More or less coincidentally, I'm having "Norwegian weeks" here on my blog right now-after this interview I'm doing an interview with Manheim from Order, who was part of Mayhem's legendary "Deathcrush" release, furthermore I have an interview going on with Jørn Steen, the director of the movie "Saga", which features Sarke and Ted from Darkthrone. Did did you hear something about this movie? I think it's not a serious movie, it's more like horror comedy including a wild mix of black metal, bikers, undead people and vikings.
What was it called? "Saga"? I know there's
been made some Norwegian like horror movies about zombies in the snow, up in
the mountains and some shit like that. But I think that's a different movie. So
I know I haven't seen that one. Okay, I guess I should keep my eye out for it.
And in a few hours I'm doing an interview with Order,
more specifically with Kjetil Manheim.
Yes, the band with personal overlaps to Cadaver, right?
Exactly. These days they release a second album. Do you
know Manheim personally? Or asked in general: Norway is not such a big
country in terms of population. Within the black metal scene, does everyone
basically know everyone?
Oh, I guess, yes and no. You know, I mean, the Norwegian black metal scene is getting pretty old. It's been existing since, well, it's
been quite active since about 1991 or so, Darkthrone and Mayhem were active
even in the 80s. But there's been a lot of people coming and going. But if you
have been around as long as I have, then you know, of course, some people, I
know founders from Cadaver because they have been around for forever. Manheim,
I don't actually know personally, but he's been around forever as well, since
the early days of Mayhem. But I think you could say probably more yes than no,
coming back to your question. As you said, Norway is a small country. Most of
the stuff going on musically in the black metal scene, is happening more down
towards the southern ends of Norway, from the middle of the country to down
south. That's where you get most of the activity. You have some bands up
further up north, I think Gorgoroth comes a little bit further up north. But
not that far, really. I know a lot of those people, but I'm kind of isolated, I
never go out. I just stay in my studio and, you know, I live with my family and
stay in my my house, I go to work, I go back home, I work on music and I repeat
that process, year in, year out. I do live shows, and that's when I meet some
people. But of course, lately that's been a little bit difficult to do because
of the pandemic.
To be honest, I wasn't really aware of where he had been and
what he had done. He must have been operating in in some really strange musical
scenes and landscapes because I am normally aware of what's going on. I mean, I
knew Maniac. When he left Mayhem he got into some pretty experimental stuff
like Status Fatal and things like that. And I did see him doing
stuff during different times. Manheim, I have to admit, I was not aware of what
he had been doing. I think the first singer of Mayhem, Messiah was his name or
something like that, I believe he formed a hardcore band called Within Range.
And I could be wrong about this. But maybe you should ask Manheim because I
think Messiah is in Order as well, isn't he?
Yes, exactly, he's in Order as well.
And I think that's the same guy that I'm talking about. I
could be wrong, but he did a couple of pretty cool hardcore punk records in the
late '80s or early '90s.
In some interviews I read that you said that Tangerine
Dream was a big influence for you. And I think Manheim enjoys stuff like that
as well, after he departed from Mayhem, for example he collaborated with Conrad
Schnitzler.
Fantastic. I know, Conrad did the intro on Mayhem's
"Deathcrush". I mean, that's pretty common knowledge to know that
true recursive intro. But that was something that have been organized by
Euronymous, I think he visited Conrad Schnitzler in his apartment in Berlin
back then. I guess that's the Berlin school, there's a lot of that music,
Tangerine Dream and Peter Baumann and close schools. It's cool to hear that
Manheim was into it because I never got the impression that the other members
really cared that much about electronic music. But that's cool.
The funny thing is that although they made music
together, Manheim never pointed out to Konrad Schnitzler that they had
something like a common musical past. They never met personally, despite
working together on this project.
That's really weird. Why didn't he say that? I mean, I think I would have said something like" I think we kind of worked together in the past, we used music for our release". Maybe he thought that it was kind of amusing, never to have said that.
Maybe he didn't mention it, because Schnitzler probably
didn't like his contribution to the Norwegian black metal history, just when
some things happened later.
