Inter*face

Description

Although "Inter*Face" wasn't a typical 80's record of mine you can notice in what era it was made. The tracks really do not sound like what the press called the "Berliner Schule". By the way, we musicians never used this term, we all just happened to live in Berlin -- myself, Ash Ra Tempel and Tangerine Dream. The Simmons drums by Ulli Schober were pretty new at the time. They weren't digital drums but I have alienated them in a way that they sounded slightly digital. The analogue sound was "forbidden" for a while during the early Eighties, and therefore, it was "forbidden" for me to sound analogue. I had already recorded a piece entitled "Death Of An Analogue" on "Dig It" [1980, No. 13 in this edition] because I didn't like the analogue sounds any more. I had exclusively worked with analogue gear for over a decade and I couldn't stand those floating oscillators, that out-of-tune sound and all the whining anymore! Today people consider that sound to be beautiful but in the 80's it was a pain in the ass. In contrast to many people who found the digital sound cold, I found it more interesting than the rumbling analogue sound just because of its clear transparency. You can use both sounds together wonderfully. Percussionist Ulli Schober lived here near the town of Celle. Ulli could also play percussively and that was exactly what I wanted on "Inter*Face". UIli came into the studio and played the fills with the Simmons drums. We met several times afterwards but we later lost touch with each other somehow. The bonus tracks "The Real Colours In The Darkness" and "Nichtarische Arie" are pretty different. The first one is very quiet, the second is pretty rhythmical because of the percussion and there are also vocals. The vocalist, incidentally, was Rainer Bloss. His primary instrument was piano but he could also sing and play the bass, and he was a qualified composer. He was educated in classical music in the former GDR. In the GDR there were the national A, B and C certificates which decided how you were classified as a musician. With the A certificate you were a hobby musician and were allowed to play at private parties, with the B certificate you were allowed to perform in small bars, but only with the C certificate were you entitled to officially call yourself a "musician" and perform in public. In that sense Bloss was a state-certified professional musician, which I noticed when working with him. When you told him to play this or sing that he could do everything! It's a pity that you don't hear anything from him anymore.