middle class had lots of money. They were happy until they realized that material objects pacified them and that true liberation came from freedom of expression.”

Aérea Negrot

BRM: Yeah, I think my personality is a mix of British and American rock and rollers on the one hand and German strictness on the other. I actually tend to really annoy people with my German stubbornness and perfectionism.

A sound engineer once asked me if I ever had a producer tell me they were going out for a pack of cigarettes and just never come back. I haven’t but it’s not totally outside the realm of possibility.

AN: It’s funny to hear that because a lot of people have moved to Berlin because things here are so much more open and less strict— which doesn’t really fit with the typical cold, unfriendly, German stereotype. When I was a kid, I always thought there was some sort of mistake; that I was actu-

EB 4/2011

79

Aérea Negrot’s exquisitely produced tech-house provides a danceable foundation to her eccentric voice, which at times sounds like a Spanish-speaking cross between Nina Hagen and Jeffrey Lee Pierce.

Listen to Aérea’s DJ mix for EB Radio at electronicbeats.net

ally from somewhere else. I think that’s what pushed me to explore the world. I left Venezuela for the first time when I was thirteen to go live with my father, and to me, that was one of the most important decisions I ever made.

Somehow I still didn’t feel at home, so I moved to Holland, and then England, and then eventually to Berlin eight years ago. And now I finally feel totally at home.

I really feel like this is where I’m from.

BRM: I had the same experience, but for me it was going to London when I was twelve on a school trip. Somehow I ended up at The Marquee Club on New Years Eve and I just knew: this is where I’m meant to be. Everybody was so drunk and open and friendly. I remember being in tears on the

“All the women in my family looked like transvestite starlets. My aunt looked like a cross between Jayne Mansfield and Marilyn Monroe and my mother looked like Brigitte Bardot.”

Billie Ray Martin

bus back to Hamburg because I was just so sad and euphoric at the same time—it was so different to Germany. And when I moved there years later, it’s where I discovered acid house, which was an epiphany for me. This is the music I want to sing, and this is where I want to sing it. And that’s how Electribe 101 got started.

AN: I had a similar house experience when I went to Caracas when I was twelve. My cousin played me “Gypsy Woman” by Crystal Waters and it floored me. Seriously floored. So house was definitely my entrance into the world of electronic music, even though today my focus is more like Ellen Allien or Ricardo Villalobos or whatever. But there was a long and winding musical road in between.

80

EB 4/2011

Fata Kiefer, my dear friend and roommate with whom I also perform live, is really the one who “trained” me. I mean, I went from listening to the Spice Girls to Fantasma by Cornelius . . .

BRM: No shame in that! Everybody has their own musical path. For me, it was always thrilling to meet, like, my musical heroes. For me it was running into Siouxsie Sioux in a bar in London. I was actually really frightened to approach her because she always had such a fuck-you attitude, you know?

I thought she was just going to punch me in the face. But my friends were like, “Just go and tell her how much you admire her”, so I did. I rolled right up on her and Budgie and was like, “Hi I’m Billie Ray Martin, and I love your music so much. Thanks for listening!

Bye!” And she was like, “Billie Ray Martin? You’re not going anywhere! Sit down and have a drink!

Champagne!” We got pretty drunk and at some point I told her “I’m surprised you like my singing”, to which she replied: “Are you kidding? Fuck Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey. I have two favorite singers: Maria Callas and Billie Ray Martin.” And I completely freaked. I spent the next two days calling everybody I knew and telling them that story.

AN: I had by far my most sig-

nificant encounter with a musical hero in Berlin when I went to see Antony Hegarty at the Volksbühne. Somewhere in the middle of the set I just kind of broke down and started weeping and couldn’t stop. Pretty soon it got really loud because I was so moved. The woman in front of me even turned around to tell me to keep it down, which I thought was hilarious. I went outside to get it together and met Andy Butler, who was part of Antony’s crew at the time. Anyways, we got to talking and he asked me what I did and I told him I made music. I had my iPod with me and I played him some stuff and he was like, “Antony should hear this!” So a day later, Andy set up a meeting with Antony and I was insanely nervous, because he just has this

incredible aura, you know? It fills a whole room. Anyways, he had a listen and all he said was: “Oh, this is really weird . . . ”—which coming from him was a big compliment. And that’s how I ended up in Hercules and Love Affair.

BRM: I saw Antony in New York play for around twenty people before he got big. It was really, really impressive—but slightly different than what he’s doing nowadays. Back then the music was more Marc Almondesque, which is what I personally prefer. Anyways, I went up to him after the show and told him that he should be singing in the Royal Albert Hall.

And lo and behold . . .

AN: He’s just incredible. I think Antony was also one of the first people to really give me confidence to continue doing some of the stranger things I do with my voice and my music. You know, growing up gay, I was influenced by the music in the only places that people like me could go, you know? I got my start performing in gay clubs and it was there that I really was able to explore who I was . . . even though it took me a while to figure out that my sexual identity did not have to determine my musical orientation.

BRM: You know, all the women in my family looked like transvestite starlets. They had these beehive hairdos, crazy eyeliner and clung to that campy sixties style . . . they just couldn’t let go. My aunt looked like a cross between Jayne Mansfield and Marilyn Monroe and my mother looked like Brigitte Bardot. I don’t think the look itself had much of an impact on the music I make, but I learned to appreciate the aesthetic, especially when going out.

AN: I tend to write a lot of my songs after weekends of partying, on Mondays in the fourth dimension. I usually feel a combination of fried and a depressed. I don’t know why it’s such a fruitful time for me creatively. Actually, it was pretty recently that I woke up on a Monday for the first time in a long time and felt good. ~

All mixes of The RAdiosession elecTRonic BeATs on AiR ARe Also AvAilABle on demAnd AT elecTRonic BeATs RAdio one dAy AfTeR The BRoAdcAsT.

All dj sets on demand at electronicbeats.net

Aérea Negrot’s exquisitely produced tech-house provides a danceable foundation to her eccentric voice, which at times sounds like a Spanish-speaking cross between Nina Hagen and Jeffrey Lee Pierce.

Listen to Aérea’s DJ mix for EB Radio at electronicbeats.net

ally from somewhere else. I think that’s what pushed me to explore the world. I left Venezuela for the first time when I was thirteen to go live with my father, and to me, that was one of the most important decisions I ever made.

Somehow I still didn’t feel at home, so I moved to Holland, and then England, and then eventually to Berlin eight years ago. And now I finally feel totally at home.

I really feel like this is where I’m from.

BRM: I had the same experience, but for me it was going to London when I was twelve on a school trip. Somehow I ended up at The Marquee Club on New Years Eve and I just knew: this is where I’m meant to be. Everybody was so drunk and open and friendly. I remember being in tears on the

“All the women in my family looked like transvestite starlets. My aunt looked like a cross between Jayne Mansfield and Marilyn Monroe and my mother looked like Brigitte Bardot.”

Billie Ray Martin

bus back to Hamburg because I was just so sad and euphoric at the same time—it was so different to Germany. And when I moved there years later, it’s where I discovered acid house, which was an epiphany for me. This is the music I want to sing, and this is where I want to sing it. And that’s how Electribe 101 got started.

AN: I had a similar house experience when I went to Caracas when I was twelve. My cousin played me “Gypsy Woman” by Crystal Waters and it floored me. Seriously floored. So house was definitely my entrance into the world of electronic music, even though today my focus is more like Ellen Allien or Ricardo Villalobos or whatever. But there was a long and winding musical road in between.

