Modeselektor - Birthday boys - Interview

ESCHEWING THE SERIOUSNESS THAT’S SO PROMINENT IN TODAY’S TECHNO, SEBASTIAN SZARY AND GERNOT BRONSERT AKA MODESELEKTOR PREFER TO HAVE A GOOD LAUGH AND MAKE MUSIC THAT TURNS PUNTERS INTO INANE DANCING MONKEYS, LIKE THE ONE THEY HAVE ON THEIR RECORD SLEEVES. NO WONDER CRITICS STRUGGLE TO PIGEONHOLE THEIR SONIC OUTPUT, WHICH RANGES FROM BUOYANT EUROCRUNK TO DUBSTEP TO SUBLIME IDM-INSPIRED ELEGIES. WE CAUGHT UP WITH THE BERLIN BOYS TO TALK ABOUT FATHERHOOOD AND THEIR SOPHOMORE ALBUM HAPPY BIRTHDAY, WHICH FEATURES COLLABORATIONS WITH THE LIKES OF THOM YORKE FROM RADIOHEAD AND MAXIMO PARK.

SO, HOW ARE YOU SATISFIED WITH YOUR NEW ALBUM? G: I guess I really like it. In the beginning, I couldn’t listen to it any more, as we’d heard it so many times.

HAS THE FACT THAT BOTH OF YOU ARE BECOMING FATHERS SOON INFLUENCED YOU? G: Not really. It was a good feeling, but it wasn’t the main inspiration. We found out that we were going to be fathers in the middle of our production process, so the music had been written already by that time, there was just no time to finish it. It wasn’t too much of a surprise to us either because we’d wanted to have babies for a long time.

DO YOU THINK THAT YOU OR YOUR MUSIC WILL BECOME MORE MELLOW BECAUSE OF THIS EXPERIENCE? G: I don’t know why people say that once you become a father and have your own family, everything is getting slower. My life won’t be slower than it was before. When you have a kid, you always have someone around you who wants to know and learn everything. It’s an interesting inspiration for me.

YOUR PREVIOUS ALBUM WAS CALLED HELLO MOM; THIS ONE IS CALLED HAPPY BIRTHDAY. SO THERE’S A CONTINUATION THERE. G: Exactly. Like Hello Mom part 2. Around the time we did Hello Mom, I’d just left my parents’ house and now with Happy Birthday I’m becoming a parent myself and we have our own families.

THERE IS A TRACK CALLED ‘HYPER HYPER’ WITH OTTO VON SCHIRACH ON THE NEW ALBUM. IS IT IN ANY WAY RELATED TO [GERMAN EURODANCE BAND] SCOOTER WHO HAD A TRACK OF THE SAME NAME? S: It’s the first official cover version of Scooter’s ‘Hyper Hyper’. G: I really liked the idea of having a ‘Hyper Hyper’ cover version sung by Otto von Schirach and made by Modeselektor. I like to have these crazy ideas and materialise them later.

WAS THERE ANYTHING ABOUT THE WHOLE RAVING THING? THERE ARE SHOUT-OUTS TO RAVERS ON THE ORIGINAL TRACK. WAS IT INTENDED AS SOME SORT OF MESSAGE? G: No. The message is the whole album. It’s more like a joke, to count all the ravers and DJs, it’s just so ridiculous. The idea of the original track was so funny in the end that we had to do a cover version of it. It’s just nonsense. S: We had to find the right place for this track on the album, that was not easy.

DID THE GUYS FROM SCOOTER LIKE IT? G: Yeah, of course. They gave us the permission to do this cover in the end. It’s an official cover version.

SO MAYBE A COLLABORATION IN FUTURE THEN :)? G: Who knows…(laughs) … Maybe...

