17 : AUG : 07
Interview by Kara Rice
This is the text version. You can view
the magazine scans here.
Your lyrics in your songs are very creative,
where did you find influence to create such lyrics in songs such
as “wolf” and “create desire”?
Wolf is a twisted version of little
Red Riding Hood. In our version, Little Red Riding Hood is facing
her fears and about to slash the wolf to ribbons: “You’ve
got big teeth, but I’ve got a knife”.
More notes on WOLF here:
http://www.angelspit.net/news/diary/wolf.htm
Create Desire is a comment on
our society’s lust to consume. “Creating desire”
is what marketing does to sell a product….even when the product
is not needed. So drone consumers spend money on plastic trinkets
they don’t need.
If you want to see an example of this, check out most advertising
campaigns for mobile phones. You don’t need half the stuff
on a new phone, but you are brainwashed into thinking that you want
it…so you convince yourself that you need it…and why
not? your last contract is almost over….meanwhile the pile
of plastic rubbish grows…and don’t believe the hype
about recycling materials in phones – there is overwhelming
evidence that recycling electronic parts is extremely non-environmentally
friendly and uneconomical.
</rant>
We want to make our lyrics relevant to people. We want them to address
the confusion and frustration that we all feel towards contemporary
society. Although we don’t offer many answers, we want people
to know that they are not alone in their feelings towards our society.
You recently released a remix disc “surgically
attoned”, which comes with the special edition of your album
“krankhaus”, how long did it take for the bands such
as Stromkern and The Mercy Cage to remix the songs?, and were there
extra remixes, that were not placed on the “surgically attoned”
cd?
Some bands completed their remixes in a few days.
Combichrist was one such band. Andy is an AMAZING musician in that
he produces high quality work very quickly.
Stromkern took a few weeks, but they were very busy at the time
of the remix.
The Mercy Cage were also very fast. We asked Josh (the main guy)
to give us a remix…and he gave us two!! plus he also did the
remix for his other project ‘Diverje’…he’s
a creative powerhouse!
The Tenth Stage’s original remix of 100%
is only available on the secret site. The Mercy Cages’ second
remix and n0nplus’ remix are only on the Australian version
of the remix CD. These two tracks were offered as free downloads
to the USA/European/Japanese release.
You have said that you take influence
from bands such as Sonic Youth; in what ways have they influenced
your music?
They are loud, punk, textured, complex and sincere….not
robotic, cold and formulaic..in short, THEY ROCK!
So much music in our genre (Goth/Industrial/EBM) has forgotten that
it is rooted in GOTHIC, AND GOTHIC IS ROOTED IN PUNK!
Punk is angry, alive, fresh, rebellious AND ROCKS!
In your cd booklet for “Krankhaus”,
you have some photos that fit the medical theme. How did you get
the idea for the medical theme?
We’ve always had an interest in medical imagery…it’s
strong and iconic plus it’s interleaved in pain and fear.
eg: Dentists look very cool and almost militant…but they are
associated with fear and PAIN!!
so it’s a kind of “loaded Beauty”…or
“Beautifully Grotesque” – which Krankhaus is built
on.
How long does it take to create a song
from start to finish, eg. From song writing to sound production,
to overall finished song?
MONTHS!
Each song on Krankhaus averaged about 80 hours of solid work.
The process starts with writing the ideas on paper. The ideas must
be strong, easily sing-able with strong bass and guitar riffs. We
usually write the songs with a bass guitar, a pencil and a note
pad.
We then put these ideas into the computer and make sure that they
are fundamentally a strong song.
Once we are convinced the song is a strong “pop song”,
we turn on our big modular synthesizer and lay down vast and complex
bleeps, loops and bass lines to fill it out. These are simplified
(so as not to make it sound too cluttered). Guide vocals go down
to make sure the music is not getting in the way with the voices.
Guitars are then recorded and edited. Then comes the fun bit…PERCUSSION!!!
We go wild and destroy anything metallic. These loops are edited
and fed into the modular synth.
The final vocals and voice SFX (eg: Vocoder) are then recorded.
Then it’s all mixed (and usually re-simplified!!).
We take a lot of time to listen to the tracks and think about them.
If a track does not “stick in your head”, we throw it
out!
Where are you going to tour next and any
idea when you will be coming back to Australia for a tour?
We’re currently trying to organise European
tours. We have a few European Festivals lined up which we are really
excited about!
We’re heading back to Australia in March 2008 and REALLY want
to do a tour!!! We have a lot of things we need to figure out with
that one though – moving from one country to another is hectic
enough…but following that with a tour is a little insane!
We did that when we played the USA with the Cruxshadows in March
this year…we moved out of our place in Sydney, had to prepare
for a relocation to Berlin PLUS get ready for a US tour…and
people wonder why our music is so frantic!
Life is short. Be inspired. Create!
ROCK!
ZooG.
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