e can't remember the weather. We can't remember
what was playing on the turntables, though it could
have been the Make-Up at the time. Could also have
been Serge Gainsbourg or Pavement. We assume that
the sun was shining and that it was warm, 'cause it was summer. We had got a lot of very short electronic songs together, knocked out of a Korg Workstation. We had an old Tascam 8-track recorder and a Mexican Fender-guitar. And an old computer and 37 unmarked floppy disks. We recorded a few songs, put together a cassette and made flyers with naked tennis players for our first show in the Sonntagsbar in Marienstr. Berlin, Mitte, 1999.
We never put out our first album. The first record we released was 'If I Had Known This Before'; and it was successful, mostly in the techno scene. One night Sebastian ordered a whisky and as the barman added red bull without asking, we knew we had had enough. We played more often with our other band, the Sitcom Warriors. We played as 'Don Multisex' and as 'The Blood Boys'. And we put out the pop EP 'I'm Absolute' on the Hamburg label Buback-Tonträger. It wasn't that successful but the best we had made that far. We practiced in my living room, the neighbour knocked and complained that our music was too 'cyclic'. We played many shows at that time. There wasn't hardly a show, where we were sober. We wrote 'Forsaken People Come to Me' and 'Cool Kids Can't Die' and got praised. A fan painted the words 'Cool Kids Can't Fly' in big letters on the wall in Jerusalem. Most songs came from the hours between 12 and 4 AM.
Suddenly, in 2004, we found ourselves sitting in the night train to Paris. The next day we were sitting in Studio Ferber. We started recording our first proper album ' The Secret Life of Cpt. Ferber' with our friend the Canadian pop monster and pianist Gonzales, and the producer Renaud Letang. Canadian Singer Feist sang in the shower on 'Girl In My Shower'. We signed to the Berlin label 'Louisville'. We were praised again, even by the NME, but we didn't have a problem with that. People tried to label us, like every band is being labelled when they release their first album. They said we were 'New New Wave' and they invented foggy terms like 'Electroclash'. They said we were 'Bohemian Disco Wave'. They said we were nice and they said we were arrogant. By the end of 2004 we had got over 100 songs together. We toured with Peaches and with our friends of 'Jeans Team'. No one dared to put Red Bull in our whisky anymore.
Then we started to write new songs again. The usual unoriginal sources of inspiration like alcohol, sex, weed, sleep and TV brought up new ones: blues, arabic music and film. Sebastian went to the movies 213 times a year. I preferred to watch films at home. We tried to capture the atmosphere of the films we liked in our words and music; we experimented with styles, symbols and sound. The American actress Lauren Bacall doesn't know all this. She just looks sceptically but also calm from the cover of our second album 'Nothing Sir' into the distance. The second album predictably had a harder time than the first. We can't guarantee that you will like it. We can only promise that it's very complex, that we like it and that we had fun making it. By the way: production had only cost a twentieth of Cpt. Ferber. That was 2007.
Then began what every musician should allow himself at least
once – the crisis. We wandered about, experimented with beards and cheap supermarket products, we changed cigarette brands, girlfriends and apartments. Sebastian only managed to go to the cinema 67 times a year. Our shows became louder, wilder and more aggressive. The old Fender guitar became more dominant and we turned up the amp. Now people called our sound 'Rock'n'Roll Disco'. We played in cities like Kiew, Bucarest, Helsinki. We played in Spain, France and Italy but less often in Germany. We started the Kissogram alter ego, 'The Gods of Love', a beat band we had on the side. At one of the three shows a London photographer was playing Hungarian rock'n'roll from the 60s and 70s. That was Joe Dilworth, who had played drums with Stereolab and Add N to (X). He didn't know at the time that a couple of months later he would be playing with Kissogram.
In the meantime we had written new songs and created a concept for a new album. The new record was meant to be less playful. The sound should be very "rough", loud and powerful. We wanted to use less electronics, less computers. We wanted to press the offensiveness and the power of our live shows on a record. The lyrical subject should be the look at the world from the bottom. How does a criminal jobless guy look at the moon ('Messiah'). How does an 18-year-old soldier lose his lust for war ('The Deserter'). How does it feel to work in a meat factory ('Rubber and Meat')? How much can you hate the people who never have to work in a meat factory ("Prominent Man"). We began to rehearse in a damp cellar in Kreuzberg. During every rehearsal we had to eat a cheeseburger from the Burgermeister at Schlesisches Tor. When we recorded the first takes of the new album, we realized that it would become very good. We realized, that the power we put into the record would not vanish in the depths of our mixer and our amps. Then we took the rudimental mixes and the well-prepared tracks to Stockholm. In Stockholm-Grondahl a little man sat in front of a big mixing desk. His name was Pelle Gunnerfeldt, he had produced bands like 'The Hives' or 'The International Noise Conspiracy' and now he chased our distorted guitars, our sick synth-sounds, Joe's animalistic drums and my vocals through his mixer and compressors.
The result, our third album called 'Rubber and Meat' is going to be released on Louisville-Records again. In the 'Musikerklause' on the Torstrasse we met the band 'Franz Ferdinand'. Shortly after we had a show together in Warsaw. Franz Ferdinand liked our concert and decided right away to play some shows with us in the near future. It happens that we will support them on their Europe tour in march. On the tour we will give everything that we have. We're still not professional enough to avoid partying and getting drunk on that tour. We will play every night until we're dead. And on the last day we will lay down in the sun of Granada. For three days.
To be continued.
