First of all thank you very much for this interview!
K: The pleasure is all mine!
1.How you get signed and decided to release albums under hands production?
K.: That happened through Leif from Mono No Aware. We were some kind of local act in the region we come from. We had some concerts in that area lots of club plays an so on but somehow development stuck. We had not sent out any demos to record companies because we didn't thought it would be interesting to anybody on that point. A friend convinced us to send demos to ant- zen, devine comedy and HANDS. We were always fans of HANDS and acts from that label like MS Gentur, Mono No Aware, 5F_55, NKVD and so on. So we tried HANDS, sent a demo and never heard of them ;). After a year or so Leif from Mono No Aware contacted us via our website. He liked what he saw and heard so he asked us to send a demo, he wanted to hand over to the guys of HANDS. We sent the early edit of activist as a demo and so we got signed on HANDS.
2.We know that you've influenced by lots of post-punk bands, but why industrial music is the main chosen one to represent your emotions?
K: I think its not only post punk. We listened to lost of different styles as we were younger. So beside post punk there was also ska, neo classic, electronic body music, dark electro, techno and avant-garde like Einstürzende Neubauten or FO 32, Industiral like Esplendor Geometrico or Test Dept. some early electronics artists like Kraftwerk, Jean Michel Jarre or Tangerine Dream. And we started making music together as an ebm/ dark electro band under a different name. But soon we realized how limited it is to make music like that people often said its not this genre if you do this and that.
We wanted to be free in what we do and do more experiments with our instruments instead of doing music for a certain genre. We liked to experiment with samples, sounds and loads of effects. Sometimes it really made no sense at all. But in the end we found the sound we do today.
I think to limit what u can do, only to fit in some certain genre is bad if you want to be creative and freedom is the fundamental condition of creativity. In our case “industrial music”, in a wider sense was the most free music at the time we started. Everything was allowed as long as it was loud ;). Our music often has a critical content. Things we want to say need to be said as loud as possible and it should be as uncomfortable and violent as the world is, we live in.
3.You've released 3 albums under hands productions, and each is more complex than the previous, is it your project's essential aspiration?
K: Not by purpose. For the last album depleted uranium weapons it was planned to do a more dark and simpler sound. We ended up with darker sound but its still more complex as planned. Actually we like to work with complex structures and as many layers as we are able to handle. Its quite challenging sometimes to keep all those layers and still have a quite useful and dynamic sound. Making music like this never gets boring somehow.
Furthermore it has something to do with learning and gaining abilities with the time. On Aktivist our musical knowledge was not much more then some basics. While working on the albums we learned a lot and could include more elements on one track. On Aktivist our focus was more on playing with sounds and effects nowadays we like to experiment with rhythm structures and how they interact with each other.
4.The third album "depleted uranium weapons" is much darker and colder than the previous two, is there any reason? What is the trigger to make this album?
K: The topic for depleted uranium weapons is quite sad, dark and evil. I mean Chernobyl was an accident, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were so cruel that since then nobody has used atomic weapons that are based on nuclear fission anymore. Contracts have been made to ban those weapons and everybody knows how dangerous they are. With DU weapons this is different. They are handled and valued as conventional weapons. Every nation will use conventional weapons that are that cheap as DU weapons. The problem is that we have to face the same danger as in Chernobyl or Hiroshima. Increasingly more people in more and more former combat zones suffer by sicknesses and genetically deformities caused by those weapons. Soldiers and non combatants are affected equally.
Some years ago we saw a documentation about the aftermath of the use of DU weapons. The US government still declines the danger of DU. In this documentation a German doctor got arrested in Germany because he brought a DU projectile for science purposes to Germany. It got declared as highly toxic and radioactive by German officials. Thus there is proof of the danger of this material. And its still used on all combat zones we have today. This insanity made us think. We contacted some anti DU movements for more information and decided to do an album in hope to make more people sensitive for this topic.
5.S.K.E.T. invented very unique ska-punk powerful flaming sounds which isn't seen in the other bands. Is "rhythmic noise" a proper word you label your music?
K: I don't really know. We didn't thought of a genre and usually other people or journalists declare a genre for a style of music or a band. When I look at the internet with what people tag us on last.fm sometimes, I wonder a little. Some people label us as electro industrial, some as power noise, some rhythm noise, some IDM, you name it. Sometimes I don't really know what it means.
I now that it is important to many people to label music. We have “rhythm” and “noise” so I am fine with rhythm noise ;). Its a free term and could be everything.
6.When you go for a work in an album or a song, what is the first idea? decide the album concept or several songs wait to be extended then?
Usually we start with research of a topic we have chosen. During that research we discuss how this and that might sound in our content, from what point of view we want to look at it and we collect terms just as 'harsh', 'speed', 'cold', whatsoever depending on the topic. And on one certain point we start writing tracks. But not strict or chronological. It mostly depends on moods and influences how the album will be in the end. We work for the concept then, focused but not bound. So changes and development are still possible.
7.Which part do you normally take first of a single song? Tone，atmosphere，rhythm or..? the change in rhythm takes a great part in your music——especially your drum tones (pretty good and i like that), just like some None-stop deep hollow things. Do you often make/record the sounds (include samples) that you want by yourselves ?
K: Thank you. How we start differs always. Often driven by intuition or a mood. It can be a beat, a sound , a sample, an idea. Its always different. Sometimes we record own sounds like fieldrecording but not that often nowadays. We create our sounds very profane with sampler, hardware and software synthesizers and effects. Important style elements are breaks and changes of the rhythm structure, many layers, a “filled” and kind of living sound and 'engine'-like rhythm parts.
8.What's your plan next，continue with your current style,or something else?
K: At the moment we are in the middle of preparations to write a fourth S.K.E.T. album. We plan more break oriented beats. A lil bit simpler (hopefully), aggressive and harsh. The subject will be more political, against the oligarchic developments in democratic governments due to aggressive lobby-ism.
So I hope I have answered the questions satisfying for you. I thank you for your interest.
Kai. S.K.E.T. |
加为好友
送她礼物
发送消息
