{"id":36261,"date":"2021-10-04T18:01:17","date_gmt":"2021-10-04T16:01:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/elgarajedefrank.es\/?p=36261"},"modified":"2021-10-05T11:54:25","modified_gmt":"2021-10-05T09:54:25","slug":"interview-das-ding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/elgarajedefrank.es\/en\/interview-das-ding\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview: Das Ding"},"content":{"rendered":"

The resurgence of interest in 80s cassette culture has brought us a lot of incredible material and, without any doubt, the music of Das Ding is among the best. Thanks to the Minimal Wave compilation released in 2009, his music has been appreciated by a lot of new fans and since then, Danny Bosten has released a lot of very interesting material. He will be playing on the 28th of November at the Ombra Festival in Barcelona. It might be the last chance of seeing him playing live. <\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"\u2014You started your music career in a punk band called Spastix. Do you think that you have kept the punk spirit in your music? I mean you have always been very DIY and tried to keep the music as simple as possible.<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014<\/b>I would say it’s the post-punk spirit, but yes, the DIY aspect is squarely punk. Or maybe it is just a matter of practicalities we learned from the punk spirit.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014The name of your main project Das Ding means The Thing, as a reference to Christian Nyby and Howard Hawks\u2019s classic \u201cThe Thing from another world.\u201d Did you watch John Carpenter\u2019s The Thing back in the day? Do you like that remake?<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014<\/b>I was, and remain, a big SF geek, and all of Carpenter is great, also his music. I saw The Thing on German TV when I was looking for a name, and ‘Das Ding’ immediately seemed perfect. The remake is wonderful!<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014Most of your initial gear came from your brother\u2019s dismantled band. As most of the equipment were synths and sequencers, I wonder what kind of music he was making. Was your brother an influence for you? Did he help you at your beginning to use those machines?<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014<\/b>It was a Rock band (called Link<\/b><\/span>), but they experimented a bit with synths and sequencers a little at the end, just my luck! We all dabbled in music, but he is a phenomenal guitarist, and I figured out the equipment by myself.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014You have always named Fad Gadget as an influence and we, at the Garaje, don\u2019t like to miss a chance of talking about him. What do you like of him and how do you think his music has influenced your career?<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014<\/b>It was the simplicity of the songs and the clarity of expression in songs like ‘Back to Nature’, I saw him on TV and thought, ‘I could do that!’<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014What can you please tell us of the creation of<\/b> Highly Sophisticated Technological Achievement<\/i><\/b><\/span> in 1982? Why the reissue on Minimal Wave had different tracks? I mean why to keep the same name when it wasn\u2019t the same album?<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014<\/b>Nothing especially stood out when I recorded that. You just keep typing sequences into the machines until you hit a lucky combination (and add lots of delay!) I was very happy with that recording. The album was more a compilation curated by Veronica, so it was up to her. Though we did do a back and forth about what would be included.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/strong>\u2014I am really curious about your time being part of a squat. Did you actually live there or only work with them? How was the atmosphere there? Did you have any relation with punk legendary band The Ex?<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014<\/b>Yes, I was a squatter for many years. It was a bit grim at times, having to fortify your house against the police or angry homeowners who would send their hired hands to threaten you. We hung around the Emma, a legendary punk venue in Amsterdam, with the Ex and many others, like BGK and de Kift. So yes, I know all those people. Our band – The Cherry Orchard- did its last gig at a garden party annually hosted by the Ex.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014At the same time, you were part of the artist collective called \u201cSTORT.’ What kinds of events were you organizing?<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014<\/b>That was total chaos mostly, parodies of political rallies, strange installations, too much to mention. I wrote the speeches, mostly, and was involved with the sounds\/music, and the radio show we did twice a week on Patapoe and Radio 100 in Amsterdam.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014You were in different bands during this 30 years \u201chyatus\u201d until Minimal Wave released your songs. What kind of music were you doing at the time?<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014<\/b>All kinds of stuff, whatever I fancied at the time, lots of guitar music and industrial noise, and everything in between. But the emergence of a renewed Das Ding<\/b><\/span> provided a clarity of concept I found very satisfying.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014You have often called your work \u201crobot music.\u201d Is it because of the futuristic vibe of the music or do you also imply the loss of humanity in society?<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014<\/b>It’s mostly the futuristic vibe, in the sense that the machines are expressing themselves, sometimes through lucky accidents and quirks in connectivity, things like that. But it is still a human that pushes the ‘start’ button.