Theme: Das Grauen, Taste Of Decay, Shadowplay, Garden Of Pleasures, The Whiplovers, Re-Set!
Author: V(A)dim B(A)rsov
Genre: Post-Punk, GothPunk, Deathrock, Punk Rock, Goth Rock, Electro
Here is an interview with Michael Scholz, a man responsible for such music projects like Taste Of
Decay, Garden Of Pleasures, Shadowplay etc. Enjoy.
Hi Michael. Let’s start from afar. Tell me
please how did your passion for music begin? What contributed to your interest
to this punk and goth thing?)) Here in Russia we have an approximate idea of
what Germany was like in '84. I'm guided by the date of the TOD first tape and
I know about West and East Germany's background of political life and cultural
phenomena s and music in the biggest cities. Tell me please how it felt like at
that time to be a member of such subculture movement in Harrislee. Judging by
what I know, read and heard from my favorite musicians from Britain, Italy,
France, America, in the early 80s, despite the general rise of independent and
alternative arts, youth and students' activity, it was quite depressive and
tough time for young people.
Michael : Well, first of all, I was always involved in making music, because my father played Accordion and my big brother played guitar. I started with making music at the age of 6, learning Melodica (listen to “Everything counts” by Depeche Mode and you know what it sounds like) in a music-school. At that time I was singing in the choir of my elementary school.
Anyway, all other instruments I have learned by myself, my brother just draw the chords on a piece of paper and showed me on a guitar how to play them. At the age of 14 I had my own acoustic guitar and played all the stuff I could hear on the radio at that time. It was the mid 1970s, so I tried to figure out the chords of songs from Cat Stevens, Smokie and so on.
In 1977 a friend of mine went to London with his mother and brought some Punk-LPs home. I think it was "Never mind the bollocks" by the Sex Pistols and the first Stranglers-Album. At that time we also heard some inspiring new music on the radio (Ramones, Clash, The Jam and so on) and soon we changed our haircuts to a shorter form and wore military trousers and boots. We started to hang out in the local record-store in the nearby city (Flensburg) and occupied the record-player for hours. We were not very political, but we felt, that something went wrong in our society. We started to criticize the way of life and the conservative attitudes of our parents, but we were just a few Punk-Rockers in our village. Even in Flensburg there were more Hippies and Rockers than people as we were.
In 1979, I was 17, one of our classmates had a gig with his band in the local youth-center. They played well known songs from the Beatles and other bands, but the girls liked it a lot. So my friends and I thought, it would be a good Idea to make a band and start performing live on stage. The only music we were able to play was Punk-Rock, so we started a band called “Chaingang” and played songs from Bands like Ramones, Clash, The Jam, without adopting their political message.
That changed after we started to write our own songs. But after all, we thought, that political activities belong to those long-haired and drug smoking hippies, which we declared to be our enemies. We just wanted to be provocative without being much political in sense of being right- or left-wing. We walked at weekends through our village with a ghetto-blaster, we had parties in the nearby wood, drinking beer and burning the big wooden chess figures in the camp fire on the playground. In the near town called Flensburg there were a lot more places, where a young Punk-Rocker could go and find other people with the same attitudes, but most of them were older and more involved in the underground-scene, doing demonstrations, occupying houses and writing communist magazines. To be honest, that was not my cup of tea and as I voluntarily joined the German Navy the Punk-thing was over for me. I found, that it became too aggressive and more and more violent people joined the scene. Also many people started to take drugs and drank too much alcohol.
The next thing, after leaving “Chaingang”, was a lot more avantgardistic. The so called “Neue Deutsche Welle” started.
Bands like “Abwärts”, “DAF”, “Fehlfarben” and “Geisterfahrer” drew my attention. I started a band called “Töne ohne Trompeten” in 1981.
We believed that there soon would start a third World War with atomic weapons and so the music must have been more dark and strange. Well, this soon ended because the music-industry tried to make money with this new wave of german bands.
Btw, when I was in the Navy, our enemy, we called the “orange forces” was always attacking from the east. I was on a “Fast Patrol Boat” on which we sailed around the baltic sea. My decision to join the Navy felt strange to my punk-friends, but some of them were joining the Army later, while many moved to West-Berlin in order to not join the Army.
Before “Taste of Decay” I played in a Hardcore-Punk Band called “Das Grauen”.In 1982 I changed a lot in my political thinking, getting a lot more critical and at the same time I started to wear black clothes. We released a tape by ourselves (20 copies I think) and even had T-Shirts with the cover of this tape. I still had german lyrics, what was strange for a band in this scene.
