Interviews-|- M H
FM: Yes sir, how low can i go?
(Laughter) As of tonight half the tour is done - the first 16 shows now another 17 to come.
MH: Half way through.
FM: Yea, now we party tonight.
MH: oh Yea in Memphis.
FM: YES
MH: Party with the King! Are you guys going to Graceland?
FM: Actually we are leaving here tonight, but we went down there today. We just saw the outside.
MH: You have the new CD out "Sensation Death".
FM: Right
MH: Please tell us a little about it.
FM: Sure, "Sensation Death" is a soundtrack I made for a German Dance Company for a sort of interactive TV show. For candidates they have to like fight for their lives and only one can survive.
MH: That's wild.
FM: That's why it is totally electronic, because i wanted to write this genre of TV music that's repetitive and like jinglewize. That's what it's all about.
MH: I noticed it was a lot different than some of the other stuff that you have done.
FM: Yes, but that's basically because i did this commissioned music and i always try to write in that total genre that fits for the play or film. All these commissioned things are very very different.
MH: I noticed Invisible re-issued "Radio Inferno". I have "Prometheus and Lear" too.
FM: On invisible we have "Radio Inferno","Sensation Death" and "Deutsche Krieger" / which is German Warrior, which is a radio drama about the last 100 years of German History. And it is divided in three parts. The first part is about Kaiser Wilhelm Overdrive, second part Adolf Hitler Enterprise the short part is "Ulrike Meinhof Paradise". The first part obviously about the first world war and what we tried to achieve is to let the original sources speak for themselves. For the first part we used a lot of grammaphone recordings of the announcing of war. We took these original recordings and put it into a different musical context. The second part is radio recordings by the nazi's. and 70's terrorist Ulrike Meinhof. She was marx's leading terrorist and that's mainly TV or video recordings. It was really interesting to hear how history sounds instead of like getting all your information out of books. Instead of getting channelized by the author - you can get your own clear picture.
MH: Instead of a watered down version by some journalist.
FM: Exactly
MH: I've got some of the Stein releases. Please tell us about that project. Stein means stone right?
FM: Stone, right.
MH: Is that like the theme of the project...
FM: The name basically is like that's my favorite instrument playing the stones. I had that experience when Neubaten played in the Mojave desert during the first american tour in 1983. Some kids got some P.A. out there. And there was hardly any lights or anything. I lost nearly all my metal sticks in the sand which left us with like just rocks lying around and a big metal plate. That was a really good experience just to play with whatever's left.
MH: Organic.
FM: yeah. And stones can react to you. You can bash them and they splinter...
MH: and then they change their sounds by breaking down...
FM: exactly. And from that came the name Stein. And with Stein I did three records. The first one was just called "Stein". I t had Diamanda Galas, Casper Brotzman, Blixa sang on one track. And the second one was called
MH: "Steinzeit"
FM: "Steinzeit" that's right and the third one
MH: "Konigzucker"
FM: Yes, that's right, a well informed man.
MH: Is most of your solo work commissioned?
FM: Mmmmmmmmmm i've done a lot of commissioned works the last eight years. I'm a little bit tired of it, because you always have to stay in other peoples plane. I left Neubauten two years ago. I was still working on a project which i think comes out on Nothing very soon. And after getting tired of doing the commissioned work, i started up a new band.
MH: Are the members mostly German?
FM: They are from all over really. We have two people from Copenhagen. The girl singer "Gry ",the human beatbox "Zaki" then "Sjang" the bass player is from Holland and "Saskia" the drummer from Cologne,Germany and i'm from Germany. I'm 39 years old now and they are half my age. Gry is 18 and Saskia is 22 we like to get input from their point of view. They think about different things than i do and that's interesting. On one hand i can train them through the things i know, on some things they are naive. That's the greatest thing you can have. You are inbetween the stage where you're naive about it. Then once you've done it you can't be naive about it anymore.
MH: A nice fresh mixture.
FM: I like it.
MH: Do you record in specific field locations?
FM: yea, we did a lot of field recordings of just steel and rocks.
MH: Do you have a preference to working in the studio or on location?
FM: It depends on the project. After 20 years of researching sound i know a lot about it. Before we tried nearly everything, whatever we could get. Like micing up the body and this device you can hear the heart.
MH: Like on "Thirsty Animal" by Einturzende Neubauten? Didn't Blixa insert a contact mic down his throat?
FM: Yea, that was me drumming on his chest. I pretty much started off as a kid anyway. You haul things around and you're just banging around on them.
MH: Primal. And now you're more focused on composition? FM: Composition. I still like it cause it sounds totally unique. It's one thing for an artist who uses a machine it's not like you're own sound. To find you're own sound, you're own voice.
MH: Original - pure.
FM: Then you know exactly what your sound is and nobody else will sound like that.
MH: Fresh. Is the latest material more electronic?
FM: Not necessarily. Again i'm quite interested in electronics. In fact that's where my name comes from. Like an FM radio for the audience to play with. I was working with these analog synthesizers 20 years ago as a kid and it was like coming out. Then i was really interested in them and then i lost interest for awhile. We still use a lot of electronics in the old days it was tape loops and since the sampler came out and it's digital now quicker and faster. Now again i'm quite fascinated by electronics. It's like we've always done shit like that. There's many different software programs coming out and different ways to really fuck up sounds with. Like squeeze sounds and deform them. And you couldn't do it that way before. And these capabilities have really sparked me to
MH: Stretch the boundaries
FM: Yes. I'm quite interested in that at the moment, but that doesn't mean i wouldn't go in the studio and record something totally acoustic. It depends on what sort of vibe someone has. I know we like to mix different things. Electronic and acoustic things and all sorts of different informations and mix them up. Instead of purely electronic i like to mix things up.
MH: Makes it more intresting.
FM: Yea, for me too. And i like to do it with other people and communicate with a whole new generation out there.
Andreas Ammer . FM Einheit . Ulrike Haage: "Odysseus 7" is available on Invisible Records. Other releases by FM Einheit are also available in the US via Invisible Records
Interviews-|- M H