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sick among the pure interview
2005
satp:
first off, i’m sure you must have had a lot of offers
from record labels. what made you sign to dependent?
what ended your relationship with endless records?
krischan:
first of all we have to thank tina and endless records.
she did a great job promoting merging oceans and truth
is fanatic and worked very hard and effectively to get
rotersand started and known in the scene. so it
was a very hard decision for us to leave endless but we
wanted to do the next step and reach another level with
rotersand and realised the limitations of endless as a
one-person record label.
we signed to dependent because the package they offered
to us was simply the best. stefan herwig as label
owner, manager, and a&r is someone who has built up
bands in this scene for a long time and formed two of
the most successful bands in this genre, vnv nation and
covenant (which we will support on their eu-tour in november
2005). he has a genuine passion for the music and
isn’t just a marketing analyst or a money driven
business man. we liked that.
satp:
from the looks of things, you put on a fantastic show.
is performing live something you see as being the high
point of your art, or is it just one more part of the
job?
krischan:
no, it’s nothing like a job… we love playing
live. i know, everyone says that… but we really
mean it. for me it’s even better than spinning
as a dj, to present our own music is really special…
and with rasc doing his dynamic show in front of gun and
me its easy to feel good on stage and to get the energy
in the place. it’s very simple, we think that
playing live is the best way to understand our music and
get in touch with it. strange, eh?
satp:
stage personas aside, would you describe yourselves as
extroverts or are you more withdrawn?
krischan:
surely rasc as front man and singer is more extrovert
than gun or me as musicians and producers. but gun
and me have examined some new sides in us while playing
live-gigs.
satp:
i understand you mastered and helped with the production
on [:sitd:]. do you enjoy working on other people’s
albums, or do you more prefer focusing on your own work?
krischan:
i do like to work on material and songs brought to my
studio. both parts work well together and influence
the other parts and vice versa. in rotersand’s
songs there are lots of creative decisions that have to
be made… decisions that push the boundaries of my
own production knowledge and force me to keep up with
all the latest technological advances. however,
every time i get the opportunity to remix a track or produce
an album, i get the chance to experience how other musicians
construct their tracks. and how they set their focuses
on certain melodies, parts etc. then if i’ve
done a solid job to them, i not only
photography courtesy of metropolis records
meet new people and make new friends (tom and carsten
from [:sitd:] are certainly good friends!), but add to
my own abilities as a producer and remixer. and
that can only be good for rotersand in the long run.
satp:
you have a strong sixth sense of what works on the dance
floor, i’m not even much into dancing, but i could
really get into your club tunes. is rotersand’s
influence what brings the dance floor to the forefront
in the music you make?
krischan:
no, to be honest it is rasc. he has the ability
to feel what will make a dance floor burn and what makes
the people move in this scene. we’ve answered
the same question in another interview and rasc told me
not to push him so hard to the front…so its once
again a mixture of ras’cs feeling and my dance-floor-knowledge
and experience in arranging breaks (we love breaks), producing
hook-
lines, and programming beats.
satp:
rotersand seems to draw influences from a wide spectrum
of bands. i can sense influences as diverse as the
aging rock of pink floyd (“hush”) and techno
pioneering bands like orbital and underworld (“lifelight”).
and yet you seem to seamlessly blend and manipulate these
influences into a unique sound. how do you create
the rotersand sound, what is at its essence?
krischan:
the rotersand sound in all its facets is nothing we have
planned or designed. in a band with three members,
like you said, each with a background of decades of music
composing, producing and djing, it is inevitable that
everyone has their roots in some styles of music and these
roots influence our work – sometimes obviously,
sometimes unrecognisably. rasc likes '80s new-wave,
pink floyd and early '90s electronics; gun is influenced
by his education in classical music and his work with
guys like mousse t, moloko, etc; and i am informed
by the dj-culture i am in - acid house and detroit techno,
and artists like felix da housecat are amongst some of
my influences. so no, we don’t have a plug-in
“rotersandilizer” which i can turn-on and
suddenly everything we do sound like rotersand, it’s
a blend of some very different influences!
satp:
how does your music come into being? do you all
sit around and compose the music in a studio or do the
lyrics come first and then you all add your own parts?
what does the creation of a rotersand song entail?
krischan:
there are several ways we create songs…. sometimes
we hang around in the studio talking about things that
are happening around us or that has happened to us in
our own lives or a good headline or phrase and bang!
there is an idea for a story – we love to
discuss things, which can be very inspiring… or
gun and me will have made a sequence, beat, and harmony
maybe. then using that, we will debate and start
to form a story and vision of how the song has to feel
when it’s finished, what its content is, and what
we would like to say in it. most times though, rasc
brings us a vocal line or an initial melody he has recorded
on his mobile phone or sings it to gun’s or my mailbox!
