The Fair Sex

Interview by Anon Devi


What are your musical roots?What did you grow up listening to?

Some examples of the TFS'ler's youth heros,Myk grew up admiring the Rolling Stones . In the eighties he moved over to more sort of Sisters of Mercy like stuff. Rascal was ffond of Pink Floyd and early 80's synth underground wave things. L'o always liked the bluesy heavy rock which he was not allowed to bring into the TFS sound. Throughout the 80's,Front 242 or for example Skinny Puppy became sort of TFS favorites.

When did you start using electronics to make music.How have electronics changed the way you work.Most electronic bands are solo projects or duets but from photos I've seen you seem to have suceeded with a full band.How has this been accomplished.Have you gone through any line up changes?

So, the electronic share grew stronger in the ol' process of days passing, as you might perceive already now. It all started with Rascal bringing in a ridiculous tiny Casio synthesizer in late 1984. Then in 1986 we started using drum machines and sequencers. But on stage we used to play all the stuff live even the fast sequencer like keyboard riffs- Blonder was quite into these tricky fast playing bits in those days,until the death of A. Bang our drummer in late 1988. A. Bang was replaced by no one but by machines which made TFS even more developed into electronic fields/direction. So a natural organic band developed slowly into the electronic monster that is The Fair Sex.

How has your sound evolved from early -pre machine bites material to the current music?

So how did we start as more sort of harsh electro/git crossover thing and end up as soft electro sythfag performers.That is the sad story of TFS as well. So more serious indeed early stuff was more aggressive than Machine Bites.

How does the difference between The Fair Sex and Testify satisfy your creative needs?

After working let's say for weeks on TFS soft wave atmospheres it's always refreshing to get into the harsh Testify stuff. Whereas after weeeks and months of being filled up with awful noise of hatred and anger the TFS relaxes the nerves,but we are never satified of course.

When did the split in style occur?

In 1992 Testify was founded after TFS had their Spell of Joy album which was even too soft for their soft souls. It was like lets get back to TFS roots of aggression and whatsoever.

When and why did you decide to sing in english?

In 1977 Myk decided to sing in english when he knew not more than 11 or 14 english words. He's sort of conservative and english is the language of Pop. It never occured in his mind to write German lyrics. That language isn't that fluently or so.

Has it helped or hurt the band in Germany?Outside Germany?

How should we know. Not one TFS title in German was released.We should travel to the parallel universe where TFS is a famous German screaming supergroup.

How did the concept of Labyrinth come about?

There was this message and this urgent request from the future sending us the story plot hinting at dangers the whole globe is running into. The future world asked us to put together a kind of warning. So that is one version of how to bring the idea of the Labyrinth concept into people's minds.For more sort of down to earth people we use this - while working on the album we perceived some kind of connection/relation between the lyrics.So we followed that train of thought until Labyrinth story plot stood clearly before our eyes.

Are there plans to take Labyrinth and make it into a full stage production or video production in the tradition of classic opera- a gesamtkunstwerk?

You see we'd perhaps start thinking about this if the 8 million dollar budget - for which we wait since the late 40's, I guess- finally gets into our hands.That's not a reality yet so we just put in some aspects of the story into our live performances during our summer 95' tour.Let's wait and see what the future will bring us....


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