Perhaps, he wasn't excited about the association with
that. I can understand that. I mean, it takes a pretty special person to
want to be involved in something like that, so most people would probably try
to distance themselves from it, but it's not necessarily good public relation.
You know, it has been great public relation for black metal bands, but maybe
not so great for electronic musicians.
Yes, that has been postponed, obviously a couple of times
already, we were supposed to do that in the fall of 2020. Of course, that
didn't happen because the world was insane at that point with the pandemic and
everything else that happened. And so it got postponed a few times. And
finally, the agents just put the date quite a way into the future and now it's
a point of time that makes sense to me. I mean, that's much more realistic, you
know? So I think it's set for april and may of 2020 now. And I think it's like
five weeks in Europe. That's the way it looks to me but it could change. Who
knows? But yes, that's going to be fucking great. And like you said, I mean,
this circle is kind of closing. I started writing letters with, Euronymous
in 1989, you know, and I was always a Mayhem fan. And so in that sense, it's a
bit weird for me to go on tour with them because I still remember the day when
I got the letters from Euronymous in 1989, I was like
14 years old. And unfortunately, he is no longer here. God knows
how what the world would be like today if Euronymous would be still alife. Who
knows what black metal would be like today? But yeah, you know, he's not here
anymore. But Mayhem is here still, which is very good. So yes, I'm really
looking forward to it. And then it's also some kind of a strange feeling
because I remember being a fan boy, you know?
Talking about Euronymous - he died young and had this
extreme, evil image. I think that if he were still alive, he would certainly
act very differently nowadays. It would be strange if he didn't, people evolve,
after all. Maybe he would have taken a similar direction as Fenriz from
Darkthrone?
Yeah, I think it's definitely possible. At the same time,
I'm not surprised that things ended the way that they did because some people
became very, very extreme in their personalities back then, you know. So,
I've thought about it for years, since 1993. Fuckin what? 28 years now, my mind
often goes back to those days and, you know, like, well, what would things have
been like if Varg hadn't killed Euronymous. And who knows, to a
certain degree, it feels like it had to end this way because people were
getting so extreme. There was really no other end to them, then that somebody
fucking looses his mind and kill someone. I don't know, but it would have been
interesting to see a different reality. You know, in a parallel world, how
would this have ended up if nobody had died? Most of us, we sort of chilled out
through the years. We've become fairly nice grown up people. Now we have more
empathy and considerate of other people and things like that. And you know, I'm
sort of like an old granddad now, but thank God, I'm not really, by the way. I would love to see this alternate reality, Euronymous would still be alive and would have made numerous albums with Mayhem and would make several more in the future.
First of all, this was recorded during the pandemic. But
there was a live crowd there, but they were seated behind the cameras with
whatever distance that the government demanded at the time. So that in itself
becomes very static, you know, you don't have the energy of a live crowd. And
there's also the fact that you're watching it on the TV screen, you don't even
feel the fucking energy of all that music coming out of the speakers. That in
itself is something you can only experience being in the same room, you know?
That's why I haven't done any stuff like that myself, because I don't feel like
it translates well through a TV screen. But you know, for me, though, being
part of that that, during a couple of songs to be part
of Emperor again was actually the reason I did it, it was because it just
felt like it would be fun and nice to reconnect with those guys and do
something that we hadn't done in 30 years, so it was more of a personal
decision as opposed to like any other kind of decision. It wasn't a commercial
decision like, "Oh, maybe I'm going to get so many new followers
now." I didn't think about it in that sense. But for live shows you need
to be in the same room, that's my personal feeling about this topic.
Yes, but as I said, that only affected the first few
minutes, after that it got better and better. All in all it was a really great
concert.
Okay, I didn't see it from the beginning. I mean, I was in
the back getting ready for the show. So I don't know what happened during
the first three or four songs. The guys in the band seemed happy when they got
off stage, they saw the crowd reaction and they seemed very happy with it. They became a huge band
after I left, so I never really knew what their attitude to me would be, most of the fans received Emperor after my departure. So I spent some
time looking at their various social media and looking at the comments, and it
all seemed positive to me. I mean, there were a couple of sort of what I call
music police, you know that appreciate the progressive side of
Emperor more than the sort of black metal primitive side that it was back then
when I was in the band. But I don't really care about that. That's
understandable, if you like another era of Emperor than the one that I was
in, that's completely acceptable to me.
