Category: Interviews

 

 

 

Please introduce yourself a bit. Where are you originally coming from (birthplace) and how did you grow up? What are your early music influences? What kind of music did you like being a teenager?

Hi Jürgen,

all my pleasure! Especially since we kinda miss out on each other way too often lately at concerts. So thanks for doing this. Appreciated a lot. I am originally from Frankfurt am Main but I grew up in a suburb of the city of Wiesbaden. Informing moments in music were the obvious. Listening to Die Toten Hosen and Die Ärzte on my Walkman while delivering local newspapers and leafleats, you know. Soon I discovered Punk and Hardcore (Dead Kennedys, The Clash, Sex Pistols, Ramones, Slime, Fugazi) and New Wave (Gang Of Four, The Cure, Killing Joke, Fad Gadget), Indie (Violent Femmes, Philipp Boa, The Smiths, Sugarcubes) and Noiserock (Pixies, Sonic Youth, Swans). A little later I added Manchester Rave (Charlatanes, Ride, Happy Mondays) and electronic music of all sorts (everything from Detroit techno to Jungle and Drum’n’Bass, from Aphex Twin to LFO) to the bill, the latter especially thanks to a superb club night at Basement in Wiesbaden called Superbleep3000. Global Sounds and Jazz came a bit later but are just as dear to me.

While I was studying, I took my first baby steps in the music business (without even realizing) by helping to put on small Indie/Punk/Hardcore-shows at Schlachthof, a converted former slaughterhouse in Wiesbaden, but also by running a fanzine and eventually helping out at the local record label Rewika Records (and soon re-founding it) with a few likeminded people from the local scene, we even did have an appartement together, “Die Rewika-WG”. Over the years I transformed the label into a PR agency. Sometimes I still can’t believe, it is up and running until today and became a real live perspective. You could say, I made my passion a profession. Which I am very grateful for to this very day.

 

 

We met first at Mute’s festival at London’s Round House in 2011 ( see here). Daniel Miller, founder of the legendary Mute Records, just got independent again and celebrated it with a weekend event inviting old and new label artists. At this time Mute also opened a new office in Berlin with Anne Haffmans (long time associate with Mute, working for Intercord for many years), Max Brudi and you being responsible for the promotion. I got the pleasure to be invited to run the social media channels like Facebook and Twitter (still doing it). Long intro – finally the questions… How did you get in contact with Mute? How did they hire you / how do you become the German promo guy for Mute? Were you familiar with their roster and music? What did you think about the label and their artists just before working for them? Did you change your mind about them over the years?

I was familiar with quite some artists of Mute’s roster from the late eighties on, having the records of Nick Cave, Depeche, Laibach, but also the not so well known stuff like Miranda Sex Garden, Fad Gadget, The Normal in my record shelf. So in that sense, it was a match made in heaven. My first coloured 12-Inch ever was actually the “Ship Of Fools”-Maxi Single of Erasure, I convinced my mother to buy for me at a local mall.

The first time, I met Anne Haffmans was when Mute was still part of the Labels/Virgin/Mute-gang situated at Leuschner Damm in Berlin. It was 2007 and I was working at a Hamburg based PR company named Affairs Of The Heart and was responsible for the campaign for LIARS LIARS LIARS-album then. A few years later, I had moved to Berlin already and had restarted Rewika Records as Rewika Promotion, I was applying for a job at Domino Records that had just opened up a Berlin office on Kopenhagener Strasse. They were looking for a new label manager and I applied, not knowing that Anne was already sitting on the other side of the table as Domino’s label manager-to-be. She was about to take on that job, but had also kept her old job as a label manager at Mute’s in the new set up with GoodToGo as their distributor after the split from EMI. Since Mute were about to share (not only Anne as their label manager but also) the office with Domino’s, she offered me to start working on the PR side at Mute’s on a freelance position instead. The rest is history. I organically blended in and find it still kinda amazing to be part of a label that has informed my musical taste since my teenage music lover’s days. What I find especially great about Mute is their democratic approach towards their artists: “There is no priority releases”, as Daniel keeps saying. And although there’s obviously priorities in terms of sales expectations and therefore budgets you could possibly spend, it is totally true in terms of support and respect for the artistic work. And a very special sense of humour that is always involved at Mute.

 

 

As mentioned before I run the socials of Mute Germany for about 12 years working close with you all the time. I have been a Mute fan for over more than 30 years so I was / am impressed being so close to the label and also Daniel Miller. Do you think a fan can be “neutral” to do this job properly? What do you think about social media appearances (changing from myspace via facebook to instagram and TikTok) as part of promotion nowadays?