80

EB 4/2011

Fata Kiefer, my dear friend and roommate with whom I also perform live, is really the one who “trained” me. I mean, I went from listening to the Spice Girls to Fantasma by Cornelius . . .

BRM: No shame in that! Everybody has their own musical path. For me, it was always thrilling to meet, like, my musical heroes. For me it was running into Siouxsie Sioux in a bar in London. I was actually really frightened to approach her because she always had such a fuck-you attitude, you know?

I thought she was just going to punch me in the face. But my friends were like, “Just go and tell her how much you admire her”, so I did. I rolled right up on her and Budgie and was like, “Hi I’m Billie Ray Martin, and I love your music so much. Thanks for listening!

Bye!” And she was like, “Billie Ray Martin? You’re not going anywhere! Sit down and have a drink!

Champagne!” We got pretty drunk and at some point I told her “I’m surprised you like my singing”, to which she replied: “Are you kidding? Fuck Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey. I have two favorite singers: Maria Callas and Billie Ray Martin.” And I completely freaked. I spent the next two days calling everybody I knew and telling them that story.

AN: I had by far my most sig-

nificant encounter with a musical hero in Berlin when I went to see Antony Hegarty at the Volksbühne. Somewhere in the middle of the set I just kind of broke down and started weeping and couldn’t stop. Pretty soon it got really loud because I was so moved. The woman in front of me even turned around to tell me to keep it down, which I thought was hilarious. I went outside to get it together and met Andy Butler, who was part of Antony’s crew at the time. Anyways, we got to talking and he asked me what I did and I told him I made music. I had my iPod with me and I played him some stuff and he was like, “Antony should hear this!” So a day later, Andy set up a meeting with Antony and I was insanely nervous, because he just has this

incredible aura, you know? It fills a whole room. Anyways, he had a listen and all he said was: “Oh, this is really weird . . . ”—which coming from him was a big compliment. And that’s how I ended up in Hercules and Love Affair.

BRM: I saw Antony in New York play for around twenty people before he got big. It was really, really impressive—but slightly different than what he’s doing nowadays. Back then the music was more Marc Almondesque, which is what I personally prefer. Anyways, I went up to him after the show and told him that he should be singing in the Royal Albert Hall.

And lo and behold . . .

AN: He’s just incredible. I think Antony was also one of the first people to really give me confidence to continue doing some of the stranger things I do with my voice and my music. You know, growing up gay, I was influenced by the music in the only places that people like me could go, you know? I got my start performing in gay clubs and it was there that I really was able to explore who I was . . . even though it took me a while to figure out that my sexual identity did not have to determine my musical orientation.

BRM: You know, all the women in my family looked like transvestite starlets. They had these beehive hairdos, crazy eyeliner and clung to that campy sixties style . . . they just couldn’t let go. My aunt looked like a cross between Jayne Mansfield and Marilyn Monroe and my mother looked like Brigitte Bardot. I don’t think the look itself had much of an impact on the music I make, but I learned to appreciate the aesthetic, especially when going out.

AN: I tend to write a lot of my songs after weekends of partying, on Mondays in the fourth dimension. I usually feel a combination of fried and a depressed. I don’t know why it’s such a fruitful time for me creatively. Actually, it was pretty recently that I woke up on a Monday for the first time in a long time and felt good. ~

All mixes of The RAdiosession elecTRonic BeATs on AiR ARe Also AvAilABle on demAnd AT elecTRonic BeATs RAdio one dAy AfTeR The BRoAdcAsT.

All dj sets on demand at electronicbeats.net

A Day in the Life

24 hours in Athens Interviews: A.J. SAMUELS AND Max Dax PHOTOGRAPHY: Elena Panouli AND luci luX

A Day in the Life

24 hours in Athens Interviews: A.J. SAMUELS AND Max Dax PHOTOGRAPHY: Elena Panouli AND luci luX

It’s no secret that financial and political upheaval often paradoxically provide ideal conditions for creative expression—as shown

by Weimar Berlin, UK-punk under Thatcher, or hip-hop under Reagan.

In Athens today, music, art, and youth culture are flourishing in the face of crippling national debt, violent demonstrations and extreme austerity measures. While signs of the city’s broken infrastructure abound, so do those of a creative class bursting at the seams. In the cradle of comedy of tragedy and birthplace of democracy, Athenians navigate their way through the fog of crisis with Dionysian élan.

10:15 AM

aM breakfast at café floral Themistokleous 80 Exarchia

Café Floral is located in the center of Exarchia, only a block away from the Athens Polytechnic, where the mother of all riots against the junta took place back in 1973. Floral had been an old 84

EB 4/2011

cafeteria for over forty years until it was refurnished sometime in the two-thousands. What certainly hasn’t changed is the great view of Exarchia Square next door. I see the square almost like an outdoor stage, where people meet and greet all day. At least it seems that way to me, because I live nearby in a house facing it, so I usually watch the scenery from my balcony.

Occasionally I’ll go to Café Floral to break my daily pattern. I won´t spend the whole day there—just do some meeting and greeting.

The first thing I usually do in the morning is drink an ice-cold frappe, which is the daily caffeine kick everybody enjoys during the summer months in Athens. But be warned: this is hardcore chemical coffee—not to be confused with your average espresso. You really shouldn’t have more than two of these a day.

In the past, Exarchia Square EB 4/2011

85

It’s no secret that financial and political upheaval often paradoxically provide ideal conditions for creative expression—as shown

by Weimar Berlin, UK-punk under Thatcher, or hip-hop under Reagan.

In Athens today, music, art, and youth culture are flourishing in the face of crippling national debt, violent demonstrations and extreme austerity measures. While signs of the city’s broken infrastructure abound, so do those of a creative class bursting at the seams. In the cradle of comedy of tragedy and birthplace of democracy, Athenians navigate their way through the fog of crisis with Dionysian élan.

10:15 AM

aM breakfast at café floral Themistokleous 80 Exarchia

Café Floral is located in the center of Exarchia, only a block away from the Athens Polytechnic, where the mother of all riots against the junta took place back in 1973. Floral had been an old 84

EB 4/2011

cafeteria for over forty years until it was refurnished sometime in the two-thousands. What certainly hasn’t changed is the great view of Exarchia Square next door. I see the square almost like an outdoor stage, where people meet and greet all day. At least it seems that way to me, because I live nearby in a house facing it, so I usually watch the scenery from my balcony.

Occasionally I’ll go to Café Floral to break my daily pattern. I won´t spend the whole day there—just do some meeting and greeting.

The first thing I usually do in the morning is drink an ice-cold frappe, which is the daily caffeine kick everybody enjoys during the summer months in Athens. But be warned: this is hardcore chemical coffee—not to be confused with your average espresso. You really shouldn’t have more than two of these a day.

In the past, Exarchia Square EB 4/2011

85

had been packed with junkies. But this year, within the span of a few weeks, neighborhood watch-style vigilantes pushed them out, day after day. You could tell that it took a lot of patience clearing the area.

In the end, I couldn’t believe it: even the children’s playground was finally usable again! It wasn’t an act of gentrification, but more just neighborhood people having had enough of the drugs and all the bullshit that comes along with it. A few months later the riots started, always beginning at nighttime.

It’s not like 2008 when the police killed Alexandros Grigoropoulos, which is what actually caused the serious violent uprising back then. Nowadays it takes next to nothing to start a fight with the police. In Floral, you can just keep on drinking your ouzo and watch the street battle raging, since nobody ever attacks the café itself.

Sometimes it feels like being in the eye of a storm. But if the police start using teargas, you better stay inside.