Have you been always in contact with the Emperor people
during all these years or were there also times when there was no contact at
all?
I mean, there might have been a couple of years where we didn't talk. But not because we didn't get along, but just because, we live our lives, we have kids and work and we have our musical projects that keeps us busy. I mean with Samoth, I've been keeping a pretty decent amount of contact with him over the years. You know, just a few messages now and then, email or just a text message and even the occasional phone call. I didn't talk to Ihsahn for a long time, which is a little bit weird because we got along really well where we did reconnect a little bit before the show. He called me a couple of times, so we went through the show and same thing it was with Faust. Me and him didn't get along for about many, many years ago when he was in prison. Then we kind of reconnected. I met him at a couple of festivals, just by pure coincidence. Things went like "Oh, it's Faust. Hello, How's it going?", furthermore we're kind of kept in touch through social media and on email.
I recently saw that you uploaded on your Bandcamp a previously unreleased track from Scum (a band that mixed black metal with punk and released an album called "Gospels for the sick" in 2005), on which you sing.
Yes, we put that out. That's actually a few weeks ago. I
just released it on my Bandcamp, simply download it. That was recorded in 2005,
and it just never made it on the album, I think it just sounded too different
from all the other tracks, and so they made the decision to not publish it. I
don't think they even mixed it properly, it would just remain as this rough
mix. So that's what I put up there.
Yes, but it sounds really cool.
I like it. I hadn't heard it in years and I listened to it
and thought, this is fucking pretty cool! Got a bit of that hardcore punk vibe,
you know? And I was like "Fuck, we should just put it out there". And
so we simply did.
Scum was my first association when you talked about
Faust.
Yes, that's interesting. I never thought about it, but the
line-up of Scum consists 75 percent of Emperor. There's Samoth, Faust and me on
the same song. And I don't think anybody realized that at the time,
but that was almost like a reunion of Emperor including Happy Tom from
Turbonegro. That's a great fucking line up, but I never really thought about
it.
Yes, I used to write with Gunther from Ancient Rites. Even
back then, he was one of those guys that had already been in the scene for a
long time. He was in the same league as the guys like Euronymus and Metalion
from Slayer Mag. I mean, they've been around since the early 80s had all these
stories. I used to get a lot of letters from him where he told stories about
touring in the UK, I think it happened 1984 with some other bands. I don't
think it was Ancient Rites, because they didn't existed in 1984. But I mean, he
had a few bands before Ancient Rights and he was telling me these stories and I
was really impressed. You know, that was probably either when I was still in
Emperor or in the very early days of Mortiis. Gunther was already a veteran,
you know?
Talking about Ancient Rites, I also have a funny story.
They once played here in Cologne, and I was a pubescent teenager at that time.
I knew the band from some interviews with corresponding statements, the
pictures with corpsepaint and then I met Gunther, who seemed to be the nicest
guy ever. Today I have to laugh about it and of course I was also aware at that
time that these people don't walk around hateful or depressed all the time.
Nevertheless, it was a surprise.
That happens a lot. You might paint a certain image of
yourself as a person. And then people will base their impression on maybe your
record sleeves and and your sort of visual presentation in photos with your
band or as an artist in my case. And they kind of assume that you're this
really extremely dark and reserved and just displayed downright evil person,
you know? And that's not necessarily the case. I mean, with some people it might
be the case, there might be people who have really weird personalities. But
most people are turning out to be a pretty nice, decent people, you know? And
as for Gunter, I don't think I've ever met him personally, I would have
remembered that. I mean, I've met a lot of people on tour, sometimes the
meetings go by quite fast, but I would have remembered that. It's weird that I
never met him because he's been on tour, I've been on tour. He lives in
Belgium, that's not that far away. I've been to Belgium many, many times. I
don't know why I never met him, really weird.
There seems to be a dark shadow over Ancient Rites, they
have already lost two members to suicide, and one member due to a car accident. Recently drummer Walter van Cortenberg died due to a heart attack.