I don’t think a fan can be neutral. A fan will always add a certain emotional extra to the job. For the better or worse. Only for the better of course, when it comes to you, Jürgen, literally hearing the grass grow before the word is even out on the official channels. Which I find amazing. Glad you are there, and glad you maintained your enthusiasm over all the years. It’s not the easiest thing to do, I know that.

Social media? Well. It’s a necessity (or an imperative if you will) you cannot avoid even if you wished. It’s definitely a good thing in terms of direct artist-fan communication, but it’s also a tool to reduce any complexity and artistic vision to a few digits, which is a shame. After all, it’s the platforms that win and capitalize on a ridiculous level from content you, me, the artists do deliver.

 

 

Besides being the head of promotion for Mute in Germany you run the promotion agency Rewika Promotion. Many labels & record companies closed their promo departments years ago and commission external agencies like yours. How do you get your “jobs” / “tasks”? Are you going out and asking for it? Or are the labels/artists coming to you? How is the process in this part of the industry nowadays?

I guess, I am not the best person to answer that question, I’ve been lucky enough to never really being forced to ask for a job but to get proposals, I can more or less cherry pick from, following my own tastes and interests. Of course, I am even more privileged to be working on a steady basis for Mute, but also for Staatsakt and its sublabel Fun in the church. Cherries à go go coming in from these labels per se. What comes on top in regards to artists and labels, we work for at Rewika, is a bonus, really, looking at it from any perspective.

 

 

Let’s talk a bit on Staatsakt. You just wrote a book about them. My first Staatsakt release was a former Mute act called Mediengruppe Telekommander. Do you know the release? Was there a connection between Staatsakt and Mute/Mute acts before that or at this time? I miss them in your book 🙂

I knew Mediengruppe Telekommander even before they were signed to Mute. They were putting out two 12-inches on now defunct label Enduro which I loved. I was actually booking them for a few shows at Schlachthof in Wiesbaden at the time, trying to offer them an album deal with Rewika Records which they refused. We nonethless became friends in the process.

Short after, Mute had to decide between two bands that my old friend Klemens Wiese, who worked at Mute at the time had found: It was for once Mediengruppe Telekommander but also the Indie/Dada/New-Wave/Funk-Chansonists of Die Türen. Mute eventually decided to sign Mediengruppe, Die Türen went on to invent their own label: Staatsakt. Funny, innit?

If Mute had signed Die Türen, Staatsakt most probably would have never came into being. And to add even another fun anecdote: The same year I met Klemens at Immergut Festival. Mediengruppe had just signed to Mute, Rewika Records had a few dollars to spend on a new band, so I asked whether he would have some recommendations on hot bands from Berlin. Of course, he suggested to get in contact with Die Türen, which I did. I managed to reach Maurice, the singer of the Die Türen and until this very day head of Staatsakt, on his cell. It was a Wednesday, around lunchtime and Maurice was laying at a Brandenburgian Lake. I introduced myself and my label and soon after he presented a proposal. Die Türen had already set the plan to start their own label, Staatsakt, but he was offering me to license the vinyl of their debut album while Staatsakt would keep the CD-version. It was almost an insult at that time, everybody was so much into CDs, nobody would ever buy LPs, so I turned down this offer.

So fun fact 2 is: If Maurice had agreed upon a proper deal – all formats – with Rewika Records, Staatsakt just as well wouldn’t probably exist today.

Fun fact 3: A vinyl version of the debut album of Die Türen has until today never been released.

But getting back to your questions: There’s not too many close encouters between Mute and Staatsakt apart from Mediengruppe Telekommander. Although, years later, Staatsakt released two albums of Andreas Dorau who was long before licensed to Mute, too. And Die Türen supported LIARS at one or the other show in Berlin as Die Blaumann Gruppe (German for “The Blueman Group” (sic!).

And to answer your last question: Mediengruppe Telekommander isn’t in the book, because they didn’t reply to our request in time, easy as that. No hard feelings, we just aren’t that close like we used to be.

