I want to thank Pascal and all guys from Datashock for making this interview happen.
Please visit band's web-site here - meudiademorte and check out their recent 2LP on Dekorder.
1.
Let’s handle with boring question first:
What have changed in independent music world with the developing and spreading of the Web? Any positive improvements? Any negative repercussions?
Wow! That’s a very difficult question to start with! When we started listening to music it was more difficult to come from one band to the next one. We had to find out ways and strategies to learn about music. Finding fanzines, reading mailorder-lists and “thank you”- lists on covers, etc. All that stuff opened new worlds. It was slow, and maybe work…
Today you get everything with one click, and that’s pretty cool, isn’t it? It’s really nice to see, that younger ones know more or can get information much faster, than we did at the same age. On the other hand it’s getting too fast?! People are listening to tons of music on one day. It’s kind of a hyper-active way to handle with music. Is a release a special thing anymore? We don’t know.
What we canenjoy it’s the knowledge that we can listen to all the music we are interestedin, or people recommend…We don’t have to wait, we can satisfy our curiositydirectly…
On the other hand sometimes the quantity and availability can be overwhelming. Being confronted with your lack of knowledge can be very disappointing too. There is a lot of homework to do, haha. Be always hard at work! So are we really ambitious?
In case of so called “music-business” issues, what can we say? You can get every meudiademorte release for free. Of course we hope that some people will buy our record, but at the same time we don’t make really money out of it. We don’tknow anyone who can make a living out of playing music. But maybe that isn’t the goal anymore. What we can is changing our stuff, working together, getting in touch, becoming friends, whatever. Getting in contact with people all over the world, that’s probably the best thing about the web.
2.
Tell about the history of Datashock project.
We grew up together. The most of us know each other for more than 15 years. Pascal founded Datashock in 2003, he is maybe the biological mother of that baby. More and more friends joined in and at least since the first tour we did, it became more or less a modern “patchwork” family. Everyone feels responsible for our little bastard.
3.
Does the cadre working on the record always vary? Do you have a fixed group of people engaged in Datashock?
At the moment there’s a core of six people (Jan, Sebastian, Christian, Ruth, Pascal and Ronnie). We really enjoy playing in this combination. It feels very good. But it’s still an open union. We don’t really think about getting more people involved. It just grows and shrinks without a master plan. Besides the six, Ulf Schütte and Marcel Türkowsky are still quite close, but they didn’t play on the pyramiden jams.
4.
What about the recent 2LP on Dekorder? How did it appear? How many people have worked on it? When and where did you record it?
We know Mark (the founder of Dekorder) for a couple of years.
After we did a collaboration with him in 2007, he asked us to release something on Dekorder. When you have a look at his releases, it feels quite natural that we can release something on his label. In your opinion we have some interests and ideas in common.
First of all we recorded around 8 hours of “drone-music” together with ulf and marcel in 2008. But max (the guy who recorded the sessions) had barely time to mix that stuff. So in the end it got banned on a hard disc (where it still is)...
Between the years 2009 / 2010 we recorded the “pyramiden” in an old and beautiful villa in Darmstadt as an 8 piece band. The place is called “Oetinger Villa” and it’s used as an independent youth centre, concert-place and as our second home etc.
We played there some shows before, and Jan Kolter (he also played bass on a few songs), who is organizing shows there, became a close friend within the last years. He has a studio in the villa, and we talked a couple of times about doing a record session with his help and in that amazing space. Finally it did happen and it was such a relaxed atmosphere, without any trouble…
Finally we asked Ulf to record an Intro & Outro for the record. So the answer how many people played on the record is 9 ;)
So now the boring part: Ronnie and Jan mixed it for months, haha. After that Pete Swanson did the mastering. Besides the music, the record also includes an exclusive cut-up made by the stunning author Jürgen Ploog. With Jeffrey Meyer we found the perfect artist for providing the cover and Johannes Schebler brought the layout in shape!
5.
You guys are often called as hippie-style experimentalists. What is that that links you to such a portrayal?
What can we say? We are not responsible for terms of expressions anyone uses to talk about us. The view from the outside will stay strange to us. But everyone can hear aesthetical influences. Psychedelic, krautrock, bands the wire circumscribed as “new weird America”,…all of that means a lot to us! Maybe the connection between all that stuff is, that they represent a kind of an utopian spirit. That’s totally a hippie thing. And we love it!
And we already said it before: Datashock is all about our friendship! Hanging out together, jamming, drinking too much beer and having fun. So if you wanna call us hippies you are maybe right.
And our largest problem is:
MOST OF US ALSO LOOK LIKE HIPPIES!
6.
Your workings are very much based on improvisation. What about the compositional part? How do you write your songs?
