Dizzy Storm

felix kubin interview ok, so we (well its ALL the work of Dr Alun Hughes really, thanks alun!!) asked FELIX KUBIN some interview questions which will be featured in the next SNAFU MAGAZINE...but thought id give you a sneak preview so you can see into the crazy world of this mans head!! Tetchy Teenage Tapes compiles your youthful material from the early 80s, an exciting time for German music with the Geniale Dilettanten movement spawning Einsturzende Neubauten and the New German Wave giving the world the likes of DAF. Were you aware of these movements at the time, or did your influences come from other sources? My influences came from there, but also from avantgarde 20th century classical music (Bartok, Strawinsky, Ligeti, Stockhausen, Sun Ra, Ives, Varse (he's a genius), Alvin Lucier, Jani Christou), and of course inventors like Raymond Scott, film music composers like Krzysztof Komeda, Morricone, and lots of less known people. And then a lot of noise/industrial culture. Everyone I know has a certain time in his life that was particularly enhancing one's energy, opening the angle of the camera, also films have very much influenced me and radio plays (Hoerspiel in Germany, very strong culture). When I talk about the period of 1979-83 I always describe it as the big German fever, something very special, and I am not the only one who says that. It died very soon, maybe that was necessary. Beauty and decay are sisters. I constantly develop and widen my senses, I cannot say that I am stuck anywhere, I am not nostalgic, I am just a full-blood musician and author and need to go on and do things. It's a curse. Recently, I like spoken word/poetry combined with sound a lot, I think, one of my next records will be something like that. I also compose more and more for a chamber orchestra, that's a complete different approach, I even write scores, notes. And the audience is completely different. Youre often described as a proponent of Dada-electronics, which suggests an anti-art stance perhaps reflected by your I Hate Art Galleries release. Does this reflect how you see the current state of electronic music? Every movement has some roots in archetypes and such is the movement of Dada. You can also find it with people like Francois Villon, you can find it in punk, German New Wave, Sun Ra is a dadaist for me, as well. That's just a word of describing a period in Germany that I love, before the war, before the loss of humour and humanity, a wild time with even heathen energy, sarcastic and anti-establishment. I am not against art, I love art. I am against shallowness, pettiness (pettiness? the opposite of generosity), culturally supported wanking (not against wanking in general if it happens in erotic lucidity like in Emanuelle Arsans books, triangular love me you it). I haven't lived at the time of Dada, so I cannot say anything about it. I use the word as a reference because people need references, in general I am free and alone (lonely) with my thoughts, aesthetics, even opinions. What contemporary artists and musicians would you rate as being good? Too many to mention. Such questions always aim at the idea of the Olymp, who is the best, who gets prices and fundings...I think a cultural climate, a certain creative atmosphere or community is more important. I mostly like the works of me befriended artists, like David Fenech, Mariola Brillowska (she's a brilliant writer who never put out a book), Daniel Padden, Mika Vainio, Dennis Tyfus, Ergo Phizmiz, Andi Diefenbach, Brezel Goering, Wolfgang Mueller, Asmus Tietchens, Jessica Rylan, well this list could go on....I am happy to live in my time, I find it very complex and versatile. I appreciate the fact that lots of artists don't think about career so much but regard their independence most mportant. This is a big difference to the past. Klangkrieg [one of Felixs other projects] uses many unconventional means of producing music and challenging your audience by surrounding them in the action. Where did this desire to immerse people in music come from, and how do you achieve it? Back then: by micrological movements, literally millimeters of turning knobs and changing parameters, and also: space. This is still important for me. The (re)definition of space carries a lot of potential to suck the audience into another "dimension" or perception. When I play my "pop" concerts (which are rather conceptual concerts using pop as a canvas), I interfere with the audience, their reactions, the room, the expectations. Still, I am not a happening artist or free improviser. Although, in some moments I happened to improvise texts from scratch, like recently at a gig in Vienna where I improvised an hommage to the inventor of the Nanoloop Gameboy programme. Oliver Wittchow, the inventor who is also from hamburg, came to me and said it was like a Paul Celan poem. He was frightened. To answer your question: I think I can immerse people because I am always immersed myself, at least when it's a good constellation of surroundings, things, light, energy. At best, I don't play music, I become music. I cannot act. You have to compare it to hysteria. Youve recently released a soundtrack to House of National Dog, a play that focuses on one girls sexual encounter with a dog in a land where adults place their affection on pets, not children. How did this collaboration with avant-garde director Mariola Brillowska come about? She is my girlfriend. I didn't like the idea to make something about dogs in the beginning because I am not interested in dogs, at all. But her texts and topics were so ambivalent and funny and sick that I was willing to work with them. At the theatre play there were some real dogs, small and loud, with very high frequency voices. They were barking all the time and arbitrarily. That was wonderful because it disturbed the actions of the actors, their monologues. In the track "Wenn Dein Hund stirbt" you can hear them barking into my drum recordings. Theres a thick vein of abstract humour that runs through all your music, and your live shows are energetic affairs that switch manically around between ideas and sounds. What do you hope people come away from your shows feeling? I don't expect anything from people apart from not being pure consuments. If I feel like a TV programme or totally exchangeable I stop the concert. This happens rarely but it does. I am happy about any (mis)interpretation of my art that is different than I see it. Actually, the complete enigma or power of an artwork only comes to existence in between the stage (or the artwork) and the audience. I like to play on a stage close to the audience. That inspires me. The best concerts were the creative ones. Where something went wrong and turned into a new quality. Or where people invented things during the concert. I like to give people a positive feeling about noise. Having tackled soundtracks from everything from stage-plays to zoetrope films, what other projects would you like to do to bring together music and visual arts? I would like to make a concert with stuntmen and a foley artist. I recently also made a piece for dance/performance in Vienna. I'd like to explore that a bit more, too. Yuri Gagarin is obviously a hero of yours, and given the sci-fi elements of your music is it a fair assumption that space holds a big fascination for you? Did you dream of being an astronaut as a child? Would you pay to be a space tourist? Yes and yes. I rather dreamt about becoming an astronomist. I was interested in black holes at the age of 9. What I like about Yuri Gagarin, though, is the fact that he took an enormous risk in order to catapult himself out of earth's gravitation. His trip could have ended few second after the start. I like his pioneer work and just imagine that he never returned to earth but started broadcasting radio programmes from up there. The image of space is but an image of mental independence for me. Rather abstract than sort of future stone-age romance. Do you really have a pet axolotl? Would you be disappointed if it matured into a salamander? You are pretty well informed. Yes, I lived together with a "punk legend" in Hamburg. He had some Axolotls. Amazing beautigul animals. Of course I'd be disappointed if they turned into slamanders. I am glad I didn't witness anything like that.