CAN YOU TELL US SOMETHING ABOUT ‘THE WHITE FLASH’, THE COLLABORATION WITH THOM YORKE? G: We did a remix for him for a track from his solo album Eraser last year and asked him if he could imagine singing on our album. He said yes and I sent him a track with an idea I had; it was an old melody, which I made more than a year ago. He recorded his vocals on a very rough song idea and we finished it in our studio in Berlin.

AND WHAT ABOUT THE TRACK ‘I CAN’T SLEEP (WITHOUT MUSIC)’ WITH MAXIMO PARK? G: That’s a funny story actually. They were on the cover of the NME a few months ago, when they released their new album Our Earthly Pleasures, and one of the band members was wearing a Modeselektor T-shirt. When they came to Berlin, we contacted them, met them in a bar before they played and had a few beers together. We then produced the track in our studio and sent them the instrumentals without the vocals. The guys recorded their vocals during two of their gigs in Spain; they rented a studio especially for this recording. We never asked them personally, it was just a coincidence. We met up, liked each other and did something together.

YOU SEEM TO HAVE QUITE A LOT OF FANS AMONG MUSICIANS. THOM YORKE HAS NAME-DROPPED YOU IN INTERVIEWS IN THE PAST. G: I don’t why that is. Perhaps it’s because people see that you can be successful with what you’re doing, that you can stay original and true to yourself without following hypes. I guess it’s really important for young people to find their own way of how to express themselves. Lots of hypes or music styles are based on a big bubble, a sort of virtual reality, which doesn’t exist. That’s one of the reasons why we called our first album Hello Mom. We wanted to show the world that reality is not about fancy haircuts or nice T-shirts. Maybe you can hear this in our music. We are not fixed in one style or music genre.

CAN YOU TELL US SOMETHING ABOUT AN OLDER RECORD OF YOURS CALLED ‘DIE TECHNOPROST ITUTIONSMASCHINE’? G: That’s a weird record. We did it in 2004. The original title is ‘Ganes de Frau’ which means something like ‘makes some jokes’ in Spanish. Finally we had a few serious tracks for it, like this IDM track ‘Don’t Panic’ and on the other side we put ‘Die Techn oprostitutionsmaschine’, a fun song, a homage to nothing.

WHY DID YOU CALL IT ‘DIE TECHNOPROSTITUTIONSMASCHINE‘? G: Ellen [Allien] asked us to do some dance tracks. At this time, we couldn’t do any dance tracks. This track was an attempt to make a cheesy dance track and we called it ‘Die Technoprostitutionsmaschine’, which was like an answer to this request – “do a record for the people”. Usually the producers in Berlin or in techno record and release records in order to have a hit, to be charted by DJs, to have bookings at festivals and this is not what we are about. We are more like a band, I guess.

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE MINIMAL SCENE THAT’S BEEN SO BIG IN BERLIN? G: I have never heard this word ‘minimal’ before (laughs). I’m not a big fan of minimal music. We don’t think it’s very innovative.

ARE YOU PLANNING ANY TOURS IN SUPPORT OF THE ALBUM? G: We will have a few recordrelease parties all over Europe, in Paris, Berlin, Glasgow, London…

WHAT ABOUT YOUR BABIES? G: Szary will become a dad in October and I’ll have a baby in December, which will be in the middle of our record-release tour. After the birth of our children, we don’t want to leave the continent. Then in spring 2008 we will go on a big world tour, including Australia, South America, North America, Japan and New Zealand.

WHAT WOULD YOU SAY WAS THE BEST EXPERIENCE RELATED TO RECORDING AND RELEASING THIS ALBUM? G: The main difference to how we usually make music was that we produced this record by day; usually we produce during the night. Originally, we planned to record this album in a mobile studio, but we didn’t do it this way in the end. The house where we had our studio was being reconstructed, so we needed to set up the studio in my house. We recorded the album every day from 10am to 6pm. There were lots of things, lot of funny, mad stories. The whole experience is still not over.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY WILL BE RELEASED IN SEPTEMBER ON BPITCH CONTROL.

By Lucia Udvardyova