Convulsion Interview with Sascha

this is an interview of Sascha from a no longer printed magazine from Scotland entitled Convulsion. the questions are in blue and
Sascha's answers are in red.

KMFDM's most recent album Money is definitely high on my list of most listened
to albums at the moment, which is not all that surprising since Godlike,
Split/Piggybank and Virus have also been and still are on my most played list.
Until recently KMFDM have not had that much press and were you to ask you're
average NIN fan (certainly in this country) who they were, they would probably
respond with a blank expression. Now signed in the UK to the recently created
Rhythm King offshoot `Transglobal' whose label mates include Sheep on Drugs
and Baby Ford (see next issue), they are set to take off in a big way (if I have
anything to do with it anyway). As far as Convulsion goes, this interview marks
a new era as far as we are concerned in that it is the first phone interview that
we have published. Since, in our opinion, it went so well, we won't be hesitant in
future to get on the phone and chat to people outwith the gig.

I talked with Sasha, vocalist and co-founder of KMFDM back in 1984, who was
sitting in the Waxtrax offices in Chicago. After about five minutes of technical
difficulties with our phone/ghetto blaster rig (which was badly held together by
blu-tak, good intentions, and missplaced faith), with much embarrassment we
got down to business. 

On Money, as with with the earlier albums, there is much
vague political comment. What, if any, message are you trying to get across?

We are not trying to get a message across, we are making statements of a provocative nature. When the kids (especially here in America) listen to KMFDM and hear these statements, they focus some attention on the current level of consciousness of the majority. So in some peoples minds they start thinking towards directions of their own personal responsibilities, so if there is a message that is it. We think that as artists we have a certain responsibility, we should not go on the stage and preach destruction and doom, we can actually do something. We are exposed, we have an audience we can put the seeds in for something, but it is up to us as to what that is. We think we should put good things in, that's why whatever we put in, in a political direction, is very back to basics. It's more a sociopolitical statement than an analysis of the state of the world.

The use of distinctive female vocals (as evidenced on the tracks Help us, save us, take us away, Piggybank, and many others) is one element that distinguishes KMFDM from other dance-core bands like NIN, RevCo, et al. How
did you come to introduce this particular feature to your sound?

We started working with female vocals from our second album, Don't blow your top in 87,88. Right now we are working with 3 female singers, it's an instrument of style - soft female vocals with distorted harsh male vocals, it's significant for the KMFDM sound.

It is especially effective on the track `Help us, save us, take us away', a dark contrast which sounds great.

Actually she (The singer) is a 15 year old girl from Holland, the same girl you hear on Godlike, the little childlike voice, that was her too when she was five. There is always a continuity in KMFDM's music, it's a thing that works on a very imminent basis, you hear things like Rip the System all the time through KMFDM's history. We do remixes in a very uncommon way, we dig out old tracks remix them and make them totally new tracks. It gives the illusion that there is something of a higher spirit or at least a definite continuity going on. We think it is very important as well, that the artwork design, visual outlines is more like a brand than a band. It's like a Coca Cola bottle, if you saw it in China you would still recognize it, and be able to expect what you are going to taste, before you taste it.

There have been charges of sexism as far as the cover artwork goes, how do
you feel about that?

Totally wrong, I mean if you are looking at art in general, through the whole history of art there are a lot of things at first sight, about which you need to make up your mind, and be a little bit patient and use your intellect to figure things out. You can't judge a book by it's cover. It's just part of our range of provocative statements; if you are feeling offended by seeing a KMFDM record cover and take your time to listen to the music, then you will make up your mind and you will see that it's not sexist. We do not participate in this kind of one way trash society thing: we're not making things easily accessible, we're not on the `light' trend. We're not smoking light, we're not eating light, we're not drinking light.We're eating fat, we don't smoke cigarettes, we smoke cigars.

This sounds a bit decadent . . .