They're maybe the Belgian Ramones? You know, everybody dies
way too young. I know Gunter has had some health problems, too. I think it had
been a while ago, but I used to read his posts on social media and he had this
really long updated post. I can't remember what the illness was, but it was
something serious and it was something that took time to recover from and he
had to go to the hospital quite a lot. I believe it's a while ago. So maybe
there's really a shadow hanging over them?
---------------------------------------------------------------
"If you can laugh for ten seconds, that's ten seconds you don't feel like shit."
---------------------------------------------------------------
Regarding images, back over 25 years ago when I first
came in contact with your music, you appeared as a very dark, depressed
person. Quite in contrast to today, where you often write funny and also
self-deprecating posts on Facebook.
I mean, the thing is like, I always had a special sense of
humor, probably around the late 90s and early 2000s because I did go through a
heavy depression. And one of the sort of defense mechanisms is to deal with it
and just to laugh at fucking everything, just joke about everything because if you can laugh for ten seconds, that's ten seconds you don't feel like shit. So
that's my theory, anyway. I mean, that's my sense of humor, it can be pretty
dark and and I don't seem to take anything seriously, you know? So sometimes I
probably annoyed people with just taking the piss out of everything. But
I think that comes out of saving myself, out of some pretty dark places about
20 years ago, so those early interviews come back to my mind. I mean, I was a
pretty dark personality at this time, I really didn't like humanity and I
didn't really like people. And so I think that was the early expression of what
became a fucking deep depression, and I eventually fought my way out of that.
But you know, having said that, I mean, even back in, let's say, 1994 or 1995
in private, I enjoyed joking around and fucking around like everybody else, but
I guess to a certain degree you wanted to be a certain public presentation of
yourself. We wanted to be that dark and mysterious at the time. I think part
of that was because I was such a huge Kiss fan. And you know, the whole thing
with Kiss in the 70s was that nobody could see their personality, nobody could
see what they really looked like. It was always the guys in the masks and that
sort of mystery. So I was really living up to that for a long time. And so it
didn't really fit to the concept to be joking around. So I had this very
serious and mysterious image. And that's good. I mean, I liked it that way. But
at the same time, that's not the way I wanted to spend the rest of my life, you
know?
Okay, that's probably a bit lost in translation. I think
what happened was that sometimes some cultural parts of the government will buy
certain records and put them in libraries around the country. And I think what
they did is, they bought 500 copies and they start to send them around to
libraries, you know? So it wasn't just me. I mean, they do that with a selected
bunch of Norwegian album titles every year. I don't know if they still do it.
Libraries are probably a dying concept, because of Google and Wikipedia and all
that digital stuff. But I hope I'm wrong, libraries should remain forever, it's
a great public service. But when you say cultural artifact, it sounds like
they're going to make a statue of me, you know?
Okay, maybe I misunderstood something a little bit, but
it's still very interesting to see the change that has taken place in terms of
the social recognition of this music. In the past, the music was considered
wicked and dangerous, but today the bands receive recognition from the highest
levels. Mayhem recently received a Norwegian music award, the
"Spellemanprisen", which is seen as a counterpart to the US Grammy.
Satyricon have performed their pieces with the Norwegian National Opera Chorus
at the Oslo Opera House, and there are several more examples.
Interesting point, times changed. I mean, and that's the
funny thing about black metal, it started out in Norway very different, I was
there when that whole thing got started. You know, just like Darkthrone,
obviously Mayhem, Enslaved and Emperor and some other bands, I mean, we weren't
really a lot of people back then. It was just a small group of young guys
making music and raising hell. You know, the way we were portrayed by the
Norwegian media at the time was basically as Public Enemy number one. Literally,
we were like the worst thing that ever happened to Norway. You know that people
were horrified. Like you said, twenty five years later, it's like there's
awards and there are things like that I got fucking my album in Norwegian
libraries across the country. There are documentaries about Mayhem and
Darkthrone on TV all the time and and performances in the opera. And I think
Ulver did the same thing, by the way. You know, there's all this. Are these all the things that were completely unthinkable? Who would have thought that this would develop for better or for worse? I suppose the old black metal reputation is
kind of dead, I guess it's not dangerous anymore. It became a common thing.