Kostas Arvanitis

DJ, Floral regular

86

EB 4/2011

12:03 pM

Above: Plastered on the walls of Café Floral are rosy homages to Parisian café culture of a bygone era.

Floral Bookstore Themistokleous 80 Exarchia

The bookstore has only been around for two years, but it seems to be selling the right things to the right people. Sales have been down over the past year or so, it’s not because people want to read everything online: it’s because people don’t have any money. I don’t think books will go the same route as CDs—they won’t be the obso-

Previous page: The Athens Polytechnic has become an institution of higher learning in more ways than one.

Following the violent suppression of student revolts against the military junta in 1973, an asylum law forbidding police from setting foot on university campuses was created. Today, the Polytechnic has become a haven for neighborhood junkies, anarchists, and various leftist protest groups.

lete, retro element of the future.

Reading a book online or with an iPad or just Kindle doesn’t give you the same experience as taking one in your hands, turning the pages, feeling its weight . . . That should be obvious, but to a lot of kids these days, it’s not.

Working in a bookstore doesn’t bring with it the same sort of pressure that other sales jobs do.

Buying a book is not the same as buying a TV. Customers are calmer, more comfortable, and curious—they browse without feeling like they’re about to be ripped off or thinking that whatever they buy is going to fall apart within a year and become a pile of unrecyclable junk.

Because we’re located in Exarchia, we carry lots of books about politics and music . . . you could call it a mishmash of leftist pop-culture. What we carry says a lot about what’s going on in Athens today—like the last book I read from the store, Le cris du people or The Cry of the People, which was recently translated into Greek.

It’s a “comic” about the Paris Commune—a group of Marxists and anarchists who briefly took over the French government following the Franco-Prussian war in 1871. It’s illustrated, so we’re not talking about super heavy literature here. But it’s still informative— especially for the kids. People need to learn about alternative forms of government. Otherwise, how the hell are they supposed to understand what they’re demonstrating against?

Kostas Fourikos Bookstore employee

01:00 PM Rebecca Camhi Gallery Leonidou 9 Metaxourgio These days everybody talks about the crisis as if it’s crept up on us all of a sudden, without warning. But to tell you the truth,

Above: Aside from featuring international artists such as Nan Goldin and Bill Owens, Rebecca Camhi’s gallery proudly champions homegrown talent like Mantalina Psoma and the late Nikos Alexiou. Exhibiting the latter is something Camhi sees as an obligation—not because she’s patriotic, but because the art is that good.

the financial crisis is only the tip of the iceberg. The real crisis is rooted deep within Greek society and it’s been around for many, many years—if not decades. This country suffers from the most extreme forms of corruption and social decline; everything’s deteriorating. Of course, some people saw it coming, and I don’t just mean financial analysts. Some of the best artists in Greece have put the crisis into context with their own work, and started to exchange ideas with professionals from other disciplines, like architecture or experimental cooking. I mean, artists who aren’t famous also aren’t rich, so for them the situation is often more inspiring than depressing. They’re struggling as they always were.

But I often wonder about the supposed “middle class”—you know, that part of the population who are constantly being referred to as neither poor nor rich. These are the people who’ve purchased expensive flat screen TVs and overpriced SUVs on credit instead of

taking their children to exhibitions or doing something educational.

And now they’re wondering where all the money went. I get really annoyed when I hear people hypocritically complain about the crisis, because I have a strong work ethic. I believe in being productive. Even if I wouldn’t earn any money for it, I’d still rather clean somebody’s apartment or pick up the trash than do nothing at all.

And I certainly wouldn’t spend my days going to riots and destroying what others have built. Don’t get me wrong: I don’t want things in Greece to be like in America, where people don’t have five minutes to eat their sandwich or get time off. But the Greeks need a reality check. They need to ask themselves whether going to demonstrations over and over again changes anything—whether it’s had any effect in the past. When people ask me if art in times of crisis should be considered a luxury, I always give the same answer: even the prisoners in concentration camps made art and wrote poetry. And EB 4/2011

87

had been packed with junkies. But this year, within the span of a few weeks, neighborhood watch-style vigilantes pushed them out, day after day. You could tell that it took a lot of patience clearing the area.

In the end, I couldn’t believe it: even the children’s playground was finally usable again! It wasn’t an act of gentrification, but more just neighborhood people having had enough of the drugs and all the bullshit that comes along with it. A few months later the riots started, always beginning at nighttime.

It’s not like 2008 when the police killed Alexandros Grigoropoulos, which is what actually caused the serious violent uprising back then. Nowadays it takes next to nothing to start a fight with the police. In Floral, you can just keep on drinking your ouzo and watch the street battle raging, since nobody ever attacks the café itself.

Sometimes it feels like being in the eye of a storm. But if the police start using teargas, you better stay inside.

Kostas Arvanitis

DJ, Floral regular

86

EB 4/2011

12:03 pM

Above: Plastered on the walls of Café Floral are rosy homages to Parisian café culture of a bygone era.

Floral Bookstore Themistokleous 80 Exarchia

The bookstore has only been around for two years, but it seems to be selling the right things to the right people. Sales have been down over the past year or so, it’s not because people want to read everything online: it’s because people don’t have any money. I don’t think books will go the same route as CDs—they won’t be the obso-

Previous page: The Athens Polytechnic has become an institution of higher learning in more ways than one.

Following the violent suppression of student revolts against the military junta in 1973, an asylum law forbidding police from setting foot on university campuses was created. Today, the Polytechnic has become a haven for neighborhood junkies, anarchists, and various leftist protest groups.

lete, retro element of the future.

Reading a book online or with an iPad or just Kindle doesn’t give you the same experience as taking one in your hands, turning the pages, feeling its weight . . . That should be obvious, but to a lot of kids these days, it’s not.

Working in a bookstore doesn’t bring with it the same sort of pressure that other sales jobs do.

Buying a book is not the same as buying a TV. Customers are calmer, more comfortable, and curious—they browse without feeling like they’re about to be ripped off or thinking that whatever they buy is going to fall apart within a year and become a pile of unrecyclable junk.

Because we’re located in Exarchia, we carry lots of books about politics and music . . . you could call it a mishmash of leftist pop-culture. What we carry says a lot about what’s going on in Athens today—like the last book I read from the store, Le cris du people or The Cry of the People, which was recently translated into Greek.

It’s a “comic” about the Paris Commune—a group of Marxists and anarchists who briefly took over the French government following the Franco-Prussian war in 1871. It’s illustrated, so we’re not talking about super heavy literature here. But it’s still informative— especially for the kids. People need to learn about alternative forms of government. Otherwise, how the hell are they supposed to understand what they’re demonstrating against?

Kostas Fourikos Bookstore employee

01:00 PM Rebecca Camhi Gallery Leonidou 9 Metaxourgio These days everybody talks about the crisis as if it’s crept up on us all of a sudden, without warning. But to tell you the truth,

Above: Aside from featuring international artists such as Nan Goldin and Bill Owens, Rebecca Camhi’s gallery proudly champions homegrown talent like Mantalina Psoma and the late Nikos Alexiou. Exhibiting the latter is something Camhi sees as an obligation—not because she’s patriotic, but because the art is that good.

the financial crisis is only the tip of the iceberg. The real crisis is rooted deep within Greek society and it’s been around for many, many years—if not decades. This country suffers from the most extreme forms of corruption and social decline; everything’s deteriorating. Of course, some people saw it coming, and I don’t just mean financial analysts. Some of the best artists in Greece have put the crisis into context with their own work, and started to exchange ideas with professionals from other disciplines, like architecture or experimental cooking. I mean, artists who aren’t famous also aren’t rich, so for them the situation is often more inspiring than depressing. They’re struggling as they always were.

