Recording "NNNAAAMMM":

 It was mainly a listening process. First we recorded the Alfa Romeo--the producer could actually open the door and drive the entire car into the studio. We then went to a place for building site machines (cranes, bulldozers); recorded those sounds and we spent the rest of the week listening to them. The majority of the work lies in the synchronizing of the different tracks to somehow be interchangeable, interactable and mix them together and run them at the same speed."

String arrangements on "The Garden" sound familiar, like Arvo Pärt: It was only when I had the string players actually play it that I noticed that it was similar. The music of "The Garden" is very, very simple and that is probably why it sounds like Arvo Pärt. There's only one note all the way through and the only other thing that comes through is the string arrangement and the string arrangement doesn't do anything but play in the key of D minor as a down scale of D minor in different rhythmical variations, all on top of each other and suddenly you got something that sounds like Arvo Pärt. I never learned what he was doing because I played it on the keyboards and I just asked the arranger to put all these on top of each other.

By describing it like that -- to play the scale of D minor downwards is kind of public property. It can't be the idea of Arvo Pärt's or anyone else. Anyone who ever learned an instrument learns to play scales up and downwards forever. It is just that Arvo Pärt is actually popular at the moment. Sure, I can hear the similarity.

Debating the ability to hear better if one had bionic powers:

 "You can't hear better... you do hear music that's in machines--there is no will involved in what these mechanical objects do but, nevertheless, you are able to hear music in it--so there must be a neurological correspondence to it. There must be something in my brain already that can actually correspond to the music that is fabricated by machines. So maybe I am already half bionic but then we are all half bionic if we are able to hear the music just created by mechanical objects."

The first sound you found and turned into a piece of music:

 "When I was 12 or 13, I opened up my cassette recorder, worked with the different contents in it, used this plastic foil to influence the erasing head, double-tracked and triple-tracked it and put some things through it...that was my initiation with making music."

On Rammstein:

 "It's a bit like if you would cut out one surface idea from Neubauten in the early 80s and put the lead vocals from Laibach on top of it."

Did you hear the scandal about the Rammstein video? The Depeche Mode cover song. I don't know why they were so careless--totally tasteless. I think it's incredibly short-sighted to use part of footage by Leni Riefenstahl, a documentary film about the Nazi party. When Kiss records were released in Germany, the record sleeves had to be changed. They are still very sensitive about it. I would be very careful about putting myself within a context like that... the potential of it being misunderstood. How easy could it be misunderstood?

[Wednesday13 recently discovered through a reliable source that the band Rammstein disapproved of the video and pulled it from being released anywhere in the world.]

If you could live in another time period...
I always wonder about people discovering their past life experience and learn that they have been involved with something fancy like serving in the court of Cleopatra. None of them ever has been a bricklayer. They all just see very fancy scenes that they have compiled out of things that they've read and I guess the only thing that I'd say: I don't know anything about other times and I would be highly suspicious if I would like an experience like that. I certainly don't want to be a bricklayer and I'm not sure about the court of Cleopatra either.

 On the American music scene:

 "I don't know anything about it nor any other music scene. I gave up listening to music. I still accept CDs as a present to which I listen. The other members of the band still listen to it together. My experiences from listening to American radio: if we're on the road and you put on the radio, it would be the thing that would make me lose my last bit of nerve."

Wednesday's Korner