sorry peeps there was a mistake on the page that said the desalvo track wasnt released until may 2008 therefore not available to download...but its all sorted now Dizzy Storm @ Indiestore clickety click to listen and download!

c'mon...the 3 tracks are only about the same price as one drink!

for those who dont have a vinyl player but still want to own the split 7" tracks GET BLACK/SIDE EFFECT/25 SECONDS OF POSITIVE well now you can available now at indiestore Dizzy Storm @ Indiestore and soon to be available on itunes, and a bunch of others courtesy of EMUBANDS

woulda been good if it'd landed on Enablers date hmm

so...FELIX KUBIN will be appearing at SNAFU as part of the DIRTY HEARTS CLUB clubnight THURS 20TH MARCH more details to follow.........

OK!! so..... how big is your flat? and do you have a PA?!

my favourite clip of his live show..so far!

..and now for something completely different..... FELIX KUBIN, messenger of exploding lungs, lives and works against gravitation. His activities comprise futurist pop, electroacoustic and chamber orchestra music, radio plays, performance projects, lectures, curator activities and his own record label Gagarin Records. At the age of 12 he started composing electronic 4-track music of which a selection has been released on Dat Politics' label SKIPP, on A-Musik and Was Soll Das? Schallplatten. Since 10 years he played on plenty of festivals for electronic music, among them Sonar, Mutek, Ars Electronica, ISEA and Wien Modern. His vast artistic output has been published on vinyl, CD and film, in books and magazines. Other groups he was/is involved with include the contemporary ensemble Integrales, the noise project Klangkrieg, the communist singing group Liedertafel Margot Honecker and the tetchy teenage bands Die Egozentrischen 2 and x2. "Felix Kubin is a Devil in Gods clothes. If there'd be one man to send to the aliens as an example of the mankind, that'd be Felix Kubin. (Aavikko, Finnland) "Noise, rhythm, melody and madness (These Records, UK) "Hamburg's purveyor of dadatronic experimentalist pop music" (RadioCBC, Brave New Waves) "Felix is a man - a former 13 and a half year-old genius - with excellent taste and a dry, quirky sensibility." (Momus) links upon links upon lots of info... FELIX KUBIN MySpace.com - Felix Kubin - DE - Electroacoustic / Psychobilly - www.myspace.com/fkubin GAGARIN RECORDS VENUE and all other details still to be confirmed...keep checking back!

clockcleaner.....ooooh yeah MySpace.com - CLOCKCLEANER - Big America, US - Visual / Gothic / Comedy - www.myspace.com/clockcleaner

no way hehehe....

thanks Adie hmm there's a slight hint of The Buggles there in the Dust demo! (for those old enough to remember or who can spot what i mean!) hehe sharon

i was sick of that 'simple kid' thread being top of the forum so im just bumping this! in fact its the next show im involved in as it happens....so far

would it be possible for you guys to post a bit more info on the bands? at least a myspace/website link would be handy for quick listens or more info on whats coming up

is it BYOB like it used to be?