But I often wonder about the supposed “middle class”—you know, that part of the population who are constantly being referred to as neither poor nor rich. These are the people who’ve purchased expensive flat screen TVs and overpriced SUVs on credit instead of

taking their children to exhibitions or doing something educational.

And now they’re wondering where all the money went. I get really annoyed when I hear people hypocritically complain about the crisis, because I have a strong work ethic. I believe in being productive. Even if I wouldn’t earn any money for it, I’d still rather clean somebody’s apartment or pick up the trash than do nothing at all.

And I certainly wouldn’t spend my days going to riots and destroying what others have built. Don’t get me wrong: I don’t want things in Greece to be like in America, where people don’t have five minutes to eat their sandwich or get time off. But the Greeks need a reality check. They need to ask themselves whether going to demonstrations over and over again changes anything—whether it’s had any effect in the past. When people ask me if art in times of crisis should be considered a luxury, I always give the same answer: even the prisoners in concentration camps made art and wrote poetry. And EB 4/2011

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they did it because it helped them to survive. These days, I’m proud to continue running my gallery and exhibiting artists I find important.

I don’t have any other option— artists are churing out great work.

Rebecca Camhi Gallerist

02:30 PM

lunch at diporto Odos Theatrou kai Odos Sokratous I actually grew up in Athens, but on the other side of the city in the U.S. base in Piraeus. But because I was an American army brat, I spent almost all of my time on the base and didn’t get to see much else. I really had no idea what the city was all about until I came back as an adult. Thank God my mother forced me to learn Greek.

88

EB 4/2011

Diporto serves what I’d call classic Greek peasant food—simple, hearty, and Eastern-tasting.

The spiciness of what you get here is the influence of Greek immi- PM grants from Asia Minor, or current day Turkey. It’s bizarre how adamant some Greeks are about the differences between Greek and Turkish culture; the most obvious similarities you can literally taste.

At Diporto, you usually share the food and help yourself directly from the serving dishes. There are no individual plates, which is why you have the paper covering the table to protect it from the oil and sauces that will inevitably drip all over the place. The owner usually cooks five or six things with some minor variations, but mostly it’s the same thing every day—a mix of vegetable and potato stew, grilled sardines, a meat dish, chickpeas in sauce, and a simple feta and tomato salad. And, of course, there’s retsina, the classic white Greek resin wine, served in a half-liter metal carafe and stored in the massive brown wooden bar-

rels stacked up against the wall.

The salad also has some incredibly spicy peppers, which serve to shock your palate. That’s where Diporto’s cool marble tap comes in handy . . . some of the coldest water in Athens.

The restaurant is only open for lunch and closes around 3 p.m. Dmitri, the owner, has no pretensions about being cool or written up in the newspapers or travel guides. In fact, he’s not a huge fan of attention or anything that would attract press. I’ve taken models here after shoots and he has actually refused to serve them.

He told me they could wait outside. He’s more into just feeding the neighborhood. The guy’s a bit idiosyncratic, but he’s also a survivor—I think he’s had two or three bypasses, and he’s still here everyday, along with his faithful apprentice, who’s been here since he was twelve years old. I don’t think Dmitri has any kids, so the apprentice will one day take over the whole operation. He can be proud—Diporto is an institution.

Above: Located just around the corner from Café Floral is Vinyl Microstore—Exarchia’s unofficial headquarters for eclectic music geeks and import junkies.

Now they just have to make the neighborhood a bit safer. I just got robbed on my way here.

Freddie F.

Photographer

04:50 PM Synching up with Dimitri

People often ask me how it’s possible to professionally run a music festival in Athens eight years in a row, and I always tell them: We need to do this. It’s an obligation to introduce and integrate the great local scene in Athens into something more international. If we didn’t have that attitude, we’d have to give up, because in Greece, there is no unified sense of how to get shit done. There is no industrial logic. The political and cultural elite in this country doesn’t seem to understand that in order to make something happen, you need a chain of functioning parts.

Everybody involved has to do his or her job. If one part of the chain is unreliable, the whole thing falls apart. That’s why we’re so used to improvising—because we have to.

When the Synch Festival doesn’t make any profit from ticket sales, we have to get the money from somewhere else. That’s why we’ve also been focusing on having really amazing merchandise designed

by Serena Galdo from Italy, which sells really well, thank God. The festival usually takes place in a huge industrial venue called the Technopolis in the Gazi district. With the line-up, we like to balance things between more avant-garde stuff and acts that everybody can feel: Jimi Tenor, Tuxedomoon, Underground Resistance, Roísín Murphy, Peaches, Bill Laswell, Liars, Tony Allen, Laurent Garnier, Fennesz . . . Balance is key. For some stupid reason, a lot of potential festivalgoers prefer to drink their beer outside the venue, listening to the faint sounds of what’s happening inside the hall. They don’t even

Above: The indomitable Freddy F.—photographer, poet, and bearded fixture of Athens’ fashion and music scenes.

think about what they’re missing, or about giving their input or contributing to the festival’s evolution.

It’s frustrating. Next time, when people ask me how it’s possible to run an electronic music festival in Athens, I’ll tell them: it’s impossible, but we do it anyways.

Dimitri Papaioannou Founder and Director, Synch Festival

06:20 PM

Vinyl Microstore Didotou 34, Exarchia For the past ten years now, the Vinyl Microstore is probably the one place in Athens where musicians, journalists and music lovers congregate on a regular basis—apart from going out at night. Local bands bring their new releases and posters for concerts or just come by to say hello and shoot the shit. Anybody interested in the Athens music scene will EB 4/2011

89

they did it because it helped them to survive. These days, I’m proud to continue running my gallery and exhibiting artists I find important.

I don’t have any other option— artists are churing out great work.

Rebecca Camhi Gallerist

02:30 PM

lunch at diporto Odos Theatrou kai Odos Sokratous I actually grew up in Athens, but on the other side of the city in the U.S. base in Piraeus. But because I was an American army brat, I spent almost all of my time on the base and didn’t get to see much else. I really had no idea what the city was all about until I came back as an adult. Thank God my mother forced me to learn Greek.

88

EB 4/2011

Diporto serves what I’d call classic Greek peasant food—simple, hearty, and Eastern-tasting.

The spiciness of what you get here is the influence of Greek immi- PM grants from Asia Minor, or current day Turkey. It’s bizarre how adamant some Greeks are about the differences between Greek and Turkish culture; the most obvious similarities you can literally taste.

At Diporto, you usually share the food and help yourself directly from the serving dishes. There are no individual plates, which is why you have the paper covering the table to protect it from the oil and sauces that will inevitably drip all over the place. The owner usually cooks five or six things with some minor variations, but mostly it’s the same thing every day—a mix of vegetable and potato stew, grilled sardines, a meat dish, chickpeas in sauce, and a simple feta and tomato salad. And, of course, there’s retsina, the classic white Greek resin wine, served in a half-liter metal carafe and stored in the massive brown wooden bar-

rels stacked up against the wall.

The salad also has some incredibly spicy peppers, which serve to shock your palate. That’s where Diporto’s cool marble tap comes in handy . . . some of the coldest water in Athens.

The restaurant is only open for lunch and closes around 3 p.m. Dmitri, the owner, has no pretensions about being cool or written up in the newspapers or travel guides. In fact, he’s not a huge fan of attention or anything that would attract press. I’ve taken models here after shoots and he has actually refused to serve them.