Everybody is into it. Everybody's listening to it. Everybody's making it. That
makes it less exciting to me. But from a commercial standpoint, you even have a
chance to maybe make a living with it now. Doing something that you love doing
as opposed to working in a factory and having your soul fucking dying? That's
positive. So, you know, it's a good thing in the end.
It's Romanian. I had a Romanian girlfriend back in those
days. I think it's supposed to mean "the devil's music". But from
what I understood, she misspelled it, and some Romanian people have later
pointed out to me that they understand what it's supposed to mean, but it's
actually grammatically wrong. So it's Romanian, maybe it's my vampire
project, haha?
Some time ago someone told me that especially in the very rural regions of Romania some parts of the population still believe in this vampire myth. A boy probably thought he had seen his uncle who had died a few weeks ago, whereupon the frightened villagers opened the grave to see if the corpse was still there. The Romanian government was probably anything but enthusiastic about this incident, especially with regard to the reputation of the country and in relation to tourism.
Sounds like it might be a really good reason to go to
Romania because they still believe in those old stories and the old legends,
which is at least partially why Romania is famous, you know, because of
Transylvania, the vampire myth, Dracula, or better said Vlad
Tepes. I mean, Romania is at least partially famous for its fucking
vampires, man.
Yes, of course.
So maybe it's not a bad thing that they opened graves now
just to make sure, that there are no vampires or undead people.
Yeah, pretty much. I mean, when I released albums like "The smell of rain" and "The grudge", the concepts on those records were based on my attitude at that time, I was frustrated and pissed off with the world and the universe and humanity and everything else. That's exactly the same mood of the Vond music, too. So, in this sense, it felt like those two musical expressions had morphed together and became one spiritwise. I really didn't see much purpose in continuing something like Vond when the spirit of Vond had been morphed into Mortiis anyway. You know, Fata Morgana, it's very similar to old Mortiis, and the only reason that record wasn't released with a Mortiis logo on it was because the music on that record consists of short songs. And at that time I was really excited about the idea, which I was inspired to do by Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze, of writing really long songs, you know, like 20 to 25 minute songs, which is what those guys did all the time in the '70s. I thought that was fucking great and that was my mindset with Mortiis at that point in 1995 or 1996. So I didn't think it fits into the concept and so it became a side project, and I called it Fata Morgana. Apart from the name, it's pretty much sounds like Mortiis, so once again, I'm not sure if that project needs to exist anymore, because I'm doing short songs and doing all kinds of stuff with Mortiis now, I'm not really limiting myself to anything anymore. So, you know, I don't really need side projects anymore.
Yes, I understand what you mean. And that is also the reason
why I stopped calling it different eras, because the big divide was, of
course, between "The Stargate" and "The smell of rain."
When I was about to release the "Smell of rain", I felt like I should
in some way indicate to people that there is a massive difference in musical styles
between those two records. That's when I came up with the whole "era"
thing. So I just put this little "era 2"-hint underneath the
logo on the record. I don't know how many people took the hint at
that time, but I had nothing but good reactions to it. So at least nobody got
pissed off with the big musical change. That wouldn't have changed anything for
me anyway. That was something I made, that was a personal decision to make a
different type of music, and nobody could have changed my mind about that. But
once "The grudge" came out a few years after "The smell of
rain", we had been touring quite a lot and the sound of the band had
gotten much more aggressive and more industrial. Performance wise, it was
starting to get that sort of punky edge almost when it got a little bit violent
and it was very angry and we were getting closer to Nine Inch Nails and
Ministry and that kind of thing. You know, we sort of had this mutation of
electronics and guitars and things like that. And so I felt like once that record
was done, once "The grudge" was about to come out, I felt again that
there's a pretty big divide between the sort of gothic electronic nature of
"The smell of rain" and this new album, which is much more into
industrial. Or at least, I wanted that record to be much more industrial
crossover sounding, you know? So again, I just felt like I think I should tell
that people and give a hint. So that became era three. And after that, you
start feeling a little silly, once I started working out "Perfectly defect"
and "The great deceiver" to see what could come after that, I was
like, "Fuck this man, this is going to confuse people. Where is this going
to end? Like what era? Area 51?" Okay, that's a bad joke, haha. So
anyway I figured, like once we were putting out, I think it was "The great
deceiver", I was like," You know what? Let's just fuck with people's
heads. Let's call this Era zero". Which means nothing, it means absolutely
nothing. It's just to fuck with people's heads. I find it funny.