Anyway, 1984 I left the Navy and kind of fell into a black hole, not knowing what to do now. Maybe the music of TOD reflects this situation. The music came deep from the inside and was in no way political at first sight. It got more depressive because the world became a more and more depressive and hostile place.
At that time, the Goth-scene in Germany was small, but even in our hometown strange looking people emerge from the darkness of their dwellings, dancing to our music. We hung around with the local Punks, Teds and even Skinheads and Psychos (not the Nazis). I was more interested in having a good time, it was like dancing on a volcano that was about to erupt. We were threatened by Pershings and SS20-Rockets but we danced to songs about mysteries, the occult and old horror movies starring Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff.
It was the most intense time of my life.
Thank you for such an interesting and detailed answer. You already mentioned how TOD began. It means that we understand each other well in our dialogue and are moving in the right direction. So, the year 84-85. First I'd like to ask you how you formed a band. Usually it's pleasant to recall because forming a band is connected with big undertakings and splendid plans. Please tell anything you can recall, like, where you found these guys, which bands inspired you then, and so on. In 84 you formed a band and it took you a year to record TOD!, which has a plenty of stuff, judging by Discogs. It was pretty quick, you must have devoted a lot of time to music? Please tell how and where you recorded the first tape. How many copies did you make, how did you manage to release and spread this record? What was special about your work at the studio? I can see at Discogs that Lenni used a drum machine, for example. Same questions about 'In The Garden Of Materita'. Sorry for skipping from one question to another, I know very few facts about TOD because it's really hard to find smth about it in the net.
Michael: OK, I asked Simon about how the Band was formed and he told me the following information.
Simon: After Felix Schultz and I had tried a few music projects between 1982 and 1984 with varying line-ups ('Varnished Version' - Pop with Karen von Törne on vocals and flute, a horrible funk-intermezzo, finally 'Friede den Palästen' – that we referred to as 'avant-garde Swing' instrumental Trash with Joachim 'Jock' Stöcken on drums – the last gig took place at my High-School Examination in 1984), we wanted a “real” band with vocals and everything and we were interested in Gothic (like X-Mal Deutschland, Sisters of Mercy, Bauhaus, etc. - just the usual suspects).
Besides that we heard various avant-garde music (Felix was also interested in Jazz and Krautrock, I was into music from Punk Rock to Butthole Surfers and stuff)A day in spring 1984, as I heard a rumor that “Das Grauen” had split up, I called Michael on the phone. He seemed as surprised as willing to experiment - then we had the first sessions in the basement of Felix parent´s house. A drum machine and the first songs came from Michael (first song was 'My Heartbeat').
Michael: The first session took place at the 17th of June 1984, at that time a public holiday in West-Germany, on the occasion of the day in the “DDR” in the year 1953, where the uprising in East Berlin was violently suppressed by tanks of the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany and the Volkspolizei.We really had some interesting songs where Karen von Törne was singing along with me, while Felix sometimes played violin. In fact, we recorded a session on cassette, I must look if I can find the tape. We called it “Projekt 17. Juni”. My influences were Bauhaus, Joy Division, The Cure, Siouxsie, X-Mal Deutschland and the “Sisters of Mercy” and a lot more bands of that genre.
After a relatively short time (it must have been autumn 1984) I asked Lenni to join the band to play the drums and after a few weeks we ended up really productive. Almost every Sunday afternoon we had a new song. Karen left the band quite early after Lenni became our drummer, because she didn´t like Lenni and we finally changed the band´s name to “Taste Of Decay”.
I know Lenni since I was 13 or 14 years old. We met each other on a playground nearby, both interested in “CB-Funk” (citizens band radio) and reading comics like “Fix und Foxi” at that time in the late 70´s.
Later on we were both into Punk-Rock and we hung around in our village. Finally I made the drivers license and bought an old car. Now at the age of 18 I was able to drive to concerts in Hamburg or Kiel. Lenni was 14 and I took him with me.
It was not very long until we had our first appearance on stage (of which there were far too few, because Felix moved to Berlin to evade military service). We managed to organize a festival with some strange local bands which we knew in a location not far from Flensburg.