He told me they could wait outside. He’s more into just feeding the neighborhood. The guy’s a bit idiosyncratic, but he’s also a survivor—I think he’s had two or three bypasses, and he’s still here everyday, along with his faithful apprentice, who’s been here since he was twelve years old. I don’t think Dmitri has any kids, so the apprentice will one day take over the whole operation. He can be proud—Diporto is an institution.

Above: Located just around the corner from Café Floral is Vinyl Microstore—Exarchia’s unofficial headquarters for eclectic music geeks and import junkies.

Now they just have to make the neighborhood a bit safer. I just got robbed on my way here.

Freddie F.

Photographer

04:50 PM Synching up with Dimitri

People often ask me how it’s possible to professionally run a music festival in Athens eight years in a row, and I always tell them: We need to do this. It’s an obligation to introduce and integrate the great local scene in Athens into something more international. If we didn’t have that attitude, we’d have to give up, because in Greece, there is no unified sense of how to get shit done. There is no industrial logic. The political and cultural elite in this country doesn’t seem to understand that in order to make something happen, you need a chain of functioning parts.

Everybody involved has to do his or her job. If one part of the chain is unreliable, the whole thing falls apart. That’s why we’re so used to improvising—because we have to.

When the Synch Festival doesn’t make any profit from ticket sales, we have to get the money from somewhere else. That’s why we’ve also been focusing on having really amazing merchandise designed

by Serena Galdo from Italy, which sells really well, thank God. The festival usually takes place in a huge industrial venue called the Technopolis in the Gazi district. With the line-up, we like to balance things between more avant-garde stuff and acts that everybody can feel: Jimi Tenor, Tuxedomoon, Underground Resistance, Roísín Murphy, Peaches, Bill Laswell, Liars, Tony Allen, Laurent Garnier, Fennesz . . . Balance is key. For some stupid reason, a lot of potential festivalgoers prefer to drink their beer outside the venue, listening to the faint sounds of what’s happening inside the hall. They don’t even

Above: The indomitable Freddy F.—photographer, poet, and bearded fixture of Athens’ fashion and music scenes.

think about what they’re missing, or about giving their input or contributing to the festival’s evolution.

It’s frustrating. Next time, when people ask me how it’s possible to run an electronic music festival in Athens, I’ll tell them: it’s impossible, but we do it anyways.

Dimitri Papaioannou Founder and Director, Synch Festival

06:20 PM

Vinyl Microstore Didotou 34, Exarchia For the past ten years now, the Vinyl Microstore is probably the one place in Athens where musicians, journalists and music lovers congregate on a regular basis—apart from going out at night. Local bands bring their new releases and posters for concerts or just come by to say hello and shoot the shit. Anybody interested in the Athens music scene will EB 4/2011

89

find what they’re looking for right here. To spread the word, we host an in-store festival, Yuria, every November, featuring up-andcoming artists from Athens, all performing live in the shop. We see it as an opportunity to bring people together who really need to know each other. The festival is free of charge, but the association with the scene makes it worth it.

It’s a give and take.

We specialize in what I’d call strange jazz, noise and krautrock, but also carry the newest indie and hip-hop stuff as well . . . and pretty much everything from Honest Jon’s in London. You can mine our shelves for loads of vinyl re-issues from all over the world because we’re good at staying in direct contact with specialized labels, thanks to the Internet. We’d actually never be able to offer our records at such low prices without our online connections, because, seriously, there is so little money in circulation at the moment. People simply don’t spend that much money anymore on music. And if they do, they take 90

EB 4/2011

care that they’re not paying too much. For us it’s a bit like a crisis within a crisis, but it’s been that way for years now.

Konstantinos Papaioannou Store owner

08:20 PM

Booze Cooperativa Kolokotroni 57, Athina I’m kind of a jack-of-alltrades—I have a degree in mathematics, I’m a graphic designer, and I’m involved in both The Erasers, an artist collective, and drog-A-tek, a band. I also used to run Bios together with Vasilis Haralambidis, but those days are long gone. Way back in the day, I used to DJ at Booze, mostly German pop and new wave—Sentimentale Jugend, the Neubauten, Malaria!—stuff like that. I especially like coming here because I drink for free . . . and I like the women and the

music. I remember when the bar opened twenty years ago, I walked in for the first time and thought to myself, “Wow, a place in Athens that plays Front 242.” I guess you could hear things like that in Rebound as well, but Rebound was and is for late-night fun.

I grew up in Stuttgart because my parents were doing their PhDs there in biochemistry. The Germans considered my parents immigrant laborers even though they were actually part of the intelligentsia. When I was a kid, I spent almost all of my time with my twin brother, developing our own language and not really interacting with the neighborhood. I can still understand German, but I can’t speak it . . . although I do consider myself a Germanophile.

I remember deciding I wanted to play music after moving to London and recording the sounds of a really primitive printer I owned. What I do with The Erasers is like real time cinema.

Live, we use six or seven video cameras onstage, and incorporate

Above: Locals having a laugh under the glare of a naked bulb at Six D.O.G.S. in Monastiraki.

Right: Mathematician, graphic designer, and jack-of-allartistic-trades Georgios Konstantinidis gets to drink for free at Booze Cooperativa. But he’s special, so you should expect to pay.

EB 4/2011

91

find what they’re looking for right here. To spread the word, we host an in-store festival, Yuria, every November, featuring up-andcoming artists from Athens, all performing live in the shop. We see it as an opportunity to bring people together who really need to know each other. The festival is free of charge, but the association with the scene makes it worth it.

It’s a give and take.

We specialize in what I’d call strange jazz, noise and krautrock, but also carry the newest indie and hip-hop stuff as well . . . and pretty much everything from Honest Jon’s in London. You can mine our shelves for loads of vinyl re-issues from all over the world because we’re good at staying in direct contact with specialized labels, thanks to the Internet. We’d actually never be able to offer our records at such low prices without our online connections, because, seriously, there is so little money in circulation at the moment. People simply don’t spend that much money anymore on music. And if they do, they take 90

EB 4/2011

care that they’re not paying too much. For us it’s a bit like a crisis within a crisis, but it’s been that way for years now.

Konstantinos Papaioannou Store owner

08:20 PM

Booze Cooperativa Kolokotroni 57, Athina I’m kind of a jack-of-alltrades—I have a degree in mathematics, I’m a graphic designer, and I’m involved in both The Erasers, an artist collective, and drog-A-tek, a band. I also used to run Bios together with Vasilis Haralambidis, but those days are long gone. Way back in the day, I used to DJ at Booze, mostly German pop and new wave—Sentimentale Jugend, the Neubauten, Malaria!—stuff like that. I especially like coming here because I drink for free . . . and I like the women and the

music. I remember when the bar opened twenty years ago, I walked in for the first time and thought to myself, “Wow, a place in Athens that plays Front 242.” I guess you could hear things like that in Rebound as well, but Rebound was and is for late-night fun.

I grew up in Stuttgart because my parents were doing their PhDs there in biochemistry. The Germans considered my parents immigrant laborers even though they were actually part of the intelligentsia. When I was a kid, I spent almost all of my time with my twin brother, developing our own language and not really interacting with the neighborhood. I can still understand German, but I can’t speak it . . . although I do consider myself a Germanophile.

I remember deciding I wanted to play music after moving to London and recording the sounds of a really primitive printer I owned. What I do with The Erasers is like real time cinema.

Live, we use six or seven video cameras onstage, and incorporate

Above: Locals having a laugh under the glare of a naked bulb at Six D.O.G.S. in Monastiraki.

