Alternative Band Bios

In Strict Confidence

Loca­tion: Höchst

For­mer name: Seal of Secrecy

Debut label: Zoth Ommog

Mem­bers:
Den­nis Oster­mann (song­writ­ing, lyrics)
Jörg Schelte (song­writ­ing, pro­gram­ing)
Ste­fan Ves­per  (rythms, pro­gram­ing, drums)
Antje Schulz (vocals, lyrics)
Heidi Pulkki­nen (Live Guitars)

Label: Minuswelt Musikfabrik

Side projects:
Con­trolled Fusion (Den­nis Oster­mann with Stef­fan Schuhrke)
Involve­ment in HMB (Den­nis Oster­mann col­lab­o­rates with Daniel Myer, Vic­to­ria Lloyd from Claire Voy­ant, Vanessa Brigs from Hau­jobb)
Steve Dragon — solo project of Ste­fan Vesper

Spe­cial info:
– In “Spread your wings”, ISC uses at least 16 dif­fer­ent voices that recite in as many lan­guages the phrase: “we are angels with only one wing, in order to fly we must hold each other”, belong­ing to the Ital­ian author Luciano de Crescendo.
– The picture-series in the “Holy” — art­work were dis­puted by some con­ser­v­a­tive groups in the US, some dis­trib­u­tors want­ing not to sell the “Holy”- album because of the bare breast on the front cover. The request to design a more neu­tral ver­sion of the art­work was strictly refused by the band.

Quotes:
– “Peo­ple in the time of more and more indus­tri­al­iza­tion are less and less recep­tive to art. There is a grow­ing cold­ness and a grow­ing num­ber of peo­ple can­not see the worth of art and cre­ativ­ity com­pared to pro­duc­tiv­ity. That is sad.“
– “Nicht denken — fühlen!” ( Don’t think — Feel! )

Das Ich

Loca­tion: Bavaria

Mem­bers:
Bruno Kramm
Ste­fan Ackermann

Bruno Kramm is founder of the Ger­man goth club Gen­er­a­tion Gothic
Har­mo­nia Mundi is a doc­u­men­tary project fea­tur­ing CD com­pi­la­tions and the ongo­ing mak­ing of a full fea­ture film about the world gothic scene; it fea­tures the gothic and alter­na­tive under­ground from coun­tries that are not on the map of inter­na­tional under­ground scenes.

Label:
Danse Macabre Records

Side projects (of Bruno Kramm):
Angst­Fab­riC
Alva Novalis
Coeur — solo album

Inspi­ra­tion: Ben Got­tfried, George Trakl, Baudelaire.

Info:
– Das Ich pre­sented a lyri­cal approach to their art through the acclaimed album Morgue, fea­tur­ing tracks set to the poems of the famous Ger­man expres­sion­ist writer Got­tfried Benn. This diverse approach brought them recog­ni­tion from cul­tural insti­tu­tions across Europe. Das Ich became a vehi­cle for stu­dents learn­ing the Ger­man lan­guage.
– They pro­duced a re-mix album, Re_Laborat, fea­tur­ing tracks span­ning over over their nearly 10-year career. Each incan­ta­tion is re-mixed by inno­vated bands such as And One, Funker Vogt, In Strict Con­fi­dence, :wump­s­cut and VNV Nation
– They made the music for the Ger­man movie “Das Ewige Licht”,

Spe­cial info:
– The name Das Ich is a ref­er­ence to Freudian psy­chol­ogy — the fight of the pri­mal, uncon­scious Es (Id) against the moral, con­scious Ich (Ego).
– Das Ich are one of the founders of the early 1990s move­ment called Neue Deutsche Todeskunst (New Ger­man Death Art). They are cel­e­brated as the start­ing spark of a new post Kraftwerk, post Neubauten era.
– The video Rean­i­mat  was directed by Hans Hel­mut Hässler (from Das Ewige Licht), an under­ground Ger­man movie “about the iso­la­tion in the times when Berlin was caged within the East Ger­man com­mu­nis­tic zone , and the remark­able change and growth of the two Ger­man states.”(S.A.). “This process from iso­la­tion to open free­dom is drawn from the per­spec­tive of one soul. Like one par­ti­cle in the quan­tum of physics and how it can affect the whole pic­ture, which is the sur­round­ing vis­i­ble world.”(B.K.)

