By Sean Flinn and Casey Fitch | March 18, 1998
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| The unbearable lightness of drumming: FM Einhiet |
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Invisible Records
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FM Einheit has been hammering the collective consciousness of discriminating fans of music since 1982, when he joined the influential avant-garde, proto-industrial German group Einstürzende Neubauten. He departed the group in 1997, opting to pursue the development of his musical vocabulary through the composition of radio dramas and themed albums. His collaboration with Andreas Ammer (Odysseus7, Radio Inferno, Apocalypse Live) as well as his ingeniously crafted multi-media radio dramas (Sensation Death, Prometheus/Lear) were broadcast throughout Germany and have won several major international radio awards. Thanks to a distribution deal with Martin Atkins's Invisible Records label, they have also found a swelling audience in America.
Casey Fitch and Sean Flinn were honored to catch up with Mr. Einheit on the eve of his departure from Germany to America, where he and his four-member backup band were to join Invisible Records' "Lowest of the Low" tour. Their interview with the "engine" of Neubauten distinguished itself by being bi-lingual; Sean and Casey interviewed Mr. Einheit solely in English for 10 minutes, then switched languages, to German, for the remaining ten minutes. Casey provided English translation of the interview's German segment during its broadcast.
Sean Flinn: We wanted to start off kind of taking this interview chronologically, and ...
FM Einheit: Oh, well that takes a long time ...[laughing] How much time do you have?
[Also laughing] Well, we're shooting for about 20 minutes to half an hour, if that's OK with you. So what we figured we would do is start with some questions about Einstürzende Neubauten, if that's all right with you? I guess the first question I have is about your personal musical history, how you came to join Einstürzende Neubauten and what your role in the group was.
I started my musical whatsoever with Einstürzende Neubauten. I started to make music on a professional basis in 1980 and started in Neubauten in 1982. So my musical upcome or education or whatever you want to call it was pretty much connected to Einstürzende Neubauten.
So you were pretty much kind of a new person to music when you joined the group. You didn't have any formal training?
Yeah, of course I had experience with, like, high school bands and stuff, but I never really thought that it would be a way to express myself. So it was pretty much with Neubauten that I started, yes.
OK, and so what was your role in Neubauten?
Being a mother. [Laughter] Well, as far as us being called "mothers of invention." [More laughter] No, I was like, the rock of the band, the rock that you build everything on top of.
OK. I mean, because I've seen you with the group only in the video Halber Mensch and I haven't seen Liebeslieder or anything like that, so my point of view is pretty much of you as a percussionist in the group.
Yeah, but without a heartbeat, it's difficult to keep the body alive.
Yes, of course. I didn't mean to diminish your role ...
Well, whatever you mean, that's was what I was doing: Being the heartbeat.
And from what we can tell, have you departed from the group?
I did, yeah.
You did? When did that occur?
At the beginning of last year, I guess.
Was the split amicable? Do you still continue to collaborate with the group? Are there plans for future collaborations at all?
I still work with certain members of the band, yeah.
I guess I wanted to talk as well a little bit about the Neubauten philosophy. We've seen interviews with Blixa Bargeld, where he talks about the "Destructive Personality" in conjunction with the idea of collapsing new buildings [Einstürzende Neubauten, roughly translated], sort of making way for a new German culture.
Well, it's all quite metaphoric. I mean, I can only talk about myself, not about Blixa Bargeld. I can just say that what I'm doing is music that's my language. And I try to find my own vocabulary. In order to do that, I have to forget about different languages that have been in music before.
How has this led you to, say, the radio plays. I know a lot of the work you're doing now involves those and in America, they have pretty much been annihilated from our cultural vocabulary. We used to have a lot of radio plays and a lot of radio drama, and those have been pretty much been wiped off the face of our airwaves.
Well, of course, the most famous radio drama was "War of the Worlds." That was a pretty good thing to have done in radio. But what we actually do is, we call it radio drama because then we have a base where we can get some money to do different projects. But basically this is a real mixture between performance and radio drama and theater and just a concert. But we can use these sources to get some sort of commissioned work to do. We decide upon the things we want to do, and we have this haven in Germany where radio drama is subsidized. So it's much more than radio drama, but since radio stations pay for it, we call it radio drama. It's all done live, and it's a real mixture between different art forms, which I think is most important; to break all these boundaries between art forms, to use whatever is necessary in order to do what you want to do.
So while the audience might be hearing a radio play, do you have, when you're performing, visual things going on as well?
Yes. There's medias going on, there's live music and it's just a real mixture between different things. But since somebody has to pay for it, we call it radio drama.
So I suppose that radio drama or radio plays attract a wide audience in Germany?
Not in the way that we do when we do other things. Normally, that's really a niche for people. It doesn't have a big audience. But the way we do it, we attract a bigger audience.
I suppose it's more of an event when FM Einheit is performing a radio play ...
Yes, well, we hope so. No, but we get a good audience and we can attract different audiences which helps radio drama as well radio drama helps us to think of weird performances which wouldn't be, on the first hand, very commercial.
And how have the plays been received? I mean, I know, not just speaking of the audience, but what has been the audience's response to the dramas, to the performances, and what have been the critical responses to them as well?
We won nearly every award you can get, even the New York Gold medal for Radio Drama, a Japanese Radio Award, and then in Germany, funny enough, you have the Radio Drama Award of the War Blind. So we won the Grand Prix Italia, we won every award you can get. But it doesn't mean anything. It just means that we're trying to create a new form of doing any sort of performance, and it's called radio drama, and for radio drama, it's quite revolutionary, but well, for me it's like finding a new form of musical theater. We use the base of radio drama because we could get some money for it.
Yeah, it provides you not only with a new art form but a form of funding as well.