It's not decadent, it has to do with responsibility too, if you know what is right for you without interfering with somebody else's aura then you can take responsibility and just do it.

Why the move to the states?

Germany sucks. Reunification Germany sucks shit. It was predictable that the
reunification would end up as a disaster, which is exactly what happened because things over there are like way off balance. There is a strong rise in the right wing movement. It seems like the Germans do not learn out of history, or are just too stupid. . . Timewise I just started being in the states more and more, I like it here, it is the place where KMFDM is most successful and this is where I dedicate most of my time to.

But don't you find the US in many ways to be equally right wing?

Fundamentalism and fascism are simply propaganda disguises of religion and politics,
and propaganda is arbitrary manipulation of information, and therefore an instrument ofower & control. Americans have problems; like their educational system is not very well taken care of. I mean if the system would educate people then they would be able to determine who to trust and who to not trust. Actually our political message, if you wanna call it that, hits left in this country which is one of the reasons for KMFDM's success. Every society has weak points and I am fully aware of that and am perfectly capable of analysing that; but in the end I come to the conclusion that, at least for me & KMFDM, it is not worth fighting things, it is better to support things. It is better to see things that are good, that we like, and nurture them, support them and put good seeds in peoples minds, then go out in the streets against systems, or blindness, or under education, and every society has that problem. In general I find that it is easier to do the things that we wanna do in this country than for example in Germany. If we hadn't moved we would still be hanging out in fucking basements, playing in front of a hundred people.

Have you ever wanted to do any joint projects, with other people working within
your field of vision?

I do collaborate with a few people, not in terms of KMFDM, KMFDM is at a stage that it doesn't make sense to have other producers or people involved, we just have like a technical staff who are perfectly capable of handling recording. I mix and produce all KMFDM's tracks. I work with an industrial band from Mexico, a project from England called Cage Engineering, I work with various people from American industrial bands. I have my side project Excessive Force which is like an over the top dance band. It is not currently available in Europe but it is going to be released by Music for Nations in the next month. I am not in line with the current British scene of music; the whole DJ remix thing. I don't think that that is suitable for KMFDM at all. I mean it is just a totally different style. People always tell me that we should have people like The Orb remix our stuff, but we are not really interested in trying it. We are not an experimental project, we know what we want to do, we are very straight forward, and very Germanic.

One criticism I had about the handling of KMFDM recently was that the first
single from Money `Vogue' wasn't that great, certainly not up to the standard of
the absolutely brilliant Money 12". I asked Sasha, why was this the first release?

Vogue, simply, was made as a promotion kind of club single and the decision to make it available for retail was made later. If you hear Vogue in a club, it's a killer. However, I totally agree, it is definitely not the greatest song; but that is part of our sort of concept. Vogue is Number 1 in Rock Pool last week, this week, and probably next week. So in a way the idea just worked out.

What of the future of Waxtrax?

I know that there are rumours that Waxtrax is not in a good position; I must say that those
rumours are missing any true basis. There is a big recession going on here, the
entertainment industry was hit very hard, and there was a time last fall when things
weren't looking too brilliant, but now everything is totally fine. I am very good friends with the owners of Waxtrax. I am not involved in things at the label, but KMFDM right now is the flagship of Waxtrax, they are doing everything for us. After last week we agreed on five more years of collaboration: I think that should be a sign that
Waxtrax is healthy.

I asked Sasha about something I had read in their press kit about German
Humour and whether the stereotypes where true (i.e. there is no German sense
of humour).