We don’t write any note or part. We are just jamming. That’s the reason why we can play very bad as well, haha. Jam by jam we just try to let it flow, to concentrate on each other, to find a common mood, to find a way to make it sound organic…that works sometimes, and sometimes it can be just awful. It depends on situations, atmosphere, audience, nervousness, self-confidence, personal temper, drunkenness… you can see we are quite the opposite of professional musicians.
7.
What pushes you forward? Tell about some inspirations for your music.
FLEETWOODMAC! Most played band in our tourvan or on our partys! Besides of that:
What pushes us forward to play music at all? Hanging around with best friends and trying to do something beautiful and meaningful besides all day pressure and bleakness. All of us are collecting instruments. We just love to play, to find out new things, sounds… Making music is an important thing in our lives. It’s necessary. Besides that: Getting in touch with lovely creative people, having the chance to enjoy hospitality, etc. are also reasons to keep it going. We are just trying to find a bolt-hole. And to have the feeling that there is an opportunity to make something you can say I’m 100% responsible and proud of it, its just amazing.
8.
Where are you based right now? What can you tell about the local scene?
At the moment we are spread all over germany. 4 of us in the southwest of germany where we grew up (Pascal still lives in Saarlouis, Sebastian, Jan and Christianlive a few km away in Saarbrücken), Ronnie lives in Cologne, Ruth in Berlin and Ulf in Hamburg.
So it’shard to talk about local scenes. In Germany it seems that there aren’t so manypeople interested in experimental music. Or maybe it’s just our personalexperience. Good stuff regularly happens in Stuttgart, Bremen, Darmstadt,Mainz, Krefeld and Berlin of course. There are people who take care! As a band wesee us more as a part of the european / international scene. Because of touringwe got friends everywhere from mülheim, germany to paris, france over brighton.uk.
9.
Whatabout current state of affairs on Meudiademorte? Any forthcoming projects?
Puh, at themoment the status of Meudiademorte is “holiday”. Pascal doesn't have the timeto run a label like he did a few years ago. So at the moment he only releases Datashock or Datashock Side projects as tour or concert editions. But you never now…maybe it will change at one point.
10.
Share your thoughts/plans for future Datashock releases/tours.
Would be cool to tour this year, we don't care where…
so if you wanna do a tour or show or just wanna hang out with us and if you can handle the bill for our drinks:
drop us a line...
thank you very much for the interview!
Please visit band's web-site here - meudiademorte and check out their recent 2LP on Dekorder.
1.
Let’s handle with boring question first:
What have changed in independent music world with the developing and spreading of the Web? Any positive improvements? Any negative repercussions?
Wow! That’s a very difficult question to start with! When we started listening to music it was more difficult to come from one band to the next one. We had to find out ways and strategies to learn about music. Finding fanzines, reading mailorder-lists and “thank you”- lists on covers, etc. All that stuff opened new worlds. It was slow, and maybe work…
Today you get everything with one click, and that’s pretty cool, isn’t it? It’s really nice to see, that younger ones know more or can get information much faster, than we did at the same age. On the other hand it’s getting too fast?! People are listening to tons of music on one day. It’s kind of a hyper-active way to handle with music. Is a release a special thing anymore? We don’t know.
What we canenjoy it’s the knowledge that we can listen to all the music we are interestedin, or people recommend…We don’t have to wait, we can satisfy our curiositydirectly…
On the other hand sometimes the quantity and availability can be overwhelming. Being confronted with your lack of knowledge can be very disappointing too. There is a lot of homework to do, haha. Be always hard at work! So are we really ambitious?
In case of so called “music-business” issues, what can we say? You can get every meudiademorte release for free. Of course we hope that some people will buy our record, but at the same time we don’t make really money out of it. We don’tknow anyone who can make a living out of playing music. But maybe that isn’t the goal anymore. What we can is changing our stuff, working together, getting in touch, becoming friends, whatever. Getting in contact with people all over the world, that’s probably the best thing about the web.
2.
Tell about the history of Datashock project.
We grew up together. The most of us know each other for more than 15 years. Pascal founded Datashock in 2003, he is maybe the biological mother of that baby. More and more friends joined in and at least since the first tour we did, it became more or less a modern “patchwork” family. Everyone feels responsible for our little bastard.
3.
Does the cadre working on the record always vary? Do you have a fixed group of people engaged in Datashock?
At the moment there’s a core of six people (Jan, Sebastian, Christian, Ruth, Pascal and Ronnie). We really enjoy playing in this combination. It feels very good. But it’s still an open union. We don’t really think about getting more people involved. It just grows and shrinks without a master plan. Besides the six, Ulf Schütte and Marcel Türkowsky are still quite close, but they didn’t play on the pyramiden jams.