We released two official tapes: TOD! and “In The Garden Of Materita”, both releases had 50 copies.The songs on the TOD! were simply recorded live with two microphones in the rehearsal room with a Revox B77 Machine, no overdubs.Then we gave the tape to a copy-service, which was very expensive at that time. The artwork was made by us all together. I had a nice book with many pictures of old horror movies, so we decided to use a picture of Boris Karloff, which we found representative for our music.
By the way, the drum-synth that Lenni used was a small box with 2 knobs that produced a single sound. Listen to Bauhaus song “Dancing” (Minute 1:30) from their album “Mask” and you know what I mean. You could put it on a drum with a screw or hit it directly with a stick to get a sound out of it.We send a few copies of the tape to some german music magazines like “Sounds” and “Spex”, but they didn´t notice us. We even send a copy to the infamous Alfred Hilsberg, who was the owner of Zick Zack Records, but no reaction. So most of the tapes were sold to friends and people in our hometown.
In January 1985 I had an accident during my Karate-Training. I had a rupture of a band in my knee and had to go to a doctor in hospital. My knee was operated and I wasn´t able to walk without crooks for 6 months, so we were unable to play live for this time. But we keep on rehearsing. Simon picked me up in his car and brought me back home after rehearsing. So we were still busy making songs.
The 2nd tape was a bit more “professional”. Felix bought one of the first 4-Track Cassette Recorders from Yamaha and we recorded the songs on it. This Recorder had a inbuilt reverb-effect, and you can hear this effect on nearly every track and song. But still we were in our rehearsal room. It was still the basement of Felix parents house and they were really tolerant about our music. The front cover is a greek mask in the garden of a villa in Italy (San Michele). The picture comes from a book I found in the bookshell of my parents.
A friend of Felix took the photos, which we used for the cover artwork.
In the Summer of 1986 Simon went to Kiel to study chemistry. Until then we had only 3 or 4 gigs and now it was time to end it. I decided to make a record, because I thought it would be a good idea, even the band would never play together again. I payed 2000,- DM for the production and the pressing. I´ve never got my money back, but anyway.
I found a little studio with only 8 tracks, which was not too expensive and we decided to record the EP in his studio.In the studio we told the guy (Klaus Koch), that the sound should not be too 'clean' and we recorded the whole EP in one weekend with a lot of coffee and beer.
The recording sessions were quite stressful because of the restricted time and we wanted to put the maximum of songs on a 7``, so it has to be run on 33 rpm. That was all I could afford. A friend of mine, who usually draw comics and cartoons (Kim Schmidt) did the artwork of the label and the inner sheet.
The front cover photo was shot by a guy called Claus Korn, who ran a cassette-label (Individual Pop). We contributed a song on his “Individual Pop Compilation” that he released and we kept in contact since then. I asked him, if he had an idea for a cover photo and he sent me this one.
On the backside of the cover there is a little figure that Felix draw just for fun and on one side of the vinyl we put the greek mask from the 2nd tape.
What else do you want to know?
Well, you've answered some of the questions I wanted to ask about the EP Calling. Still, let's talk a bit more about this period. Have I correctly understood that while recording 'Calling' you already knew it was going to be a 'swan song' for the band? What was the cause of the band's break-up? Have you thought then that after 28 years this record will be sold for at least 45 euros and will have such a cult status? Is there any feeling of incompleteness and the fact that the band needed a full-length album? After all, a new tide of interest to TOD has emerged earlier than in 2010 when your compilation was released by Infrastition, have you thought about renunion? Maybe just now, when your song was included in a compilation Killed by Deathrock, Vol. 1 of a quite trendy label Sacred Bones Records and CVLT Nation wrote about you?
Michael: I wanted to make this record because it was clear that the band split up. As I said before, Felix went to West-Berlin for studying reasons and because he didn´t want to join the army. When you were a citizen of West-Berlin, they didn´t force you to serve in the army.Simon went to Kiel, a city that is 100 km far from Flensburg, to study at the University of Kiel.Lenni and I were the remaining members, so we decided to end T.O.D.
Of course nobody would have imagined that this EP would have been so sought after like it is today. Although we made jokes about T.O.D. being „The secret cult-band of the high north“, just because nobody knew us.
We made 2 full-length tapes and an EP, so there is not really a need for a whole Album.
I never thought about a reunion, everyone moved away, physically and mentally. I still have little contact to the remaining band members, but we never talked about a reunion. Nobody would have wanted that.
