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10 : NOV : 06 As mentioned in the review I seem to be behind the times and ahead of the game - with 'Krankhaus' due for re-release in January via Dancing Ferret Discs...how did the deal with Dancing Ferret come about? ZooG: THE FERRET (the affectionate nick-name of our beloved record label) walked into a record shop in Philly and bought our CD. They liked it and emailed us. The offer was pretty awesome and unexpected, because we sent our demo to a heap of other record labels and the only reply we got was a polite mass-produced reject letter from Digital Hardcore. Up until then, Tommy T at DSBP was helping us out with distro in the USA - TOMMY T ROCKS!
I'd like to talk a bit about 'Krankhaus' - the first thing to strike me about the album were the visuals and the photography of the album - what inspired some of the pictures that were used to accompany this release?
There are many ideas behind Krankhaus. One of the main themes is the idea of the "Beautifully Grotesque" - something so grotesque it is beautiful, something so beautiful it is grotesque. We were toying around with the idea of trying to find the beauty in horrific themes. The other driving idea behind Krankhaus is the notion of extreme entertainment and vanity, if people had the means to do whatever they pleased, how far would they go? Krankhaus is a mixture of hyper-capitalism, cannibalism, recreational vivisection and drug use, all wrapped together in a secret society for horrifically rich and spoilt children who find torture a pleasurable past-time. The 18 months leading up to the release were very trying times for us. There were many unfortunate events and hardships that fanned the fire.
Lyrically there's this strong flowing feel throughout the album about cosmetic surgery (and extreme cosmetic surgery in places) and vanity - what inspired this concept? French performance artist Orlan was a big influence as she uses cosmetic surgery as a tool to sculpt the body in order to make an extremely visceral statement about society. Destroyx did a lot of research about the history of the corset, a beautiful garment with a grotesque past. She found out that during the Victorian times some women had to wear corsets that had an attachment which was a rubber cup. This rubber cup was inserted into the wearer's uterus to stop it from hemorrhaging. It's this kind of perverse extreme in fashion that we're interested in, and comment on. Vanity is just another pleasure drug…enough of it will kill you.
I also spotted quite a few religious references - how has religion influenced your lyrics/music (if at all) and what are your views/beliefs? With all honesty, "religion" hasn't inspired us at all. People inspire us. "I can not do it without the help of God" What I'm trying to say here is that people will ultimately believe in something, whether it's religion or not…. We just have to identify what the gods are for this age. I believe the earth is invaluably precious and all people are beautiful. I believe the only person who can stop you from doing something is yourself. I believe you fail when you stop trying. I believe that "winning" and "succeeding" have every different meanings- to win is to have power over someone else, to succeed is to achieve something for yourself. I believe "selfishness" and "greediness" are profoundly different. I believe life is short.
Musically, I've noticed nods in your sound towards the Digital Hardcore movement (Atari Teenage Riot, etc) were bands like this at all an influence into your sound and style? What other bands have helped influence your style and sound? We don't actually listen to much ATR. We're big fans of Cobra Killer though. We only started listening to ATR after we established our sound with our first EP - Nurse Grenade. Skinny Puppy ROCK - They are GOD. Sonic Youth are also brilliant! We're inspired by a lot of rock and indie as well as cyberpunk. We try to make music that reflects the passionate, turbulent and complex world we live in…our music is not simple and robotic, nor is our reality.
Being the nosy person I am, I noticed you were planning on moving to Germany - do you feel this will help you in the long term and in what ways? What pushed your decision to move from Australia ? Sydney is a LONG WAY from everything…Berlin
seems to be in the middle of it all - so it makes so more sense
to go over immerse ourselves in it! We've always wanted to spend
time in Europe and luckily an opportunity presented itself so we
jumped on it. We're going to miss Australia - this country is beautiful
and we have all of our friends here. It's important that we challenge
ourselves with new people, places and ideas - these will inspire
us and push us. It's all about growing…right?
On Australia , it's not somewhere commonly thought of (over here) for it's Goth/Scene movement - can you describe what it's like over there? It's small and strong. If a club pulls 300 people it's officially HUGE. The people are very flamboyant - especially with the Cyber-Goth genre. I've heard people say that the Australian Cyber-Goths are as insane as they come. The fetish scene is also small but strong. A real characteristic of the alternative scene here is the mixing of subcultures - you'll get Goths, ravers, punks and fetish people in the same club because the of the small population. Our biggest gripe with the scene here is that there are only a few DJs who will support us by playing our music in clubs. Crash Frequency's latest Compilation is getting played all over the world except in Australia. We had to send an email out to all the DJs who got a free copy of the CD and BEG them to play it. about 10% of the DJs replied and said they were playing us.
I understand you're also heavily involved in the Crash Frequency Collective - how would you describe this network and how did it come about? Crash Frequency is BRILLIANT. It's all things dark! There's Goth Rock bands like IKON, EBM bands like AngelTheory, electro like Tankt, Industrial Rock like The Mercy Cage, Noise like The Process Void and future pop like The Tenth Stage...and that's only half the bands!! The official blurb is: Although I'd call it: We all pitch in with contacts and helping each other get gigs and publicity. From our perspective, the best thing Crash Frequency offers is the group of older and extremely experienced bands who we can adopt as mentors…we pick their brains for advice and get support from them often!
I'm also guessing that your Surgeon-X store has been something that has helped fund the band (there's a band over here funded themselves doing something similar - www.smellyourmom.com - but away from them…) but how did this idea come about?
Krankhaus was absolutely self funded. We made the
doe through Surgeon-X. We made ties, collars and fake hair to pay
for the photoshoot, mastering and pressing. We worked like mutha-fuckers
to make and sell that stuff…but we were also writing, recording
touring AND doing a double degree and full time job WHILE we were
doing all of this. We love to create! Whether it's music or images of fashion of extreme hair…we live to create!
This is a question I've honestly never asked a band before, but, I was looking on www.youtube.com to see if you'd done any promo videos or live clips to upload on there - and I found quite a few fan made videos. What are your thoughts on fans making clips sound tracked by your music? WE ENCOURAGE IT! It is the greatest honour to have people put images to our music. We've just launched a forum (www.krankhaus.net/forum) We are encouraging people to create and share inspirations. Negativity and web-bitchery are not welcome! We'll be uploading samples and images - people are welcome to do what they want with them….just be respectfully creative!
Based on the strength of 'Krankhaus', the signing to DFD and the relocation to Germany - what are your goals for 2007? Play as much as we can
Anything else to add? We're releasing Krankhaus in Europe/USA through
Dancing Ferret in January 2007. It will be a limited addition that
will contain a remix CD from artist such as Combichrist, The Tenth
Stage, Angel Theory, Tankt, The Mercy Cage, The Crystalline Effect,
Diverje, The Process Void, n0nplus, Ego Likeness, Stromkern, and
more to be announced. KRANK IT UP!
TWF Magazine : www.twfmagazine.com |
