Sielwolf


Sielwolf exist since eight years. How will you celebrate this event?

Thanks for telling us we didn't know that we are together now for eight years. We will wait for another two years to celebrate.

The experience of Peter Prochir within a free-jazz/avant garde band looks quite amazing listening to any Sielwolf release. Would it be a layer of kindness under the strong crust of chocolated nastiness?

Peter was a wild drummer at Cassiber and we both like to listen to many different kinds of music. Peter also played in a punk band in the end of the seventies and with a country and western band (this one for money).I think its a typical thing for Sielwolf to experiment with different styles, it doesnt matter what genre. There is good music in different genres and in our opinion its boring to stuck in one style. If you develope personally you will automatically change your taste of music, books, etc. The atmosphere on our albums is very simular. Most of the times quite introvert except the more aggressive parts but if you compare the past albums to the 4 and remixes you will see a big difference but still the typical Sielwolf Atmosphere which is the basic of what we are doing. By the way we are quite friendly people (not spitting around or beating up people!). We change life on stage because the Sielwolfside comes out more than.

Could your music be defined by a mixing of Einstuerzende Neubauten and KMFDM because of you have been discovered by the same agent?

It was said in a press info but we don't think so! It seems important for the promotion to compare bands or describe it as a mixture of bands but it makes you feel like you would copy these bands which isn't true. By the way we dont like the sound of KMFDM at all and we dont see any parallels to Sielwolf except that they are German too. The Neubauten have got charisma and we used to like them quite a lot in the past. I think we had a simular way of working with the lyrics, Peter uses only german and more associations with symbols instead of full sentences. The excitement that is built up in the songs sometimes is simular too in the way of changing slow quiet parts with heavy aggressive parts.

Listening to the Sielwolf's releases, one feels deep influences of the American synthcore genre as well as of inovative bands such as The Young Gods or Einstuerzende Neubauten. Is that comparison too daring to you or, on the other hand, only a very small part of the truth?

We used to be more influenced by bands like the Swans, Mark Stewart, Chrome and old avantgarde. Do you know Pierre Henry , Pendereckie, Varese for example? As I said before you can find paralleles if you want but personally it's wrong in the end because personal experiances always play a big rule. We used to be quite stimulated by a life gig of the swans in the 80s. It was very expressive and intensive, never seen something like that before or after. What I like about them is that they also change their concept all the time. Now they split up which is a shame. At the moment we are quite influenced by dark drum and bass. Its very interesting and one of the rare genre at the moment where something experimental happens.

Which were your relationships with your previous label Cashbeat when you left them for KK records?

It became to stressfull to work with A. Hilsberg but we still have some contact sometimes (phone). We left because there wasn't money to bring out albums and we had material ready that couldn't come out which is quite annoying. We still think except this that he was one of the most interesting label. KK offered us a deal to bring out our material and they seemed all right, so that's why we signed with KK.

I saw on a prime-time TV show produced by the Arte network that you were very telegenic. Do you remember this TV report on the electronic music? Which was the feedback you received after it was broadcasted?

We got a positive feedback on the television report but we were disappointed because they cut the best parts off. They were filming us two days and they were really happy about having a woman in the show and wanted to use much of what I was saying (we were talking about psychology mainly) but in the end they built up the typical structure and used one sentence of me (I can't even remember what I was saying). We kind of knew it before that they would behave like that, it happend before when we were on television, but you always hope they'll do better this time.

Using a marketing language, which has been the penetration rate of the American market by your Metastasen album? A successful operation?

We don't know it exactly how much we sell in America but Paul Van Richter is doing his best for promotion and sales.

How did Mick Harris decide to produce your 'IV' album?

We like Scorn so we got in touch with Mick and he decided to produce the 4. and the remixes of the 4 (5). We thought that he would perfectly fit with the sound of the albums. Mick Harris is very talented and into simular sounds. He exactly knew what we wanted from the beginning on we didnt have to talk much. Great experience.

Why are there almost none vocals on the 'IV' album?

The samples of Ch. Bukowskie fit to our concept of 4 and we didn't want to repeat the way we used th lyrics before again. Bukowskie just said in a few words what we wanted to say. It would have destroyed the whole album to use more than this. We wanted it very hypnotic with slow heavy rythms. Next time we will use own vocals again but again in a different way than in the past.

Sielwolf easily avoids the traps of the synthcore and indus genres. I guess you had to listen to a lot of not really 'listenable' bands to reach such a level?

We didn't really listen to a lot of bands of this genre, we prefered to listen to experimental bands of the seventies but later then bands like Chrome, TG, etc.. Maybe its this dark kind of thing that you find in some industrial type of bands that was fascinating to us but as we said before the mixture of what we listen to is important not one genre. We liked Captain Beefheart as much as Coil or new classic.

While one is expectating homogeneous releases from Sielwolf, easy to label, you seem to enjoy mixing the genres to better avoid them. Why this permanent escape towards something always different?

We like to develop our music. It expresses phases and changes of our life. We try to make music for ourselves and not to do what people expect. We cant live on our music so we have the freedom to do this and not to look if the record sells all the time, this is a big advantage of it. Thanks for your interest and sorry for the short answers, I remember that the interview wasn't that short the first time but we forgot to save it and we had to do it again and got kind of impatient about doing the interview, sorry because of that, yours Petra.


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