Right: Mathematician, graphic designer, and jack-of-allartistic-trades Georgios Konstantinidis gets to drink for free at Booze Cooperativa. But he’s special, so you should expect to pay.

EB 4/2011

91

Above: See your food before you eat it, late night at Rosalía.

live music, live graphic design, live art . . . I suppose you could call it a form of opera, without librettos and arias and all that. It has elements of Fluxus, Dada, punk and electronic music . . . but it’s rough.

We never rehearse, because the equipment we use is so expensive, with all the projectors and cameras and whatnot. Anything that’s written or composed, my twin brother does. The whole thing’s like a “Gesamtkunstwerk”.

Giorgos Konstantinidis Artist and musician

09:45 PM PM

dinner at Rosalía Odos Valtetsiou 58 Exarchia

Rosalía’s been feeding the neighborhood since 1978, but I’ve been coming here twice a week for around twenty years. I live nearby and am rarely able to subdue

92

EB 4/2011

my urge when it comes. What’s interesting about the restaurant is that it serves tourists and locals in roughly equal numbers.

Neighborhood people aren’t scared away or turned off by the tourists, so the clientele is balanced. I usually order something different every time I come, but I have my favorites, like the lamb chops or whatever is the catch of the day.

Everything’s prepared with simple herbs and spices and grilled to perfection, but most importantly, all the produce is fresh, and they buy their fish every morning directly from the main agora on Athinas Street. The fact that they bring out all of the starters on a tray for you to choose from is one of my favorite things about coming here.

Honestly, I like choosing food by how it looks.

There are two sides to the district of Exarchia where Rosalía is located: the media side, which gives outsiders the impression that they’re entering a war zone with violent protests and clashes with police twenty-four-seven, and the

real side, which is that sometimes there are flare-ups and whatnot, but nobody is in any real danger. I’ve lived here for more than twenty-five years and I’ve never felt threatened or unsafe at all.

Occasionally you’ll have problems with overzealous police officers, but normal people and tourists have no reason to feel unsafe.

There is almost no petty or common crime in Exarchia—nobody’s ever robbed or raped or assaulted here . . . This is a neighborhood of communal solidarity. People stick together and help each other out. And if you’re a tourist, you temporarily become part of that community; you’re welcomed here.

It’s only dangerous in Exarchia for police officers in uniform—their presence is taken as a form of provocation. It might seem unfair, but if you’ve ever witnessed serious police brutality, you would understand. These days, everybody’s got a real short fuse—but I’m sure the world knows that already.

INA TIBKE / Co-Owner of The Great Getwaway Marrakech Hotel & Spa / Morocco

Konstantinos Airahotis Lawyer and Rosalía regular

MADEBYORIGINALS.COM A project by Design Hotels™

Above: See your food before you eat it, late night at Rosalía.

live music, live graphic design, live art . . . I suppose you could call it a form of opera, without librettos and arias and all that. It has elements of Fluxus, Dada, punk and electronic music . . . but it’s rough.

We never rehearse, because the equipment we use is so expensive, with all the projectors and cameras and whatnot. Anything that’s written or composed, my twin brother does. The whole thing’s like a “Gesamtkunstwerk”.

Giorgos Konstantinidis Artist and musician

09:45 PM PM

dinner at Rosalía Odos Valtetsiou 58 Exarchia

Rosalía’s been feeding the neighborhood since 1978, but I’ve been coming here twice a week for around twenty years. I live nearby and am rarely able to subdue

92

EB 4/2011

my urge when it comes. What’s interesting about the restaurant is that it serves tourists and locals in roughly equal numbers.

Neighborhood people aren’t scared away or turned off by the tourists, so the clientele is balanced. I usually order something different every time I come, but I have my favorites, like the lamb chops or whatever is the catch of the day.

Everything’s prepared with simple herbs and spices and grilled to perfection, but most importantly, all the produce is fresh, and they buy their fish every morning directly from the main agora on Athinas Street. The fact that they bring out all of the starters on a tray for you to choose from is one of my favorite things about coming here.

Honestly, I like choosing food by how it looks.

There are two sides to the district of Exarchia where Rosalía is located: the media side, which gives outsiders the impression that they’re entering a war zone with violent protests and clashes with police twenty-four-seven, and the

real side, which is that sometimes there are flare-ups and whatnot, but nobody is in any real danger. I’ve lived here for more than twenty-five years and I’ve never felt threatened or unsafe at all.

Occasionally you’ll have problems with overzealous police officers, but normal people and tourists have no reason to feel unsafe.

There is almost no petty or common crime in Exarchia—nobody’s ever robbed or raped or assaulted here . . . This is a neighborhood of communal solidarity. People stick together and help each other out. And if you’re a tourist, you temporarily become part of that community; you’re welcomed here.

It’s only dangerous in Exarchia for police officers in uniform—their presence is taken as a form of provocation. It might seem unfair, but if you’ve ever witnessed serious police brutality, you would understand. These days, everybody’s got a real short fuse—but I’m sure the world knows that already.

INA TIBKE / Co-Owner of The Great Getwaway Marrakech Hotel & Spa / Morocco

Konstantinos Airahotis Lawyer and Rosalía regular

MADEBYORIGINALS.COM A project by Design Hotels™

11:45 PM pM enjoying the view at bios Pireos St. 84 Metaxourgio

projects, and listen to really new music—electronic and otherwise. You can literally feel that things are happening; people are exchanging ideas, making plans, contributing to a certain creative energy. And a few months later, you start seeing results. Alva Noto actually recorded parts of an album here for his Raster-Noton label. It was a perfect example of an abstract idea transformed into something concrete, as somehow we sensed something more permanent would come out of his being here. But who knows . . . I always say: social and work relations are subject to change. That’s why it’s good to have a space that stays in one place.

Vasilis Haralambidis

Co-founder of Bios

Bios began in 2000 as a festival for electronic music, new media and art. But after two years we came to the conclusion that Sónar in Barcelona already had the area covered, and it didn’t make much sense to have something similar in Athens because, at the time, there wasn’t much of a scene for electronic music. So we decided to keep the name and open a permanent venue, instead of just throwing one three-day party a year. Over the past few years we’ve been able to draw pretty much every important act from the international electronic music scene—from Flying Lotus, The Bug, Kode9 and Autechre to Gonjasufi, Zomby and King Midas Sound. To date, we’ve put on more than a thousand shows.

When we started out, performers who used laptops were still considered exotic by the audiences here. I guess we’ve managed to bring people around. It certainly helps to have a beautiful rooftop terrace with a view of the Acropolis. Don’t forget: this is Athens—it doesn’t get super cold here. The question of how to present really progressive music is an important one, and it’s something we take really seriously. I think we’ve been successful, and that’s why Bios has become something like a subcultural think tank for the city. At night, all kinds of people meet in one of our three bars to drink, discuss future 94

EB 4/2011

02:15 PM aM

drunk at koukles Zan Moreas 32, Koukaki I’ve been performing at Koukles for over nineteen years, pretty much from the beginning of our fierce and famous tranny club.

We haven’t changed what we do in terms of the basic idea: dressing fabulously, lip-synching and choreographing dance performances.

But in a way, you could say that Koukles changes all the time, because we’re always up-to-date on what’s happening musically . . . assuming it’s fierce enough to be included in our program.

Of course, we take much pride in performing the classics: old Greek pop, Maria Callas, Lady Gaga—I think it’s about having a balance between the new and what’s tried and true.

Queer culture in Athens is slowly starting to become more and more normal. In the beginning, things weren’t easy. I’m from a small port town and know how it is to have to deal with ignorance and small-mindedness. But an artist never stops. Ever. Sometimes you’ll have people come to the club who just want to heckle and be a menace. Or even worse: sit in front of the stage stone-faced, just staring at you, not saying a word.