Yes, yes. Exactly.
So the radio plays are coming to us courtesy of Invisible Records, and that's who you're going to be touring with coming up here in a couple of weeks [on the "Lowest of the Low" tour, alongside Pigface, Not Breathing, Tribes of Neurot and others] and I was wondering how you got connected to Martin Atkins and Invisible.
Management-wise.
Just management? You never worked with Martin before on anything?
No, I never worked with him. I met him a very long time ago, in 1982 I guess, when I was performing in London, but apart from that there was not too much of a connection. But I really appreciate his effort to bring us over and play.
And you're going to be joining Pigface on stage, from what I've heard. Is that correct, or was I misled?
Oh, well, we will see. I think now it's about ten o'clock, and in about six hours I'm going on the plane, and then I will see. In the "Land of the Free," we will see what's going to happen.
Yes, I know, having seen one Pigface show that it's kind of nice because they bring a lot of talent together and everybody gets to bring their own vision to the table.
Well, I'll bring my own band and that's the first thing I'm going to do. If there's any...I don't even know who's in the band Pigface. I don't know what's going to happen. Anything can happen.
So it's kind of a giant question mark as far as the performances go. But you definitely have something that you're going to do with your own band?
Yes, thank God, I know I'm going to perform something.
OK, with that I think I'm going to turn you over to my colleague Casey Fitch and we'll be doing a language switch as well. So thank you very much.
Casey Fitch: If you need a beer or something, go ahead. Take a little break.
I'd rather have a red wine. Germans love their beer, but I like wine.
As a pseudo Californian, I enjoy a good wine. They have gotten pretty good.
I'm a bit skeptical as a European, but one hears of Californian wine.
Perhaps I can bring you a bottle in San Francisco and you can taste for yourself?
Good.
To start off, we met briefly once about two years ago. It was right after your concert with Caspar Brontzman in front of the Trocadero in San Francisco. I remember being blown away: a lot of sounds that somehow all came together and worked well. I said something stupid like neat and walked away. That was then, this is now. What can we expect this time around? Or should we expect anything ... just let ourselves be surprised?
You should always expect something. Without expectation, life would be a shame. I'm going to bring a band with me that has played before in America. I'm going to be playing a lot of new material and the performance will definitely be much different than what I was doing with Caspar. But when I perform like that, everything that goes along with such a performance has to do with friendship and the people that I work with. My work has to do with music as a language and speaking as musicians with each other along those lines. And in that sense it will be like it was with Caspar.
Is it going to be loud?
It could be damn loud, but ...
It could also be quiet?
It could also be soft.
I have heard that your last time on the road you allowed the audience to participate. Using Mozart's Kompositionspeil with 16 layers, you allowed the audience to keep the show variant each night. Do you foresee any type of active participation with the audience for the upcoming tour?
That was mostly something for Sensation Death, a fictitious TV show that became interactive. We probably really can't incorporate something like that this time around. It was based on the silliness surrounding the age of the computer using computers. We did it for that show, but we're not equipped like that this time around.
So we can't expect active participation?
That depends on the audience itself.
So if it is prepared to ...
Sure. Music is communication. When people talk with each other that way, we can't exclude it. That would be silly.
As students and Americans, we have mostly heard of you as a part of Neubauten. We know a lot about FM Einheit as the so-called "engine" of the band, but not so much about you as an individual. How would you characterize yourself as an individual, composer, or artist? Or perhaps that's impossible?
Actually that is a really complicated one. But on the other hand, it really isn't. I see Neubauten as a group of people or individuals in which each member plays very strongly for himself. And from this combination, you can sum up Neubauten. There everyone had his task. If I was the engine of the whole thing, I can't say.
I saw that on the World Wide Web and wanted to get your feedback.
I like something along the lines of heartbeat. But it's something that I can't really put into words or care to. And since I left Neubauten, I've played with others and there we have a different type of communication. Myself as a composer, I play ... about things that I have encountered in all walks of life, and it forms the inspiration for what I do. I did it with Neubauten and I am doing it now.
You were talking earlier with Sean about your own language through music. You are lookingfor it or have you found it?
That's right. I don't really think that you can say that I have found it. There are languages that I have used, but the search is a constant process. One that is always changing and needs to. That's important.
As a student of German, I have had to learn about different epochs in the history of Germanculture. In reference to that, the notion of transcendental homelessness seems to be a recurring theme... have you heard of it?
I can imagine what it means. But in America, one has a different perspective of German history than one does in Germany.
The idea is that since the end of W.W.II, there are no longer any structures on which to believe--music and culture accordingly no longer have traditional form. Applying the notion to your own composition, do you think that it exists? Or is it just our professors being pompous?
That is a very interesting question. I think Germany needs to chill out a bit. For one, German culture was extinguished after W.W.II. The big thinkers had to emmigrate or were gassed or burned... or went to Hollywood. The elites in Germany were destroyed. And then came Germany's adaptation to American culture. Since the end of the 60's have been sporadically movements to a new understanding of German culture. Excellent examples are Kraftwerk, Kern, and Faßbinder [the late filmmaker]. I think like before, there is a great understanding of German culture, but it has been shaken up. Neubauten works along those lines.
To what extent does your own music reflect such a view?
I understand myself in terms of the tradition of German culture. Because I'm not a critic of culture, it is something I can say or claim, but remains to be proven. I am not influenced by the guitar, a symbol of American culture. Jeans, rock, and guitar are all things that never really influence me.
And we see it in your music.
I don't know. I am not a critic of culture, but I am certainly not bound to any notion of culture.
With that I'll say thanks and let you go drink beer or wine or whatever. Any last comments?
FM: Well, I am always excited to see what has changed in America since I was last there.
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