And a few questions on another topic. Germany used to have large Goth scene in 80's, I mean Goth punk, Deathrock, Goth rock, not NDW or Depro-punk, though of course they often got crossed. Have you had at least some kind of relationship with musicians of such bands like Der Fluch, Mask For, Marquee Moon, Malaria, Asmodi Bizarr, Danse Macabre, Cyan-Revue, Stimmen Der Stille, Aus 98, They Fade In Silence, Calling Dead Red Roses, Remain In Silence, Blue Kremlin, Chim Chim Cheree !, Hoodoo, Belfegore ..? I know these projects existed in different periods of time, and it was before Internet appeared, but it seems strange that with such a developed scene you were isolated and did not receive any interest and support from the outside.
Michael: Yes, we were quite isolated up here. I thought of moving to West-Berlin at that time, just to be near the “scene”. We sent lots of EP´s to any record-label we could think of, but they ignored us. Some of the bands you mentioned above had already releases on the “What´s so funny about” Label in Hamburg, and I met Alfred Hilsberg (the label owner) in his club called “Kir” and gave him a demo-tape, but he wasn´t interested.
The Goth-scene in the big cities was not so open minded as you might think. If you don´t come from Hamburg or Berlin they ignore you. But maybe we weren´t present enough. 2 years was not enough time to grow a publicity that would be big enough, so that the right people became aware of us. We were at the wrong place, at the wrong time and we did not meet the right people.
Now I'd like to ask you about Shadowplay. As far as I understand the history of this project dates back to 1984. Since it's hard to find anything about it except for some pieces of info at kentuckyfriedwave blog, Discogs and your site in German which is hard to read even with online translator. So could you please tell the history of Shadowplay, with its discography including three cassettes and album released in 2013. Anything you wish to tell (and I should admit you're a really good storyteller).Sorry that I don't ask you suggestive questions because I'm afraid of confusing you and myself too).
Michael: Okay, I will tell you something about Shadowplay. This is a project, in which I can do anything I want without discussing it in a band. I always had ideas for songs which were rejected by other band-members. So I started recording the songs by myself. I always loved bands like “Sad Lovers and Giants”, “Chameleons” or “Comsat Angels” and “Danse Society” which all transport a certain mood. I wanted to make such kind of music, but I didn´t find people who would join in.
In 1983 I started recording ideas on a Revox B77 (the one from my brother Ingolf). I used an old keyboard with a nice string sound, an old MFB Fricke Beatbox (the only types of rhythm it had was some sort of Bossa Nova and you could change the pattern by turning a switch at the front of the box.
At that time I had first experiences with drugs, but I soon discovered that they would do some sort of damage to my psychological health. In fact, I had some real bad trips and really scary feelings of paranoia at times.
I also had frustrating experiences with “friends”, just the usual “relationshit” (© by “Dance or Die”)
I tried to “heal” myself by writing songs and recording them. A friend of mine heard the songs and he liked them very much. He said, that I should release the songs on a tape and call it “Shadowplay”.
By the way, the name “Shadowplay” was not a very good choice, because nowadays there are loads of bands and other goth-related people and events who use this name. But without the use of the internet 30 years ago, it was nearly impossible to find out who already used a certain name.
It lasted 4 years until I could release the first tape. I thought that these songs were too personally and nobody would want to listen to them.
Until 1988 Claus Korn (He sent me the photograph which became the front cover picture of TOD´s Calling-EP) asked me, if he could release a tape with my songs on his tape-label “Individual Pop”. Before that he already released a compilation where TOD contributed a track (“Calling”).
In the following years I was involved in a type of international underground tape-scene which grew bigger and bigger.
People from different countries asked for the tape “Another Autumn Day” which came out in 1988 and later I released 2 other tapes but not on a label (“An Ideal World” and “Tears”). And finally “A History Of Shadowplay”, which was just a selection of tracks from the 3 tapes, released on Alexander Pohle´s Label “Beton-Tapes”.
I had a few connections to fanzines and Tape-Labels all over the world. Today I still discover compilations of which I didn´t know, with one of my songs on it (thanks to Discogs.com). Too bad that I didn´t get at least a copy of those tapes.It must be around 1993, when I sent a tape with some unreleased songs to Mick Mercer (a journalist who is writing about goth and indie-bands), I called it “A Perfect Frame” but that was no official release, but somehow I read about this tape of a regular 4th tape in the kentuckyfriedwave blog. Maybe I planned to release this tape, but for reasons I don´t remember I never did.
