Here's the rest of the 1997 Rolling Stone interview:
---
RS: "Would you agree with a definition of the term "Krautrock" that lists Tangerine Dream as the father figures of the movement?"
EF: "Of course not. To be honest, I count myself lucky that so far I couldn't penetrate the fathomless meaning of the word. Besides: who cares?"
RS: "For a while, Kraftwerk were regarded as your most potent competitors..."
EF: "Kraftwerk? I only could find them enjoyable after I've seen them in prima ballerina tricots of the Bolshoi ballet. They still lack that pivotal Kling-Klang pirouette, that final torsional moment in music transcending the mundane. I rather prefer the morbidity of the Ruhrpott, the true German underground."
RS: "How would you rate current Rock made in Germany?"
EF: "I ask myself for years now: Is there really only Lindwurm and Rummmmstein, Kunzel and Pur between Flensburg and Garmisch? Or are there, out there somewhere in this country still some cosmopolitan, upstanding musicians getting shivers down their spine when hearing a badly played Em7-chord by Rollstone Richards?" And just imagine what happened if that whole musical and mental misery got grafted with the Kunzel-quota [Heinz Rudolf Kunze proposed in 1996 a compulsory quota for German music in German media]. The German Bundestag rules: German music for German blokes. Help, what century are we living in?"
RS: "Does working on soundtracks offer you the possibility for being creative outside the despised music biz?"
EF: "Even that area is predominated by mass production nowadays. Interesting at best would be a radical conversion of images into music, preferable without dialogue, documentaries for example. Otherwise, soundtracks turn into routine very quickly."
RS: "How do you counter critics calling your music insignificant these days?"
EF: "That's fine by me. When we started in 1970 we were as insignificant as we are in 1997, just for a different group of people. That we don't have anything in store anymore for all those trend-hunting writers might be because we don't make our music for those people."
RS: "Who exactly is your clientele?"
EF: "Well, as a label we're going to take part in a virtual record store where people can download music to their home computer. They can have a listen at 8 bit for 20 seconds - and if they like what they hear, they can simply download it."
RS: "And how to pay for that?"
EF: "By credit card, I suppose."
RS: "Could you imagine being a customer yourself in such a virtual store?"
EF: "No. Although I'm both musician and merchant, I only can be good at the two when strictly separating them from the outset."
RS: "Beautiful new world?" [actually the original question "Schöne neue Welt?" is in reference to the German title of the Aldous Huxley novel, but the novel's English title "Brave new world" wouldn't fit here because of EF's answer.]
EF: "Certainly not beautiful, because from a purely aesthetical point of view it is absolutely dreadful."
Deutsche press
-
Michael66
- Posts: 967
- https://mapa.targeo.pl/kuchnie-na-wymiar-warszawa-ladna-41-97-500-radomsko~20490206/meble-wyposazenie-domu-sklep/adres
- Joined: Wed May 02, 2007 11:56 am
- Location: Germany