 

 

Mentioning your book: when did you get the idea of writing a book about Staatsakt? What is your concept (having read the first chapters there are people talking about Staatsakt and the label’s history)? Was this concept your intention from the beginning or did it change during the process? How did you develop it? What was Maurice Summen, owner of the label, opinion about? Why not a book about Mute 😉

When the 20th anniversary of Staatsakt was arriving, Maurice and I were approached by our dear friends from Berlin based publishing house Verbrecher Verlag. They were asking whether we would want to write a book on the label for this anniversary. An idea, we had discussed ourselves already. It only took us a few bottles of red wine and one evening to come up with the concept of an oral history / large roundtable talk if you will. Instead of sharing our own anecdotes and opinions, we found it way more intriguing to have our artists speak in their authentic voices for a more complete few on the label. So we invented an epic questionnaire on several topics and asked pretty much the whole roster whether they wanted to participate. More than 40 artists were interested. Over the next couple of months, we collected and transcribed their takes on our questions. The rest was cut and paste and editorial work. Trying to edit and arrange a meta text of – in total – more than 2 million characters into a book that has now some 300K characters was quite a bit of work – and even more challenging: to make sense out of it and create a comprehensive read. I hope, we halfway succeeded. I would as well like to mention Maurice’s wife Gaby who helped as the photo editor.

Another book on Mute? Dennis Burmeister, Sascha Lange, over to you! 😉

 

 

You are not only a promotional guy for labels/artists and their releases but also co-owner of the concert venue Schlachthof Wiesbaden. How did it come to this? What’s your part?

I’ve been interested in music and bands and everything from pretty early on – so looking back, it seems like a logical progression to get involved with the new underground venue that opened in Wiesbaden in the 90ies. I had always been a supporter of the then formed movement for a self-governed cultural centre in Wiesbaden, a lose group of cultural heads, peace – and anti nuclear power-movement peeps, Hippies, Punks, Squatters and so on. They eventually found their place in the abandoned old slaughterhouse next to the main station in Wiesbaden. And I eventually became part of their collective.

At that time, we shared all work that needed to be done and did everything ourselves: band booking, PA-tech and lights, guarding the doors, selling drinks, organize catering and hospitality, cleaning up, doing promotion, organizing presales, parties, readings, we were deejaying, dealing with legal and business administration, and so on, you name it. Over the course of the years, the structure became more and more professional, we even opened up a bar and restaurant next to the venue and could step by step start paying loans and even employ people that weren’t necessarily part of the collective.

This year, Schlachthof Wiesbaden is celebrating its 30th anniversary, is one of the biggest concert venues in the Rhein Main area and I must say, I’m taking a bit of pride in being a part of this whole project for more than 25 years now. Of course things have changed since the 90ies, but there’s still a few of the original founders on board and we still do keep our self-organized and collective structure.

In regards to my own job, I had to let go of being in the booking team and a few other things when I moved away from Wiesbaden. Since then, I mostly work as the editor and author of all the show announcements and other texts for publication.

 

 

Running a live venue and attending a lot of concerts as label representative …. are you still enjoying going out to concerts beside your job (attending concerts without being involved in any way)? What is most important for you – a great show with lights & stuff or the music itself (also when being a label guy there)?

There’s phases, obviously. But all in all, yes, I actually do enjoy it still. Especially after the years of Covid silence. I enjoy the best possible conflation of lights, show, musical performance, the moment of epiphany, if you will, but, you know, in the end, I am all about the music really. Epiphanies are rare. Except for you are at a Swans-show.

 

 

Promotion, Venue owner… Did you ever make music yourself? If yes, what kind of music did you make? What were your experiences and the reason to stop it (as I know you don’t make music at the moment)? If not, ever thought about playing an instrument or so? Which instrument would you like to play?

Actually, I did. I had some years of guitar lessons while I was still at school. And played bass guitar with an Indierock and Singer/Songwriter band in the early 2000s. The band was called Tobacco and starred the voices of Daniel Riedl and Zac Johnson that were as well singing in then pretty popular indie bands Rekord respectively Readymade. We did two albums, “Don’t deny your weakness” (2000), and “Tobacco Saves Lives” (20024) on Rewika Records and we played all in all four headliner tours in GSA, and a couple of extra shows as the opening act of Adam Green. Fun times. It was all pre streaming, but you can nevertheless listen to Tobacco here for instance (see Spotify).

 

 

At the beginning we asked you for your teenage music. Now we would like to know your “all time” favourite tracks/releases. Please give us 10 of them with a short explanation why these ones are important for you. Additionally I would also like to know your 5 favourite Mute tracks and 5 favourites released on Staatsakt…

The living hell. I am afraid, I cannot answer this one. Top 10 tracks of all times MUST include at least 100 tracks. Same goes for the repertoires of both, Staatsakt, and Mute. So having set this disclaimer, take these (In no particular order. It could just as well be completely different ones, really):