After so many years it is very interesting that some people still like my old songs, so a few years ago Klaus Weinrich from “Holy Hour Records” wanted to release a CD with “Shadowplay” and I agreed. I re-recorded some of my old stuff and put them together with new tracks on the album “From Darkness To Light”, which is the last release until now.
I could imagine to release a new Album as LP, (yes Vinyl!) just because I like to hold a record and a large cover in my hands and have a sheet with lyrics and pictures which is big enough for me to read without glasses.
Have I correctly understood that so far you've been making music of Shadowplay all by yourself, without anyone's help? If it is so, you're doing with all the instruments really well which is probably not a rare thing nowadays but certainly deserves respect. Last album was released in an edition of 300 copies on Holy Hour Records. Why have you chosen this label?
Michael: Thanks, yes, I play all instruments by myself and I do the vocals as well. Klaus, the owner of “Plastic Frog Records” asked me if I wanted him to release an Album on his sub-label “Holy Hour Records”, I just had to send him the songs and the cover. 2 years later he released the CD and I am quite happy with it, because I didn´t pay anything for it. He also sent me 30 copies for free, which I think was very nice of him.
Now let's talk a bit about Garden Of Pleasures. Quite an interesting project, it's a pity that there are no releases. To tell the truth, I've heard only one song on a compilation New Alternatives by famous label Nightbreed Recordings. I should say that your Pan-dora's Box is the best track to my mind on this compilation along with the songs Momento Mori UK. But another compilation named «Split-Tape / Three Times Four» released on Black Death label has three more songs, as well as there's a track 'Age Of Lies' on 'The Unknown Eight'. So in fact you have 5 songs recorded. Have you ever considered releas-ing them all together? It would be cool, I'd be happy to buy such release. Were these songs recorded at various times? And again sorry for my ignorance, there's scarce infor-mation on the net so I have to ask you to tell about history of Garden Of Pleasures
Michael: Ok, with “Garden of Pleasures” I had the most fun playing live, and we had a lot of gigs. It all started in 1987. I had a girlfriend who went to a danish school in Flensburg, which was not unusual in this region, as we have an established minority of danish-thinking people. Her name was Kerrin and she is now a well known Journalist in Denmark.
Anyway, she had some classmates who were doing a bit playing around with instruments in a rehearsal room, nothing serious. They were just at the beginning of playing in a band.
So one of the guys asked my girlfriend if I wanted to come to one of their rehearsals and maybe we could make some music together. My girlfriend asked me and I thought, well, why not. At that time I had no band, T.O.D was long time dead, so let us see, what those young lads are doing.
I went to this old house, it has rooms where bands could go and make music without disturbing other people. There was no toilet. No that is not correct, because there was the staircase...
I then opened the door to a small room with four young boys at the age of 17 to 19 years. Then I showed them how to play one of my Shadowplay-songs (Out Of Control) and it turned out to be quite good for the beginning. Kim, who was the youngest of them, was a really good drummer, Marc played his guitar in a way I played it and Steff was a good bass player.
But there was one of them, who I thought did not fit. His name was Arne and soon I told him to leave because I thought, that one guitarist is enough. Well, life can be cruel sometimes...By the way, Arne became a very good musician and now lives as a guitar teacher in Hamburg.
We carried on rehearsing, reduced to 4 people, and soon we had about 10 songs. We started in Autumn 1987 (first rehearsal was 30.10.1987 to be precise) and our first gig was at the 16.01.1988 (the evening before Mark´s birthday). The venue was our rehearsal-room and it was surprisingly crowded with people. Most of them obviously came to the birthday party, but there were a lot who just heard rumours, that a new band would play for the first time.
Unfortunately my girlfriend couldn´t come and I was a bit sad about that. So I drank a bottle of vodka before we started playing and so the tragedy began. This concert was recorded on tape, a kind of historical document indeed.
During the gig I fell backwards into the drum kit and destroyed one of the cymbal stands. The next morning I discovered a big blue and green bruise on my upper leg. My voice was gone and I had a terrible hangover. Apart from that we had a great night.
We continued rehearsing and looked for any occasion to play live. We had too many gigs to remember and we drank a lot and it was really funny. We even had gigs in Denmark and Poland and I think we were quite a good live band.
When “Every New Dead Ghost” toured in Germany in 1992, we supported them for one concert. We even did some sort of studio recordings but only demos. Pandora´s Box was one of the songs from that session. When I look back I cannot understand why we never recorded an album or a tape. I am sure, that with someone who would manage us, we would have become much more wellknown, but somehow we didn´t care.