---------------------------------------------------------------
"I'm glad that record didn't turn out to be harder and more aggressive
than it became...
So thank god, I didn't know how to make things sound angrier or more
distorted."
---------------------------------------------------------------
Do you agree that "Smell of rain" had the biggest commercial potential? I don't know what commercial success you had with this album, but whenever I listen to this album I think how many catchy tunes it contains.
Yeah, I guess.I mean, I'm not rich, I didn't sell that much.
I was on the wrong label, they didn't really do a lot, they could have done a
much better promotional job. But up until that point, that was the best selling
album and it's still one of my bestselling albums. And it does have a lot
of catchiness. I think Mortiis has quite a diverse fan base. You know, it's not
just one type of music fan. It seems to stretch across a rather interesting
diversity of people. I've seen people with Chemical Brothers T-shirts next to
people with Darkthrone T-shirts at my shows, I think that's interesting. I like
that because when you think about it, my music has been quite varied and
the way that it's been sounding through the years, I guess that means I did
something right that was able to convince the guy that's into Chemical Brothers
and the guy that's into Darkthrone to actually come to the same show. So I'm
happy about that.
"The smell of rain" was catchy, but I don't think
it's pop music. I'm glad that record didn't turn out to be harder and more
aggressive than it became, because when I made "The smell of rain", I
actually wanted it to sound harder and more aggressive. But at that time I
didn't know all the studio tricks to make that happen. So that record is a bit of a happy
accident. It sounds much softer and nicer than I wanted it to.
And every time I think about that record, I'm very relieved because it's
perfect the way it is. It shouldn't be any other way. So thank god, I didn't
know how to make things sound angrier or more distorted. You know, such as the
more noisy sounds I did later.
If we talk about labels, was it Earache records back
then?
Yes, I could say a lot of rather negative things about them,
but I'm just not going to waste my time. I mean, the one good thing that they
did was that they did manage to bring more acts out of the underground. You
know, bringing bands in the music business, so to speak, I went from doing
interviews to underground mags to talking to Kerrang and Metal Hammer. I mean,
I was in the media all the time, I got a lot of coverage.
Yes, I remember a cover story that must have been Orkus magazine, that must have been at least 20 years ago.
Yes, I've been on the cover one it once or twice there. And
you know, both Sonic Seducer and Orkus have always been pretty good to me. And
every time I've done something new, they've always been interested in writing
about it. So they're good guys, you know? But the thing about the promotion of
"The smell of rain" has been, that Earache only ran the campaigns for
a couple of weeks and then they were done. Normally, when you see that the
album sells, you kick into high gear and you do more promo and you keep pushing
it aggressively, like "Let's fucking continue this fucking promo
machine", you know? But they never put up a lot of money for it. Which is
a mystery to me, and I remember when "The smell of rain" came out,
they refused to put out a single. And that's the most popular song on the album
by far, and even to this day, that's the most streamed song I have on Spotify,
for example. So they never wanted to put it out as a single, which was fucking
weird. I really had to fight to get them to make a video. And they finally
relented and said some thing like "Okay, we'll make a video, here's a
couple of dollars to do it". And when we released this video, my UK sales
have doubled if not quadrupled from this video alone, so these fuckers didn't
want to listen to me, but I have some pretty good instincts. Later they
admitted to me that I was right, that they should have made this single and
that would have probably increased sales by quite a lot. But on the next record
they made two singles.
When you talked about people with a Chemical Brothers
shirt standing next to someone with a Darkthrone shirt at your concerts, I
couldn't help but think of Moby.
Yes, maybe.
