Provokátor: Where did the concept come from to make the band accessible to people?

Alex Hacke [of Einstürzende Neubauten]: After we celebrated our 20th anniversary and the longest tour in our career up till then, we decided that we had done [almost] everything we wanted to do. Then we met a lady in San Francisco who presented to us the idea of utilizing the Internet to get our stuff directly to the people who love it without the mediator of the record industry in between. Why not try to actually try to produce a record with the money of the end consumer, in exchange giving them something like intimacy and bringing them a couple of steps [closer] towards us? They can watch us while we work on the record. They can interact and talk to us about what we do. Most importantly they can communicate amongst each other. This was an experiment that we started with the first phase in 2002. … Currently we’re working on the third phase of this project. It was like a test balloon—we didn’t know whether we’d get enough creativity to come up with a record. We didn’t know whether we would get enough people to support us, in order to financially produce the project. As it turned out, we did get enough people and we got together a pretty potent community, not your average rock chicks and rock dudes.

Danielle de Picciott: o:In this, the listening phase, which has been going on since February, the new goal is to do two records, one exclusively for the supporters and one public one, which they will advertise and distribute also on their own. With this phase it’s the mechanism of financing yourself through the Internet, in a way so you can do it with the open market, without a record company.

A: When we started, our contract had just run out, and we didn’t have any obligations to make any further records—it was either quitting because it would have made a nice clean [break] or starting something new.

P: Was it suddenly “Oh my god we’re free, what do we do”?

A: Now we have an entirely different responsibility, because, if you work for the record industry, you receive their advances and spend them and then take your time doing the record.

P: It forces you to be truer to your project and art.

A: You cannot postpone decisions forever like you would do on a regular recording.

P:You’ve got a little screen where you see [Neubauten] working, and a chat room, so you can comment live—it’s very immediate.

A: [Supporters] help in the sense that you are likely to scrap stuff that you have been working on for just a few days too long, but if you have a couple hundred people watching you, shouting out, “No! Keep that!” We ask why, we think about it, and decide ‘yeah, maybe you’re right.’ They do actually have an impact on what we do, though it’s not a democracy. We have the last say.

P: You’ve created this community of intimacy and constructive criticism through wires and electronics.

A: Or wireless.

D: After watching technology or computers a long time or Internet for the last ten years, there is a sudden kind of understanding of what this can be used for in general. When Neubauten.org started, they were basically the first to use it in such an effective way, from wires into a live aspect, especially because they use instruments—they’re not an electronic band. Now we’re starting to hear of different things: in the film Sounds of Silence, they were saying that in Iran the musicians cannot perform live because it’s so difficult and that they had the idea of organizing a Internet music festival, which is a fantastic idea. If a state, some kind of political form, is trying to keep you from doing it, use Internet.

P: Who are the heroes that might have inspired the idea before you had it or that you’re learning from?

A: There’s many so-called magical concepts of reality right now, means of information; that’s one thing. The whole Burroughs, cutup electronical revolution kind of ideas have come to be a reality, but also I think some of the things we’re doing today are what we read about in the late ’70s, early ’80s: “This is interesting—this is how something could work out ...” Now it actually does.

D: Everyone that’s questioned things, destroyed them and started anew.

P: Do you see anyone that might be on the verge of a pioneering breakthrough?

A: The most interesting developments recently were done by misusing or finding a new use for technology. Like the whole techno movement. It started out with drum machines and sequencers that were originally built for classical musicians and guitar players for accompaniment; musicians bought them, couldn’t really do anything with them and pawned them. Then the kids bought them in the pawn shops and created a whole new branch of music with those machines intended and designed for someone else [and another purpose]. That actually is the way to go, to be alert and aware of what is going on around you and finding ways to hijack these concepts and “misuse” them to benefit from them.

D: There is a new art direction which I think is going to be immense in the next couple of years. It’s this kind of a movement called pop surrealism, or lowbrow art: artists that look at what’s going on around them—comic, skate, kitsch—and made it into this new kind of art form, which has had a pretty hard time being accepted. ... I’ve been waiting for it for years in the art world.

The Mountains of Madness DVD with the Tiger Lillies is distributed worldwide, along with the documentary On Tour With Neubauten.org and the new Neubauten concert documentary.

More information available at www.danielledepicciotto.de, www.hacke.org, and www.neubauten.org

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