EB 4/2011

95

11:45 PM pM enjoying the view at bios Pireos St. 84 Metaxourgio

projects, and listen to really new music—electronic and otherwise. You can literally feel that things are happening; people are exchanging ideas, making plans, contributing to a certain creative energy. And a few months later, you start seeing results. Alva Noto actually recorded parts of an album here for his Raster-Noton label. It was a perfect example of an abstract idea transformed into something concrete, as somehow we sensed something more permanent would come out of his being here. But who knows . . . I always say: social and work relations are subject to change. That’s why it’s good to have a space that stays in one place.

Vasilis Haralambidis

Co-founder of Bios

Bios began in 2000 as a festival for electronic music, new media and art. But after two years we came to the conclusion that Sónar in Barcelona already had the area covered, and it didn’t make much sense to have something similar in Athens because, at the time, there wasn’t much of a scene for electronic music. So we decided to keep the name and open a permanent venue, instead of just throwing one three-day party a year. Over the past few years we’ve been able to draw pretty much every important act from the international electronic music scene—from Flying Lotus, The Bug, Kode9 and Autechre to Gonjasufi, Zomby and King Midas Sound. To date, we’ve put on more than a thousand shows.

When we started out, performers who used laptops were still considered exotic by the audiences here. I guess we’ve managed to bring people around. It certainly helps to have a beautiful rooftop terrace with a view of the Acropolis. Don’t forget: this is Athens—it doesn’t get super cold here. The question of how to present really progressive music is an important one, and it’s something we take really seriously. I think we’ve been successful, and that’s why Bios has become something like a subcultural think tank for the city. At night, all kinds of people meet in one of our three bars to drink, discuss future 94

EB 4/2011

02:15 PM aM

drunk at koukles Zan Moreas 32, Koukaki I’ve been performing at Koukles for over nineteen years, pretty much from the beginning of our fierce and famous tranny club.

We haven’t changed what we do in terms of the basic idea: dressing fabulously, lip-synching and choreographing dance performances.

But in a way, you could say that Koukles changes all the time, because we’re always up-to-date on what’s happening musically . . . assuming it’s fierce enough to be included in our program.

Of course, we take much pride in performing the classics: old Greek pop, Maria Callas, Lady Gaga—I think it’s about having a balance between the new and what’s tried and true.

Queer culture in Athens is slowly starting to become more and more normal. In the beginning, things weren’t easy. I’m from a small port town and know how it is to have to deal with ignorance and small-mindedness. But an artist never stops. Ever. Sometimes you’ll have people come to the club who just want to heckle and be a menace. Or even worse: sit in front of the stage stone-faced, just staring at you, not saying a word.

EB 4/2011

95

If you’ve been performing as long as I have, you don’t let it get to you. Trust me: I’ve had all sorts of shit happen to me onstage: my wig has fallen off, my heels broke, CDs have skipped in the middle of my set . . . You take it in stride or you get off the stage and never get back on. It’s a personality thing.

I love singing, I love impersonating and I absolutely love to dance. But most of all, I love a fresh wind blowing through Koukles. There’s no jealousy or infighting amongst the dancers, even though there are some big differences in age. We’re all one big family, and I can say that without any reservations. The price of entrance is so cheap that we haven’t noticed fewer guests coming—since the beginning of the crisis I mean.

I’m not rich, but I have accepted a salary freeze, because it was necessary for the club’s survival. I really can’t complain—my autobiography is coming out in November and it’s written to sell, baby.

Eva Koumarianou

96

EB 4/2011

Dancer and performer

05:37 AM wrapping it up: Rebound Mithimnis 43, Platia Amerikis Going to Rebound is like entering a time warp: everything in the club is exactly the same as it was twenty-five years ago. And I mean exactly the same. The only significant change has come from the anti-smoking laws that were passed not too long ago, when the owner was forced to build a kind of glass casing inside the bar—a fishbowl for the tobacco-friendly.

Other than that, the decor hasn’t changed one bit; the tables are still in the same places, the music is still the same, you still see the same people, and they’re still wearing the same clothes. It’s like walking into Desperately Seeking Susan. That’s perhaps unsurprising for a darkwave-goth-EBM-

Above: Koukles Club is equal parts glitter and pathos. There’s a reason why Jean Paul Gaultier and Patricia Field always visit when they’re in Athens—it’s simply the best drag show in town.

Previous page: A boom with a view.

The dramatically lit Acropolis as seen from the rooftop at Bios.

industrial venue, but if you’ve been going there for as long as I have, that kind of resistance to change is impressive—and it’s a big part of the club’s attraction. You run into people you haven’t seen in ages and everybody is kind of sloppy drunk.

More than anything else, Rebound is an after-hours place, although real goths are there from the beginning and stay until the bitter end. And the end can be bitter if you’ve actually had anything to drink there other than beer. Trust me, after your second “vodka” tonic, you’ll be seriously trashed.

You know what to expect on the dance floor at Rebound: Christian Death, Bauhaus, Front 242, Alien Sex Fiend . . . the songs of our youth. I always feel so uninhibited dancing there. Because it’s so old, people think Rebound is dirty, but I would say it’s more musty. At least there aren’t any cockroaches anymore—people say the mice ate them.

Maria Pappa Music journalist

If you’ve been performing as long as I have, you don’t let it get to you. Trust me: I’ve had all sorts of shit happen to me onstage: my wig has fallen off, my heels broke, CDs have skipped in the middle of my set . . . You take it in stride or you get off the stage and never get back on. It’s a personality thing.

I love singing, I love impersonating and I absolutely love to dance. But most of all, I love a fresh wind blowing through Koukles. There’s no jealousy or infighting amongst the dancers, even though there are some big differences in age. We’re all one big family, and I can say that without any reservations. The price of entrance is so cheap that we haven’t noticed fewer guests coming—since the beginning of the crisis I mean.

I’m not rich, but I have accepted a salary freeze, because it was necessary for the club’s survival. I really can’t complain—my autobiography is coming out in November and it’s written to sell, baby.

Eva Koumarianou

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EB 4/2011

Dancer and performer

05:37 AM wrapping it up: Rebound Mithimnis 43, Platia Amerikis Going to Rebound is like entering a time warp: everything in the club is exactly the same as it was twenty-five years ago. And I mean exactly the same. The only significant change has come from the anti-smoking laws that were passed not too long ago, when the owner was forced to build a kind of glass casing inside the bar—a fishbowl for the tobacco-friendly.

Other than that, the decor hasn’t changed one bit; the tables are still in the same places, the music is still the same, you still see the same people, and they’re still wearing the same clothes. It’s like walking into Desperately Seeking Susan. That’s perhaps unsurprising for a darkwave-goth-EBM-

Above: Koukles Club is equal parts glitter and pathos. There’s a reason why Jean Paul Gaultier and Patricia Field always visit when they’re in Athens—it’s simply the best drag show in town.

Previous page: A boom with a view.

The dramatically lit Acropolis as seen from the rooftop at Bios.

industrial venue, but if you’ve been going there for as long as I have, that kind of resistance to change is impressive—and it’s a big part of the club’s attraction. You run into people you haven’t seen in ages and everybody is kind of sloppy drunk.

More than anything else, Rebound is an after-hours place, although real goths are there from the beginning and stay until the bitter end. And the end can be bitter if you’ve actually had anything to drink there other than beer. Trust me, after your second “vodka” tonic, you’ll be seriously trashed.