then gun will start to transform this into a harmonic
song structure and than it’s up to me to destroy
everything and reconstruct it - that’s normally
the rotersand song making process!
satp:
bands like yourself and a few others are redefining the
electronic music genre, and breaking new ground that still
works at clubs. is this something that you think
of when writing rotersand music, or does it cross your
mind at all?
krischan:
i don’t know if we redefine anything or push things
forward, but if you see it like that, thank you.
i feel the answer to this question lies in our musical
influences and bands and music that give us inspiration.
for me it is necessary to follow the trends in some other
music genres and to know what is “state of the art”
and to listen to it, this keeps me open-minded and helps
me to find solutions for musical problems, which are not
so usual, especially in this scene. actually i’m
listening to a lot of progressive music like music by
deep dish or deepsky and its amazing how “dark”
the mood and flow of a lot of this work is without being
so “cheap”, “evil”, or “posy”
like a lot of this scene’s stuff is, it’s
worth listening to. during the final-production-
period of welcome to goodbye i was listening to quite
a lot of tunes by sander van doorn, dj tiesto, armin van
buuren, or techno like robert hood, joey beltram, slam,
and dave clarke…. sure, we’re doing a different
style of music, but when i listen to the album now i can
find some bits of those tracks i was listening to at the
time - for those of you who are interested, have a close
listen to the album track “would you buy this”(full
of quotations) and you will see what i mean!
satp:
you all have a wealth of experience behind you, rasc and
gun coming from the fair sex and rotersand having dj and
production experience. so although this is a fairly
new band, you’ve all been around a bit. does
this past experience influence what you’re doing
now?
krischan:
of course! our experiences are bound to influence the
work we do as rotersand; the way we interact, our musical
style all has a lot to do with our pasts. we have
all released music, worked in the music industry, and
run our own recording-studios and labels… so we
know that every comment, suggestion, idea is based on
solid experience and knowledge which means that there
is no real hierarchy in the band. i know that gun
is able to do production work, that rasc is able to program
drums – we each know our talents, so although
each of us has his own expertise we also put essential
creative input into each other’s parts. i’ve
never worked in such a competent collective. it’s
like a constellation of stars all of which work together
to shine. it’s amazing, and an honour to be
a part of.
satp:
some of your lyrics, such as those for “content
killer”, flirt with politics and social issues.
do you see your music as primarily entertainment, or do
you have a higher artistic or social purpose behind it?
on that train of thought, are songs like “content
killer” directed at any group of people in specific,
or are they general commentary?
krischan:
we all are interested in what is happening in the social
and political scene. rasc studied communication-science.
i studied culture and media management. gun worked
in music education. all are related to media and
how it influences us and society. so we think and discuss
a lot about questions and problems related to media-presentation,
tv, internet and so on and naturally it transforms into
song lyrics. but we haven’t ambitions to judge
something, or curse it. we have an opinion, but
we don’t want to do missionary work in a way of
our opinions. we just try to start a discussion
and add maybe some new points of view or aspects…
nothing really special. maybe if we are able to
entertain, then afterwards we will manage to make some
people think.
satp:
i’m sure a great many people are eager for the next
rotersand album to be released. can we expect it
anytime soon and will it be a natural progression from
truth is fanatic or more dance-floor orientated?
krischan:
the album welcome to goodbye will be released on 27th
june 2005. the title is related to a story rasc
read last year. the story is about a woman whose
daughter is missing after a plane crash. the mother
can’t accept that her daughter has died and is waiting
for her to come home. she finds solace with another
bereaved mother and together they begin to build their
lives again and get over their shared grief… the
article closes with the line – “welcome to
a world that knows goodbye.” that was the
inspiration for the album. we like the idea that
every end has the possibility to start anew. music
wise it will be more open-minded than truth is fanatic.
there are some harsher tracks on it, some more trance-influenced
songs, and some stirring ballads. for us it is a
significant development in the rotersand sound, hopefully
you and the listeners will share our opinion.
satp:
what are your future touring plans? who do you plan on
touring with in the near future?
krischan:
we will support covenant on their european tour in autumn
2005. hopefully we will manage to play some shows
in the us and canada next year.
satp:
finally, it seems that there is a philosophy behind the
rotersand ‘brand” if you were to sum up what
rotersand was about, what would that be?
krischan:
rasc tried to strip it down to “hard beats with
wonderful melodies,” but to me, it’s
a little bit more than that. words i would use would
be: “pure, dynamic, deep, authentic, electronic,
epic, open-minded and maybe … mature or grown-up”
(like you said).
imterview taken from
http://www.sickamongthepure.com
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