Neonman - Waiting For The Man - Interview

Neonman is an Anglo-German partnership, in which the only thing they can definitely agree on is a mutual love for Guns N’ Roses (a rare thing and coincidently a love shared by their interviewer). They have just released their second album on Berlin’s guardian of new talent, Pale Music. With a sound somewhere between guitars and electronics, but closer to the former, they have certainly changed a lot since their early days releasing electroclash on Gigolo.

How did you meet and how long have you guys been in Berlin?
Bastian: I came in here in 2000.

Ben: Yeah in 2000 – 2001 we met at work – I came here in 1999. I’m a trained graphic designer and it was the beginning of the internet boom when I moved here. So, I taught myself HTML and internet in three months and managed to talk myself into the job at Dollar Man, which made pop music videos. Bastian was working there too and one day he just came up to me and said ‘I heard you’re into music – here’s one of my mix tapes’ – back in those days it was - I dare say - more trip-hop.

Bastian Yeah, it was on a mini-disk in those days!!
Ben: Yeah, I am a DJ as well and that’s the background I came from in London. So Bastian said if you like electronic music, listen to my mix tape. It was in that weird void time of 1999 and 2001 when everything had gone a bit strange. Especially here in Berlin, everything had gone a bit Jazzanova and people in suits. We were both moaning about the musical state at that time, so when I took Bastian’s mix tape home, I thought yeah, this is alright, it’s quite funny – so I got out my old microphone and recorded some vocals over the top of it onto another mini-disk, gave that back to Bastian, who then went on and sampled it on an Atari ST and the first track was born! Which was shit, probably.

Bastian: Yeah, pretty shit!

How long have you been into music? Was this when you started making music?

Bastian: No, no I was doing a lot of stuff – house stuff – I was writing and then computers came along and I found them very intriguing, so started to do basic things like samples on Ataris.

So how long ago was this – about nine years ago?

Ben: God yeah, it must have been! When we did that first track it was all really just for a laugh – I’d never even sung anything before. So we were like “yeah I fancy a bit of that!” So when we started producing things together, our main aim was to make the most offensive music possible – lyrically and sonically!

Bastian: You have to remember back in those days it was completely covered with dope RnB and American artists – I mean they do great stuff and everything, but after a while it was all too much. And then there were all the chill out albums and the jazzy Brazilian albums for people in suits at the time of the economic boom who could afford the expensive drinks – it was shit! So we tried to make something that was totally tasteless and different.

Ben: I mean then, at that time, even on a Saturday night at ZMF, there was loads of house and techno because in 2000, techno sort of lost its way and so did house music – like that ‘Sing It Back’ song from Moloko – it was like playing at every party! So, from making this horrible electronic music, next thing, we were watching Fischerspooner at their first live gig in Berlin, and this was long before the term electroclash had ever been used. We then became a large part of that scene in Berlin. So we had our four tracks, then we met this man about town and he managed to arrange our first gig – this was the first time I was ever on stage with a microphone in my hand. It was at E-Werk at Love Parade, and I remember the line-up well: Ricardo Villalobos, Steve Bug, DJ rock from Gigolo. It was also the first ever live gig! So we went on in front of 800 ravers with four songs playing from CD!

Bastian: It went all right. I mean the whole concept then was to take the money, be as successful as possible without out knowing anything about it. We purposely didn’t even rehearse! It was a legendary techno venue and everyone was really educated on their techno, but somehow we did it!

Ben: It was all very crass and tasteless and we never imagined that project would become Neonman and all of a sudden we had people from Sony BMG and all these record labels in the Far East saying they were interested in our stuff. Our MP3s had somehow got onto the internet and people were downloading them and they were being played in clubs! There was one called ‘Riot-Ache’ with lyrics like “boys in black boys in blue – don’t like the look of you” (laughs). It was all really funny, and then there were people offering us money and pills. This was in 2002 and we started signing record deals, obviously there was never any real money at this stage - we were still dreaming that might happen one day! So we started to take it a bit more seriously and would meet regularly and write – we both didn’t have washing machines at that point, so every Monday we would meet at the laundrette and write songs.

Bastian: Yeah, so eventually, after releasing a few of the songs on 12”, we had an album!

Ben: After all that, we discovered our love of rock songs – everything had gone a bit electronic, I guess it was a knee jerk reaction.

Bastian: We were being different cause of whatever was going around us. We were tired out, we’d been doing it for so long. So when we play live now, we have a live band – drums and guitars – that wouldn’t really go down well at a techno club these days. I play guitar, but we have a backing track still.

Ben: So now with this new album, we haven’t totally lost the electronic side to our music, it’s just a bit more in the background now than before when it was in the front.

Bastian: Electronic music doesn’t always give you a lot of room to let you say what you want to say and now we want to be able to have our say.

Ben: Now we get angry about various political things and things on our doorstep and we wouldn’t be able to express this on a nice techno track. I want to tell it in a song to get it off my chest! After writing it and practising it over and over again, it’s out of my system for good!

So how long have you been working on the album?

Bastian: About two years – it takes a long time, what with writing and record companies. It should have been ready nine months ago. Don’t sign a contract – that’s our advice to anyone out there thinking of doing the same!

Ben: We pretended it was a concept album when it first started, as some of the songs are dance and some are rock – it’s not a concept album really. There’s no concept of a story running through it – it’s just bullshit really, we’re having a laugh and doing it for fun!

Knights of Error out now on Pale Music