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014In December 2007, Frans de Waard created a post about you in his No longer forgotten music blog. That was the very beginning of your comeback. Were you aware of this? According to you, is there still any artist of the time that should be rediscovered?<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014<\/b>I was not aware of the resurgence of an interest in 80s music, no. Until Veronica contacted me, I hadn’t seen the blog post before that. It just totally passed by me! Funny.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/strong>\u2014How do you approach <\/b>Why Is My Life So Boring?<\/i><\/b><\/span>, your first new album as Das Ding? Did you want to separate your modern work from what you did in the past and was being reissued at the time?<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014<\/b>Not really that different, though maybe a bit more polished. After all I had more and better equipment. Still very happy with that record, especially the last tracks of each side, these are like benchmarks to me.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014You have recorded material for important labels such as Pinkman or Mechatronica. Do you try to adjust your music according to the general style of the label or don\u2019t really care about this? Although I ask you at the end about your live in Ombra that it\u2019s going to focus on your two 12″ for Mechatronica, what can you tell us of these releases?<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014<\/b>I never took that approach, after all, they asked me, so I guess what I was doing was what they liked. There are always practical requests such as longer intro’s and outro’s for the DJs, etc., and to make the collection a unified whole as an EP, but that’s all. I’m very happy with the Mechatronica EPs, it is one of those labels that give precise and excellent feedback about your tracks and the collection.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014After <\/b>Missing Tapes<\/i><\/b><\/span>, can we expect more compilations of non-released old material?<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014<\/b>There is no more old stuff that’s worth compiling, but who knows. Maybe I’ll find an old cassette somewhere (I have a few hundred stashed away)<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014In an interview you said that you wanted to make \u201can album with songs that are completely finished, so with lyrics, verses and choruses and such.\u201d Do you still want to go in this direction? Are you planning to make a more synth pop album? Or just more pop?<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014<\/b>I’m still doing that, for Electronic Emergencies in 2022, hopefully. But maybe not all the songs will be that complete (with lyrics and stuff).<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014In Summer we made a contest to win HIV+\u2019s last album and one of the winners was Dmitry Distant, who released an album on your label, Tear Apart Tapes. It\u2019s a very small world. How do you select the artists who will appear on it? What can we expect of the future of the label?<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014<\/b>It is mostly through meeting people in real life and working from there. The label is now mostly producing eurorack modules and it’s become almost a full-time job now! Internet sales have exploded during the Covid lockdown, and I’m doing very well with that, it’s crazy. For now, I focus on that. I would like to do more records and tapes, but records are expensive and always a gamble. Cassettes not so much, of course, that’s the DIY thing.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/strong>\u2014In your second reference, a compilation called<\/b> Kalkulator<\/i><\/b><\/span>, there are bands related to Spastix but also a track by Jad Fair. Is he one of the brothers of Half Japanese? If the answer is affirmative, how did you contact him?<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014<\/b>Yes, that’s him. We just wrote to him and asked for a contribution. I still have the original cassette somewhere, Woolworths brand! (That’s an American chain of warehouses.)<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014With your more experimental AKA, Schedelvreter, you released a cassette in 1985 (reissued in 2012). What were your influences in that album? Are you finally going to release an album with new material of Schedelvreter?<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014It’s in the planning for Futura Resistenza records, some stuff already recorded. I want to make a concept album about ‘Cosmic Nihilism’!\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Schedelvreter was conceived to be a break from the \u201crigid\u201d Das Ding format, not completely pattern-based or sequenced, the synth sounds are hand-played over a collage of found sounds. At the time, I had a Crumar synth that was falling apart, and would sporadically create sounds that were like human voices. I created massive drum sounds by layering noise, using leftover four-track additions in reverse and some live drum recording courtesy of his brother\u2019s tapes. The end result feels narrative and filmic, like the sound track to an imaginary apocalyptic movie: bleak and desolate. I was heavily influenced by the bleak atmospherics of the original Frankenstein movie, and the strange, alien stories from 16th-century missionaries that went to the New World.<\/span><\/p>\n

A strange clip appeared on YouTube for one of the songs: \u201cCibola\u201d, accompanied by footage taken from a Soviet tank in\u2009\u2013\u2009I think\u2009\u2013\u2009Afghanistan, which perfectly sums up the mood:<\/span><\/p>\n