These 5 songs you mentioned were all recorded in one session. We really should have released them, but it never happened.
We made lots of live recordings and even videos of some gigs as well. We even played at a local festival with an old lady as headliner. Her name was Gerty Molzen, she must have been 80 years at that time and she released a single on which she sang the titles “Take a walk on the wild side” (Lou Reed) and “Do you really want to hurt me” (Culture Club).
Anyway, we had lots of quite strange gigs. We only wanted a place to sleep and a crate of beer for playing. We even refused to play as headliner at a local festival arranged for Nicaragua (I really don´t know the purpose for this festival anymore). We just wanted to finish early in order to drink beer at the backstage and have party. Many people who came to see us came too late, because we played earlier than announced. The band that played after us had their first live appearance and they didn´t know that there was free beer in the backstage room, and there wasn´t any beer left when they came backstage after their gig.
We didn´t take ourselves much seriously. Once we had a gig at a party where people came in disguise (German Karneval) and everybody thought, that we, being serious Goth-Rockers, would never go on stage in costumes. Well, of course we did and we had a really good laugh at all the “serious Gothic people” in the audience. (Even Mark wore a costume. Hint: Just look at his nose on this picture.)
The year 1990 was a year full of changes. GOP disbanded for the first time in February because Kim suddenly quit school and left the country to sell Leather-Hats in Portugal or whatever. I asked Lenni, the former drummer for Taste of Decay, to join GOP, but it didn´t match, so that was the first break we had.Kim returned in May 1990 and we started playing again. I took high school graduation and in July my father died of cancer.
In August 1990 Steff suddenly changed his mind and started to become some sort of anarcho punk and he quit playing for GOP. That was really sad, because the guy who came after Steff could not replace him. The new bass player was a schoolmate of Mark and he was more an intellectual type of musician. He was a very good musician nevertheless, but the music changed. We started rehearsing in October 1990 with him and carried on playing gigs in November.
The new songs we made, after Steff left the band, were quite different. The music was less post punk and more “modern style”, hard to explain (I started to listen to all this shoegazer bands like “Ride” and “House of Love” and also “Nine Inch Nails”. I even wrote a song with a political message, what was not bad, but different.We recorded a demo-tape in a professional studio and had a few gigs, but I felt that the spirit was gone and so I thought it was time to end GOP.
At that time Kim left Flensburg again because he wanted to study in Denmark and Mark went to Bremen, studying art and media at the university and that was it. We played the last time supporting “Every New Dead Ghost” on 31st of January 1992 in a small venue in Eckernförde, Germany.
At that time I started to concentrate deeper on Shadowplay and I also started to make music with Peter Rowell. Years ago he had a Solo-Project called “Tumorous Flesh” which I helped him to record on my 4-track Cassette-recorder, but that is another story...
A few years later (1997) the original members of GOP came together to play again for one time. Simone, a good friend of ours was (and still is) the biggest GOP-Fan on earth. She managed to get the band together for one gig. It was really a great concert in the “Volksbad” in Flensburg. If I remember correctly there must have been about 100 people at that night. We just needed to rehearse one time and the spirit that I missed so long, was instantly back. At the concert people threw small pieces of paper towards the stage. It was really hard to sing with all this confetti in my mouth.
Would you be interested in a re-edition of GOP's five songs if you found a label for it?
Michael: Oh yes, why not? I would like to release a full time Album. Klaus from Holy Hour Records was interested in releasing something from GOP, but until now he never did.
In 1999 you took part in an old school EBM project The Whiplovers. I also know about your synth band Re-Set! and your collaboration with a pretty popular futurepop band Solitary Experiments. Please tell about your experience in these projects and your interest in electro music.
Michael: Well, there was a time in my life where I wanted to make music without guitars, or even with synthesizers and guitars. I always liked the sounds of bands like DAF or Depeche Mode or „A Flock of Seagulls“ back in the 80´s.
So it happened that a friend of mine had a simple synth from Yamaha and a drum-machine called „R8“. This friend, Peter Rowell, had his own music project called „Tumorous Flesh“ and later we played together in a band called „Animal Passions“. Due to a drummer, who couldn´t play and a bass-player who went to Berlin later on, Peter and I decided to go on and make a mixture between Synth-Pop and EBM.