You know what to expect on the dance floor at Rebound: Christian Death, Bauhaus, Front 242, Alien Sex Fiend . . . the songs of our youth. I always feel so uninhibited dancing there. Because it’s so old, people think Rebound is dirty, but I would say it’s more musty. At least there aren’t any cockroaches anymore—people say the mice ate them.

Maria Pappa Music journalist

NEU

imagine how Bitcoin could scale outwards because the system was devised to only have a fixed amount of currency—meaning that its value in the long run will just continue to increase.

All together now: Download your favourite song and reduce environmental waste.

AS: So what’s it good for?

This is what the 3,000 fans have been waiting for: their favourite song! Only a few have it at home on CD, and that’s the way it should be. Most of them download their music in an environmentally safe way using Deutsche Telekom’s online portals. Not only shopping becomes more convenient, but it also saves a lot of plastic, making it really easy to turn a favourite song into a hit for the environment.

SL: I think what Bitcoin has made clear is that some people don’t want to have all their transactions be traced. The father of digital money, David Chong, was an early proponent of untraceability, and he came up with some brilliant cryptographic methods to make that a reality. I think it’s a tragedy that we have the technology to make digital cash untraceable, but not the appetite. That just means that eventually governments will move in on digital currencies, because untraceability means untaxability . . .

Collective Hallucination A.J. Samuels: Steven, you’ve written about crypto currencies in the past—electronic money with each unit defined by a number of digits. Since the nineties, we’ve seen all sorts of e-currencies come and go: Facebook credits, Second Life credits, Xbox credits, to name a few. In comparison, Bitcoin seems not only designed for broader use; it also has a decidedly political thrust.

Steven Levy: Absolutely. Bitcoin isn’t centrally controlled or based on trusting some federal or international regulator—which in theory is supposed to make it more stable. But even more interesting for me is that you can earn Bitcoin currency by being part of the system that makes it trustworthy—

98

EB 4/2011

In recent months, Bitcoin’s fluctuating market value has been the object of much speculation, as has the identity of its creator(s), the anonymous Satoshi Nakamoto. Touted by some as the untraceable peer-to-peer digital money of tomorrow, Bitcoin has been demonized by others as the computer-savvy criminal’s e-cash of choice. A.J. Samuels spoke with Steven Levy to find out more about the political implications of crypto currencies.

which, in some ways, is almost the exact opposite of today’s financial system. You can “mine” Bitcoins by allowing your computer to be used to process the cryptographic activity of individual transactions—that is, the process which ensures a single Bitcoin is not used twice in a single payment. My sense is that Bitcoin was launched more as an experiment or as digital money performance art than as a real currency . . . but it is impressive.

AS: Not to mention the best way to pay for drugs, child porn and human trafficking . . .

SL: Who knows—maybe one day

you’ll have entire pedophile rings paying in World of Warcraft credits instead. But seriously, crypto currencies are just the natural evolution of fiat money: since today’s currencies are no longer of any intrinsic value like, say, salt, it makes sense that after “worthless” paper would just come code. Trust me, our pockets won’t be jingling in the future.

AS: Have you ever bought or paid for anything in Bitcoin?

SL: No. I truly believe that crypto

currencies have a future, but I’m not so sure about Bitcoin. You know, these days people pay for their coffee in Starbucks with a credit card. With that kind of behavior, you end up with a pretty granular credit card statement.

Personally, that would drive me nuts.

AS: Certainly the volatility of Bitcoin’s market value in recent months would make it seem less stable than its proponents would have you believe.

AS: People are trading anonymity for the ability to track their own payments.

SL: Well, it’s definitely tough to

have to sacrifice one for the other.~

SL: Hopefully one day you won’t

Big changes start small: www.telekom.com/nachhaltig-handeln

NEU

imagine how Bitcoin could scale outwards because the system was devised to only have a fixed amount of currency—meaning that its value in the long run will just continue to increase.

All together now: Download your favourite song and reduce environmental waste.

AS: So what’s it good for?

This is what the 3,000 fans have been waiting for: their favourite song! Only a few have it at home on CD, and that’s the way it should be. Most of them download their music in an environmentally safe way using Deutsche Telekom’s online portals. Not only shopping becomes more convenient, but it also saves a lot of plastic, making it really easy to turn a favourite song into a hit for the environment.

SL: I think what Bitcoin has made clear is that some people don’t want to have all their transactions be traced. The father of digital money, David Chong, was an early proponent of untraceability, and he came up with some brilliant cryptographic methods to make that a reality. I think it’s a tragedy that we have the technology to make digital cash untraceable, but not the appetite. That just means that eventually governments will move in on digital currencies, because untraceability means untaxability . . .

Collective Hallucination A.J. Samuels: Steven, you’ve written about crypto currencies in the past—electronic money with each unit defined by a number of digits. Since the nineties, we’ve seen all sorts of e-currencies come and go: Facebook credits, Second Life credits, Xbox credits, to name a few. In comparison, Bitcoin seems not only designed for broader use; it also has a decidedly political thrust.

Steven Levy: Absolutely. Bitcoin isn’t centrally controlled or based on trusting some federal or international regulator—which in theory is supposed to make it more stable. But even more interesting for me is that you can earn Bitcoin currency by being part of the system that makes it trustworthy—

98

EB 4/2011

In recent months, Bitcoin’s fluctuating market value has been the object of much speculation, as has the identity of its creator(s), the anonymous Satoshi Nakamoto. Touted by some as the untraceable peer-to-peer digital money of tomorrow, Bitcoin has been demonized by others as the computer-savvy criminal’s e-cash of choice. A.J. Samuels spoke with Steven Levy to find out more about the political implications of crypto currencies.

which, in some ways, is almost the exact opposite of today’s financial system. You can “mine” Bitcoins by allowing your computer to be used to process the cryptographic activity of individual transactions—that is, the process which ensures a single Bitcoin is not used twice in a single payment. My sense is that Bitcoin was launched more as an experiment or as digital money performance art than as a real currency . . . but it is impressive.

AS: Not to mention the best way to pay for drugs, child porn and human trafficking . . .

SL: Who knows—maybe one day

you’ll have entire pedophile rings paying in World of Warcraft credits instead. But seriously, crypto currencies are just the natural evolution of fiat money: since today’s currencies are no longer of any intrinsic value like, say, salt, it makes sense that after “worthless” paper would just come code. Trust me, our pockets won’t be jingling in the future.

AS: Have you ever bought or paid for anything in Bitcoin?

SL: No. I truly believe that crypto

currencies have a future, but I’m not so sure about Bitcoin. You know, these days people pay for their coffee in Starbucks with a credit card. With that kind of behavior, you end up with a pretty granular credit card statement.

Personally, that would drive me nuts.

AS: Certainly the volatility of Bitcoin’s market value in recent months would make it seem less stable than its proponents would have you believe.

AS: People are trading anonymity for the ability to track their own payments.

SL: Well, it’s definitely tough to

have to sacrifice one for the other.~

SL: Hopefully one day you won’t

Big changes start small: www.telekom.com/nachhaltig-handeln

N° 28 · WINTER 2011/2012

w w w. electroni cbe ats . ne t

conversations on essential issues WINTER 2011/2012

electronic beats · BRYAN FERRY · ZOLA JESUS · Carsten Nicolai · Tuxedomoon · Anika

yo u r dig i ta l d a i ly

­ lectronic E beatS

“Don’t forget: I studied art. . .”

Bryan Ferry talks to Dieter Meier

ZOLA JESUS pantha du prince brandt brauer frick aérea negrot