you're quick of the mark you...i was just gonna post that! yeah small mention of aberdeen...ive really liked watching the tour diaries

just noticed its the only gig on the calender for tonight o_O yep ZZ shall rock....pity im feeling really ill, who fed me razorblades whilst i was sleeping?! ...i'll be there (obviously) in body...dunno bout (my xmas) spirit tho!

tour been getting good feedback so far....looking forward to aberdeen show....think a few drinkies in order to disguise the fact ive got a hella' cold...sniff sniff

yep they will be playing at midnight....and yep they do remind me of Zombi also! dont know about the 'who got there first' with the name and all that though

everyone should go to their myspace and check out every single track...amazing...THEN you should track down END NOTE and buy either on vinyl at www.midmarchrrecords.com or on cd at N E U R O T R E C O R D I N G S along with the newest album Output Negative Space also i hear they're doing a split with a liverpool band i know called Red Panda which should be cool...more details to follow!

http://www.aberdeen-music.com/forums/dizzy-storm/46913-enablers-neurot-recordings-%40-tunnels.html#post638692

a while away but thought we'd get the word out on this show early...an amazing band! this is a DiZZY SToRM / perfucked joint promotion ENABLERS. Those cunning, compulsive and malevolent compatriots we eagerly allow to drag us along to our willful destruction. Those little demons that flutter in our ears encouraging us to do what we know best not to do. Fitting to its name, the San Francisco quartet Enablers writes songs that are equally manipulative and encouraging to our darkest desires. The band made up of journeyman veterans of Swans, Tarnation, Nice Strong Arm and Toiling Midgets merges dramatic and flowing melodic soundscapes of which SF Gate calls "possibly the world's best power trio" with the visceral spoken narratives of underground literaryveteran Pete Simonelli. It's almost as though the band's fluid and often soothing music exists to distract our better instincts while Simonelli whispers above it all, urging and lulling us into the dark, decrepit world of his words. Guitarist and recording engineer Joe Goldring has collaborated with Swans, Toiling Midgets, and Doug Scharin of June of 44 under the moniker Out in Worship, as well as with Neurosis Steve Von Tills solo projects. Guitarist/bassist Kevin Thomson, veteran of Timco and Nice Strong Arm, has been playing and touring for twenty years and with his own projects and has been a writing partner with Goldring for ten of those years collaborating on Morning Champ, Touched by a Janitor, and now Enablers. Drummer Yuma Joe Byrnes has lent his unique take on the trapset to Tarnation, Broken Horse and others. Pete Simonelli has been continually writing and publishing his efforts in underground literary journals for years and now brings his poems to the table for Enablers. Output Negative Space picks up where Enablers' previous Neurot Recordings album End Note left off, adding more soaring melody to the sometimes parched and brittle, sometimes coiling and steeped in tension. It's musically reminiscent of the dynamics of Slint and the raw neo-beat intellect of Saccharine Trust. And, above it all, Enablers make music that exists in a realm beyond the typical sing-song gestures of traditional tunes. It's something altogether as powerful and motivating as our own psyche. check them out further at the following links.... MySpace.com - enablers - SAN FRANCISCO, California - 2-step - www.myspace.com/enablers N E U R O T R E C O R D I N G S everyone i know who has seen this band/put them on, has been blown away by them...become infatuated...become their new favourite band...so we cant wait to host them here! TUESDAY 18TH MARCH 2008 @ THE TUNNELS SUPPORTS ETC STBC

he liked 'the way they stood' graeme did yep, was it because of their Jools Holland appearance, or their (apparant, i didnt know this) lots of Radio 1 airplay, that all those 400+ punters came along? good on Foals for getting that exposure, its how bands 'get big' i suppose...and yes im guessing there were a lot of people there who havent even heard of abdn music

late response from me on this...been busy busy since monday night o_O YES! great show....olafur and band didnt disappoint, didnt think for a minute they would anyway.... lovely lovely lovely is all i can say. thanks to those that came and checked them out, they loved the show, everything was perfect, the setting, the sound, and im assured they'll come back again....as will more ERASED TAPES bands hopefully now, attentions to ZOMBIE ZOMBIE monday night!!!!!!!!!

i know its a monday night n all, and they wont be on till midnight but anyone thats on the go/out on a works/uni xmas night out then you'd be a fool not to pop along and catch the mighty Zombie-Zombie ...also, monday 17th is the launch night of the new Snafu Magazine which will be happening from 8 onwards in the club, and features an interview with ZZ themselves...those of you lucky enough to have an invitation will, in addition to complimentary drinks, get free entry to Electrique Boutique thus able to catch Zombie-Zombie...woop....in fact i *may* be able to get my hands on a couple invitations if anyone's interested contact me if you're interested and i'll see what i can do