JP
what was playing on the turntables, though it could
have been the Make-Up at the time. Could also have
been Serge Gainsbourg or Pavement. We assume that
the sun was shining and that it was warm, 'cause it was summer. We had got a lot of very short electronic songs together, knocked out of a Korg Workstation. We had an old Tascam 8-track recorder and a Mexican Fender-guitar. And an old computer and 37 unmarked floppy disks. We recorded a few songs, put together a cassette and made flyers with naked tennis players for our first show in the Sonntagsbar in Marienstr. Berlin, Mitte, 1999.
We never put out our first album. The first record we released was 'If I Had Known This Before'; and it was successful, mostly in the techno scene. One night Sebastian ordered a whisky and as the barman added red bull without asking, we knew we had had enough. We played more often with our other band, the Sitcom Warriors. We played as 'Don Multisex' and as 'The Blood Boys'. And we put out the pop EP 'I'm Absolute' on the Hamburg label Buback-Tonträger. It wasn't that successful but the best we had made that far. We practiced in my living room, the neighbour knocked and complained that our music was too 'cyclic'. We played many shows at that time. There wasn't hardly a show, where we were sober. We wrote 'Forsaken People Come to Me' and 'Cool Kids Can't Die' and got praised. A fan painted the words 'Cool Kids Can't Fly' in big letters on the wall in Jerusalem. Most songs came from the hours between 12 and 4 AM.
Suddenly, in 2004, we found ourselves sitting in the night train to Paris. The next day we were sitting in Studio Ferber. We started recording our first proper album ' The Secret Life of Cpt. Ferber' with our friend the Canadian pop monster and pianist Gonzales, and the producer Renaud Letang. Canadian Singer Feist sang in the shower on 'Girl In My Shower'. We signed to the Berlin label 'Louisville'. We were praised again, even by the NME, but we didn't have a problem with that. People tried to label us, like every band is being labelled when they release their first album. They said we were 'New New Wave' and they invented foggy terms like 'Electroclash'. They said we were 'Bohemian Disco Wave'. They said we were nice and they said we were arrogant. By the end of 2004 we had got over 100 songs together. We toured with Peaches and with our friends of 'Jeans Team'. No one dared to put Red Bull in our whisky anymore.
Then we started to write new songs again. The usual unoriginal sources of inspiration like alcohol, sex, weed, sleep and TV brought up new ones: blues, arabic music and film. Sebastian went to the movies 213 times a year. I preferred to watch films at home. We tried to capture the atmosphere of the films we liked in our words and music; we experimented with styles, symbols and sound. The American actress Lauren Bacall doesn't know all this. She just looks sceptically but also calm from the cover of our second album 'Nothing Sir' into the distance. The second album predictably had a harder time than the first. We can't guarantee that you will like it. We can only promise that it's very complex, that we like it and that we had fun making it. By the way: production had only cost a twentieth of Cpt. Ferber. That was 2007.
Then began what every musician should allow himself at least
once – the crisis. We wandered about, experimented with beards and cheap supermarket products, we changed cigarette brands, girlfriends and apartments. Sebastian only managed to go to the cinema 67 times a year. Our shows became louder, wilder and more aggressive. The old Fender guitar became more dominant and we turned up the amp. Now people called our sound 'Rock'n'Roll Disco'. We played in cities like Kiew, Bucarest, Helsinki. We played in Spain, France and Italy but less often in Germany. We started the Kissogram alter ego, 'The Gods of Love', a beat band we had on the side. At one of the three shows a London photographer was playing Hungarian rock'n'roll from the 60s and 70s. That was Joe Dilworth, who had played drums with Stereolab and Add N to (X). He didn't know at the time that a couple of months later he would be playing with Kissogram.
In the meantime we had written new songs and created a concept for a new album. The new record was meant to be less playful. The sound should be very "rough", loud and powerful. We wanted to use less electronics, less computers. We wanted to press the offensiveness and the power of our live shows on a record. The lyrical subject should be the look at the world from the bottom. How does a criminal jobless guy look at the moon ('Messiah'). How does an 18-year-old soldier lose his lust for war ('The Deserter'). How does it feel to work in a meat factory ('Rubber and Meat')? How much can you hate the people who never have to work in a meat factory ("Prominent Man"). We began to rehearse in a damp cellar in Kreuzberg. During every rehearsal we had to eat a cheeseburger from the Burgermeister at Schlesisches Tor. When we recorded the first takes of the new album, we realized that it would become very good. We realized, that the power we put into the record would not vanish in the depths of our mixer and our amps. Then we took the rudimental mixes and the well-prepared tracks to Stockholm. In Stockholm-Grondahl a little man sat in front of a big mixing desk. His name was Pelle Gunnerfeldt, he had produced bands like 'The Hives' or 'The International Noise Conspiracy' and now he chased our distorted guitars, our sick synth-sounds, Joe's animalistic drums and my vocals through his mixer and compressors.
The result, our third album called 'Rubber and Meat' is going to be released on Louisville-Records again. In the 'Musikerklause' on the Torstrasse we met the band 'Franz Ferdinand'. Shortly after we had a show together in Warsaw. Franz Ferdinand liked our concert and decided right away to play some shows with us in the near future. It happens that we will support them on their Europe tour in march. On the tour we will give everything that we have. We're still not professional enough to avoid partying and getting drunk on that tour. We will play every night until we're dead. And on the last day we will lay down in the sun of Granada. For three days.
To be continued.
JP
(C) Kissogram & Matthias Krebs 2009