---------------------------------------------------------------
"I remember I was talking to a producer once that
knew Moby, a guy who lives in New York, and Moby had played him the tape of
"Play" before it was released. He said the music is fantastic, but
nobody's going to buy it know, but in reality it sold without end and
made Moby a star."
---------------------------------------------------------------
Moby has and probably always had a stylistically broad audience.
He started out in punk bands, made hard techno and then again the things with
which he became famous. I think such a stylistically broad audience also
influences the artist in the sense of creative fertilization.
Yes, I thought it was a pleasure, I liked seeing these
really diverse T-shirts out there. You know, there's Moby, started with making
punk music and then got fans of that and then he got into like, you know,
techno and which, honestly, is sometimes pretty fast and hard.
And also there's an element there that you can actually relate to if you're
into fast and hard music, which can often be punk or heavy metal so I've seen a
lot of metal guys listen to techno. I think it's because there are certain
parallels to the sort of energy of techno and the energy of heavy metal, even
though I think both those genres pretend to hate each other. I don't think it's
always necessarily true. Punk is the same thing as it is with industrial. It
has a lot in common, especially that sort of raw, angry energy, so that's
awesome. I got to know Moby musically through the "Play"- album like
everybody else, because obviously he sold like a fucking billion copies of it.
And it's a great record, but it's not just a commercial album. I remember I was
talking to a producer once that knew Moby, a guy who lives in New York, and
Moby had played him the tape of "Play" before it was released. He
said the music is fantastic, but nobody's going to buy it know, but
in reality it sold without end and made Moby a star.
Haha, grandiose miscalculation. Just like someone once
claimed that no one would need computers.
Exactly, it turns out everybody needs such a machine.
Yes, there are some historical errors. Here in Germany, a well-known politician once said that people will always have a lot of children. And nowadays, a woman in this country has an average of 1.4 children.
I have two kids. But I refuse to have more. We were talking
about three. When we got our second, we were like, no,
we're not having more kids. Kids are insane, really. They
don't grow up until they're fucking 30, man. I mean, you know,
you think they're 20, they're still kids. I mean, oh god, I love them, but
they're fuckin out.
How old are your kids?
They're 10 and 13 years old.
I have an 11-year-old daughter. When I look at her
childhood and mine, I honestly have to say that I'm glad I had a childhood
without cell phones and the internet. Back then we used to spend hours in the
forest, building huts, playing soccer or riding bikes. Today, too much of the
kids' activity is internet-based. Unfortunately, even if you wanted to, you
can't take the smartphone away from children, because they use it to organize
all their social contacts, including personal meetings. If you take away a
child's smartphone, he or she automatically becomes an outsider.
Yes, they even communicate through games because it's all
interactive. They have their friends playing the same game, so they communicate
that way. And WhatsApp, and all that stuff, right? I mean, that's their whole
social life outside of school. I mean, it appears to happen through various
sort of, you know, interactive media, which sounds positive, but at the same
time, I would say, get out there and fucking take a look at the sun.
I think it changes a lot for the negative, just in terms of changing attention spans. As a pedagogue, I used to work with young people, and many of them can't concentrate on one thing for more than a few minutes at a time.
But it's weird, that social media is more exciting than the
real world. The real world has become boring. But looking at photos of it and
videos of the same world through a small screen appears to be a lot more
important. That's crazy!
The most frightening thing I saw was when young people
who obviously belonged together as a group met in a pub, but no longer talked
to each other. Instead, everyone just looked at their smartphones all the time.
The funny thing is, you go to a pub and all you do is stare
into a screen. You know you're in a pub. It's short for public house. Yeah, for
the public, you know, to interact, presumably. It's everything's just fucking
falling apart, man.
We will see how it will affect the psyche and the whole
life of the generations growing up now, but I do not fear anything good.
Who knows, man.
Copyrights:
first picture from top: Soile Siirtola
second picture from top: Ekaterina Gorbacheva
---------------------------------------------------------------
You can read Part II of this in-depth interview HERE. In this part of the interview among other things we talk about connections to Björk, about Abba, Bathory and Swedish hardcore.