„The Whiplovers“ were born. I bought a „Sirius“ from a company in Germany called „Quasimidi“which was a nice synth and Peter already had a CS1X from Yamaha and a Drum-synth from Roland called „R8“.
We released a Maxi-Single CD on our own and also had a few gigs, starting with a video with atomic explosions while I went on stage in a white suit wearing a gas mask. I carried a yellow barrel with a radiation-sign on it. Our themes were the future of mankind, atomic destruction, travelling through space and time, genetic engineering and so on. The music was deeply influenced by bands like early „Covenant“ or „Front 242“.
In the year 2001 a DJ from Kiel, Jens Seyfert, introduced us to his friend Stefan Kuboteit from Hamburg, who was the Manager of „Dance or Die“ and „Solitary Experiments“ at that time. He told us to change our band name from Whiplovers to RE-SET! Because he thought, that the old name would bring bad associations to the public and thus having no success. He also pushed us to go in a more dance orientated direction with our songs. Before that we also used acoustic and electric guitars.
We then had 3 supporting acts for „Dance or Die“ and played a few times supporting „Solitary Experiments“. But we were not so successful like them and our Manager failed to promote us the way we expected.
After releasing a CD-Album „Mono-lith“ which was merely ignored by the music-press we decided to end the collaboration with Stefan and that was it. By the way, a few years later „Solitary Experiments“ also quit working with Stefan.
On this CD-Album however, there also was a Remix of one of our songs called „Static“, which was done by Michael Thielemann from „Solitary Experiments“. We kept contact via E-Mail for some time.
In 2009 they decided to put this Remix as a B-Side on their Maxi-Single „Immortal“, but sung by their singer Dennis Schober.
In 2013 Dennis asked me, if they could buy the rights to perform a song called „Eye of a Storm“, which I uploaded on Soundcloud. Dennis obviously liked it and so it was released as a B-Side of their Maxi-Single „Trial and Error“, again remixed by Michael Thielemann and with Dennis voice instead of my version.
I still like to play around with synths, when I am in the mood for it, so you never know what comes out of it.
This question may seem not quite appropriate, and if you find it so you can skip it. But if you don't mind, could you tell something about yourself as a person: what hobbies apart from music you have, what your typical weekdays look like, what kind of literature you like, which cuisine you prefer, do you have pet animals... anything you wish to tell about yourself.
Michael: Of course I can tell you a little bit of myself. Besides making music I practised Karate since I was 14, but I don´t practise it anymore, for several reasons that were too many to mention here. I am still interested in martial arts, especially from Okinawa and Japan. I was quite interested in Zen-Buddhism and for a long time I read many books about it and did some meditating.
When I was about 20 years old, I started to read books from Hermann Hesse (Der Steppenwolf) or Franz Kafka (Das Urteil). All that crazy stuff you read, when you are „searching for satori“. ;)
I like fantasy and science-fiction, but more in movies than in literature. I also like to play computer games (the Fallout-series, Wasteland 2 just to name the latest).
I got my first computer in 1986 by „accident“. Lenni sold some copies of TOD´s „Calling-EP“ and did not deliver the money to me, because he already spent it on alcohol or drugs or whatever. So we made a deal. His parents gave him a Commodore C-64 as a birthday present, so he gave me this computer to pay his debts.
I really like asian food, but I also like italian, greek and indian cuisine. Everything without meat. I started to be a vegetarian 14 years ago, at first because my girlfriend Heike was vegetarian, but now I think, it is better for the animals, the enviroment and for my health to eat plants instead of dead meat.
I really love to cook, because then I know, what is in the food that I eat. The only ones who eat meat and fish, are my two cats. That is okay with me. They are carnivores and sometimes they invite us to have a mouse or a bird, but we must decline.
I'd like to thank you for the interview. You are an amazing and interesting storyteller, very self-organised and responsible, which is not so common in a creative person, but I appreciate such qualitites very much. I'm really glad to publish this interview, I was working on it with great pleasure and I hope that readers of my blog will like it, too. I'd like to finish it all with the most important question about your future plans in music...
Thank you very much for your questions, which were not so easy to answer. But they led me into long forgotten places of my past, that was quite exciting. I hope you enjoyed it too.Now for the future, there is not much I can tell you about. I think I just keep on writing and recording songs, upload them on soundcloud and see, if people respond to it. Maybe I release my new songs or find a label that would like to release a CD or maybe LP, that would be great.
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