People in the past have asked us `Since you're German, since you're and an industrial band, since you're doing all that hard music and stuff, do you have any humour at all?' That is where it comes from. There is tonnes of humour. You have to remember, two or three years ago, KMFDM was totally out of style, way too hard for most people. However, the people are slowly catching up with that kind of music. Music is getting harder and harder and in a way I think it would not be an exaggeration to say that we were protagonists of this kind of style. We never just did what people expected of us, we did just what we wanted to do. Since we were not worried about monetary success's like houses and cars and stuff, we have the freedom to say no to offers from major companies. We have the freedom to design our own tours and do what we want to do basically. That is something that we are starting to be proud of, because it was not possible to tempt us with Cheesy shit in the past right? Like we wouldn't sell out for a couple of dollars. . .
 There is a single scheduled for release in the fall, to open up for the American tour called `KMFDM Sucks' and it is pretty much, Virus, The Money mixes, The Hardness, The Consequences in one track.

Is there a place for anger to be used as a positive force within music?

Anger is certainly an energy, it is just a question of how you direct that drive to get
somewhere. There is this generation of `the angry young man' dating back to the punk rock of the 70s. The young men that went on stage and shouted shit out of their brains. It is not a concept to be taken seriously, if you do not direct, do not transform it, into something positive (at least for yourself).

Do you have any opinions about man-of-the-minute Trent Reznor; the angry
young man of the nineties?

He is a traitor. He accepts the fact that he is on the cover of Spin magazine but he didn't say anything about the fucking industry mechanisms like MTV or Spin which are just exploiting trends and exploiting Trent. That would have been the chance to open your mouth and speak out and he didn't, he just enjoyed being portrayed, and that I think is not very expected after hearing his music.

How was you reception the last time you toured Europe?

We started a tour with the Thrill Kill Kult, and they left after about three weeks so we continued the tour by ourselves. It wasn't a very pleasant experience. It seems that Europe might never be ready for this kind of music except in a very few places. The problem with KMFDM is that people who are into bands like Front 242 and Body music run away at the sight of a guitarist. That was one of the problems that we had to deal with because KMFDM is a very guitar oriented band, we are going to have four guitarists and a live drummer on stage - it is quite heavy.

Actually all the guitars on the album are played live too, apart from Hendrix, but Hendrix is two guitar tracks, one sampled, one live. The way we record our guitars is we record them on tape, then we sample the crucial bits, and sequence them and play them on another track. Then we take both tracks, sample the sampled guitar and the live guitar together and put it onto a third track. This makes it really fat. Then we put one to the hard left, one to the hard right, and then the live track out of phase and that gives it like a spaciousness.

On the subject of guitars I asked Sasha about `Godlike' and the slayer riff
throughout ...

It is played by our guitarist. I don't even know what it's from, I just heard it and the guitarist started playing it, and then.... Y'know there are only this and that many guitar riffs anyway. I don't care if people say `Well this is a rip-off' or something. We always have fun with that. There was like this radio station out of Chicago, somebody at the College radio wrote on the album that track number so- and-so was a total unauthorised rip off of Jimi Hendrix, and then we got a guest DJ in and he played it like four times in a row.

But surely that riff is one of the most sampled Hendrix riffs?

And here it is again, from KMFDM right in your face, with a white supremacist preacher, and Martin Luthor King on top.

I talked briefly about En Esch's involvement with Pigface and what feelings he
had towards them...

Pigface is just a rip off! They say that all these members from all these bands are on
stage, which is not quite true. It is a concept that would make sense if the music was
appealing in one way or another. The music to me sounds like nothing new, nothing
exciting. I think it is a waste of time. That is why I am not involved in projects like that.

And as far as the legendary drug abuse going on within Pigface . . .

Speaking for KMFDM, we are probably one of the only Drug-free bands, apart from En Esch who loves Vodka, he drinks Vodka like other people drink soda, but I mean if we did drugs we gave it up a long time ago, the majority of the band didn't take drugs at any time. Which I find easy to work with, people that have drug habits are like unpredictable, things always go wrong. We don't have problems with trashed up hotel rooms, as a band we know what we're doing. Our tours break even usually and we do not have extra costs by any coincidentals with arrests or drugs or shit. Drugs are a very stupid thing to do and I cannot put enough emphasis on that point. Why would you do drugs? Its just like totally stupid.

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