Quotes:
– “Today, every­body is in a posi­tion of ego­cen­tric super-individualism. At the same time we lose our­selves in dig­i­tal net­works, we start to shiver from our aban­doned and lonely soli­tary state from which we can see this as a result of our mod­ern lives. The net­works that social sys­tems — we are not talk­ing about insur­ance — can offer are much stronger and can give us back some of the warmth we need. We have to under­stand our­selves as beings that are woven into this cur­rent time/space con­tin­uum for the min­i­mal time period of a nor­mal life span. This makes us all one fam­ily which is lost on this lit­tle time frame in the ocean of pos­si­bil­i­ties. Why not help each other together? Tomor­row we are all — one ear­lier, one a lit­tle later — dead, and a new con­tin­uum starts with­out our­selves instead with the holy indi­vid­u­al­ism of our super­nat­ural ‘Ich’s.“
– “The ‘epic’ role, in the Brecht­ian sense, is that the art is con­sid­ered to be like a weapon for open­ing the mind’s eyes (espe­cially in the regards to the soci­ety in which we live)“
– (on industrial/goth growth through years) “I think we are still not real­iz­ing that this scene will be one of history’s most remark­able gen­res that cares about more than just fash­ion or music — It is a lifestyle that con­nects and grows in all nations, sys­tems, and ages. It is so won­der­ful to be a small part of it. It feels home wher­ever you go in the world“
– “In the begin­ning you always have these big goals but then you find that the biggest chal­lenge is always hid­den beneath your own con­scious.”

Diary of Dreams

Loca­tion: Germany

Mem­bers:
Adrian Hates
Gaun:A
D.N.S.
Tor­ben Wendt

Label: Acces­sion Records

Side projects:
Stoned Ages (Gaun:A)
Dio­rama (Tor­ben Wendt pro­duced by Hates)

Inspi­ra­tion:
– Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre and German/Austrian 1909–1935 expres­sion­ists such as George Trakl
– “das rauschen in meinem kopf“
– “Lit­er­a­ture, movies, art, noise, silence and dreams and any­thing else that is strong enough to leave an impact on us.”

Info:
– The lead singer and found­ing mem­ber Adrian Hates has pro­duced most of the albums by him­self or with min­i­mal help from oth­ers. He rarely uses a full band, except when he is on tour. Nowa­days, he works with  Gaun:A on the whole theme and musi­cal pro­duc­tion together.
– A.H. grew up only with clas­si­cal music. The main com­posers influ­enc­ing  him  are Mozart, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky and Bach -  prob­a­bly his favourite. Today he is also impressed by sound­track compositions.

Spe­cial info:
– Adrian Hates was orig­i­nally a clas­si­cally trained gui­tarist and pianist, and sub­se­quently bassist of Gar­den of Delight. His biggest dream at the age of 8–9 years was to be a drum­mer.
– A.H. never remixes other group’s songs and doesn’t like much either to be remixed, allow­ing just cover ver­sions at times, but not often
– A.H. biggest dream when very young was to work with dogs. He is a great ani­mal lover.

Quotes:
– “Man believes what he sees and what he can not see fright­ens him“
– (On steal­ing music over the inter­net) “I think peo­ple are steal­ing my exis­tence, they’re steal­ing my basis and they’re steal­ing my future. And they do this to every­body, so I don’t know how this is sup­posed to com­pen­sate at some point, I don’t know what is going to come up that will bring us the money that we use dur­ing the cds“
– “(A.H. on the def­i­n­i­tion of his music:) “I don’t give it a name, if I don’t really have to, because there is no use in build­ing walls of lim­i­ta­tion for some­thing that can only sur­vive in free­dom. Any­way I pre­fer it if every sin­gle per­son has a name for it rather than hav­ing a mass def­i­n­i­tion with only a lit­tle per­cent­age of peo­ple being able to iden­tify with it“
– “I invest a lot of thoughts in human species and the way peo­ple think and peo­ple observe their envi­ron­ment. I just thought that is very remark­able, that we always try to under­stand every­thing, to give every­thing a name and write it all down. I think the human species lacks a lot of sen­si­tiv­ity, and a lot of capa­bil­ity to really enjoy what they see because they have to observe it and they have to cat­e­go­rize every­thing. Why in the world we have to do this, why we have to know what hap­pens after death, why is it inter­est­ing at all, I mean why to think of death while we live? We can’t change it any­way and even if we know what hap­pens we will not be able to change it so why not leave the unknown unknown and why not leave the other plan­ets out there alone because we fucked up this planet already so why we should ruin another one? We should just leave the things the way they are and not inter­fere always and every­where.“
– (A.H. on the self-benefits of his musi­cal ‘psy­chi­a­try’:) “Dig­ging in the dirt isn’t always a fun thing to do, but it does help. I think it’s like explor­ing a new coun­try, a new ter­ri­tory. It’s inspir­ing even, it makes you ques­tion things, and it makes you close your eyes then open them again and see things dif­fer­ently than ear­lier. That’s def­i­nitely a ben­e­fit, it’s a bless­ing.“
– “‘No enemy of the cre­ative process is big­ger than rou­tine.“
– “The con­cept of Diary of Dreams is not to have one, which means that we’re really try­ing to be as open-minded as pos­si­ble.“
– “[..] How help­less and how strange human beings han­dle prob­lems and how much they react and how much they overreact.”

source: Sorina

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