4.
What about the recent 2LP on Dekorder? How did it appear? How many people have worked on it? When and where did you record it?
We know Mark (the founder of Dekorder) for a couple of years.
After we did a collaboration with him in 2007, he asked us to release something on Dekorder. When you have a look at his releases, it feels quite natural that we can release something on his label. In your opinion we have some interests and ideas in common.
First of all we recorded around 8 hours of “drone-music” together with ulf and marcel in 2008. But max (the guy who recorded the sessions) had barely time to mix that stuff. So in the end it got banned on a hard disc (where it still is)...
Between the years 2009 / 2010 we recorded the “pyramiden” in an old and beautiful villa in Darmstadt as an 8 piece band. The place is called “Oetinger Villa” and it’s used as an independent youth centre, concert-place and as our second home etc.
We played there some shows before, and Jan Kolter (he also played bass on a few songs), who is organizing shows there, became a close friend within the last years. He has a studio in the villa, and we talked a couple of times about doing a record session with his help and in that amazing space. Finally it did happen and it was such a relaxed atmosphere, without any trouble…
Finally we asked Ulf to record an Intro & Outro for the record. So the answer how many people played on the record is 9 ;)
So now the boring part: Ronnie and Jan mixed it for months, haha. After that Pete Swanson did the mastering. Besides the music, the record also includes an exclusive cut-up made by the stunning author Jürgen Ploog. With Jeffrey Meyer we found the perfect artist for providing the cover and Johannes Schebler brought the layout in shape!
5.
You guys are often called as hippie-style experimentalists. What is that that links you to such a portrayal?
What can we say? We are not responsible for terms of expressions anyone uses to talk about us. The view from the outside will stay strange to us. But everyone can hear aesthetical influences. Psychedelic, krautrock, bands the wire circumscribed as “new weird America”,…all of that means a lot to us! Maybe the connection between all that stuff is, that they represent a kind of an utopian spirit. That’s totally a hippie thing. And we love it!
And we already said it before: Datashock is all about our friendship! Hanging out together, jamming, drinking too much beer and having fun. So if you wanna call us hippies you are maybe right.
And our largest problem is:
MOST OF US ALSO LOOK LIKE HIPPIES!
6.
Your workings are very much based on improvisation. What about the compositional part? How do you write your songs?
We don’t write any note or part. We are just jamming. That’s the reason why we can play very bad as well, haha. Jam by jam we just try to let it flow, to concentrate on each other, to find a common mood, to find a way to make it sound organic…that works sometimes, and sometimes it can be just awful. It depends on situations, atmosphere, audience, nervousness, self-confidence, personal temper, drunkenness… you can see we are quite the opposite of professional musicians.
7.
What pushes you forward? Tell about some inspirations for your music.
FLEETWOODMAC! Most played band in our tourvan or on our partys! Besides of that:
What pushes us forward to play music at all? Hanging around with best friends and trying to do something beautiful and meaningful besides all day pressure and bleakness. All of us are collecting instruments. We just love to play, to find out new things, sounds… Making music is an important thing in our lives. It’s necessary. Besides that: Getting in touch with lovely creative people, having the chance to enjoy hospitality, etc. are also reasons to keep it going. We are just trying to find a bolt-hole. And to have the feeling that there is an opportunity to make something you can say I’m 100% responsible and proud of it, its just amazing.
8.
Where are you based right now? What can you tell about the local scene?
At the moment we are spread all over germany. 4 of us in the southwest of germany where we grew up (Pascal still lives in Saarlouis, Sebastian, Jan and Christianlive a few km away in Saarbrücken), Ronnie lives in Cologne, Ruth in Berlin and Ulf in Hamburg.
So it’shard to talk about local scenes. In Germany it seems that there aren’t so manypeople interested in experimental music. Or maybe it’s just our personalexperience. Good stuff regularly happens in Stuttgart, Bremen, Darmstadt,Mainz, Krefeld and Berlin of course. There are people who take care! As a band wesee us more as a part of the european / international scene. Because of touringwe got friends everywhere from mülheim, germany to paris, france over brighton.uk.
9.
Whatabout current state of affairs on Meudiademorte? Any forthcoming projects?
Puh, at themoment the status of Meudiademorte is “holiday”. Pascal doesn't have the timeto run a label like he did a few years ago. So at the moment he only releases Datashock or Datashock Side projects as tour or concert editions. But you never now…maybe it will change at one point.
10.
Share your thoughts/plans for future Datashock releases/tours.
Would be cool to tour this year, we don't care where…
so if you wanna do a tour or show or just wanna hang out with us and if you can handle the bill for our drinks:
drop us a line...
thank you very much for the interview!
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