Michaela Melián

Michaela Melián grew up the classical way, playing in orchestras from a young age. During art college she was asked to found Freiwillige Selbstkontrolle with fellow art fanzine contributors, and she immediately swapped her cello for the bass guitar. F.S.K. have always been the punk band’s punk band, in spirit if not in style, with an against-the-grain ethos that means they’re likely to change shape just when you think you have a grip on them. Never one to respect convention, let alone chronology, Michaela sat down at the 2005 Red Bull Music Academy in Seattle to discusses her art installations, albums, and her musical journey, stopping along the way to take in inspiring sceneries.

Hosted by Tim Sweeney Audio Only Version Transcript:

MICHAELA MELIÁN

I started out doing projects like installations where a fourth dimension, the sound, was coming to the installation. I did several tracks for pieces for shows.

TIM SWEENEY

When did you start doing the installations with music?

MICHAELA MELIÁN

It started with Ignaz Günther-Haus in, I think, 2002. That was the first one I made and I liked it so much… That was one idea, to get a showroom of an institution, like a public space, and I wanted to get different people there, not the normal art crowd, so I tried to make this house with music, and I made a special track for that house.

TIM SWEENEY

So before that you were doing art as well, but without music?

MICHAELA MELIÁN

Right. Because I always made music my whole life, I started when I was six years old with the guitar, then I started to play cello and I sang in different choirs and orchestras. So it was really like a musical childhood. And then I studied music – and also art – but music-wise I mainly played in a band called F.S.K., which we’ll talk about later, and I wanted to keep it separate. So I had this kind of band project and my art was not about music. But then I thought, “Why shouldn’t I bring this experience of making music for all these years, in studios and concerts, to this art world?” So that’s the reason.

TIM SWEENEY

That is a good reason compared to the stuff from the early ‘80s. So with this [picks up her 2004 album, Baden-Baden], did you do everything on this album?

MICHAELA MELIÁN

Yes, I play everything on the album – mainly I play acoustic guitar, and many tracks of cello and violin, and also melodica. In F.S.K. I’m mainly the bass player, so also bass and some synthesizer things. It was done in the home studio of the drummer of F.S.K., Carl Oesterheld, and he produces everything for me and does the drum tracks. As we learned from Steely & Clevie, you really have to have a feeling of drums to make it good.

TIM SWEENEY

Right. So this is on Monika Enterprise, which is run by Gudrun Gut. How did you decide to put it out on this label rather than Disko B or with F.S.K.?

MICHAELA MELIÁN

Well, I liked the idea of Monika Enterprise because Monika, like the name tells you, is mainly focused on female productions, electronic also. I know Gudrun Gut from a very long time ago when she started out with Malaria!, the same time as F.S.K. started. At that time F.S.K. was still called Freiwillige Selbstkontrolle – F.S.K. is the abbreviation. That means in English, “voluntary self-control.” It was a funny name at that time.

TIM SWEENEY

Everyone seems to like that name.

MICHAELA MELIÁN

Well, it was in 1980 and everyone was into punk, so we decided to have this special name. It comes from the German film industry and it’s the self-censorship institution for filmmakers. Filmmakers have this institution where they [submit] every film to decide if they will retouch genitals or cut out pieces that are not politically correct or whatever. So we liked the idea that when you bring something out, like a product of music, you have that self-censorship in your mind.

TIM SWEENEY

So shall we play the DVD of the art installation?

MICHAELA MELIÁN

We could do that. This is a ten-minute documentary on the exhibition I made and I could say some words about it. It’s in a museum in Innsbruck in Austria, and Innsbruck has one of the very rare European panoramas. A panorama is a round building that you can go inside, it was very famous in the 19th century. Mostly you have a round painting that goes 360 degrees around you, and it’s a re-enactment of an important moment in history. This one in Austria has the subject of the Tyrolean liberation fights of Andreas Hofer, when they tried to keep Tyrol a subject.

TIM SWEENEY

Wait, what’s that?

MICHAELA MELIÁN

What’s that in English? Tyrol? It’s an Alpine part of Austria, but after the first world war it went to Italy. It’s now a part of Italy. There were always places, like Poland, that belonged to other countries throughout history, and they wanted to be free. So that’s the liberation thing, and at that time Napoleon came in and they had these fights against Napoleon and the Germans, who fought with Napoleon against Austria.

TIM SWEENEY

So that’s the whole basis for this panorama?

MICHAELA MELIÁN

Yes. It’s a very important wooden thing, it’s an attraction for tourists still. It was built and painted more than 100 years ago, and you have this situation where people are fighting and you see a wonderful painting of the whole landscape. I did a new piece about this kind of situation, but I did a new kind of panorama about Innsbruck. [You normally] pass by there by car because today you have the big autobahns from Germany to Italy. You always pass Innsbruck, but no one goes there, it’s just passing by.

TIM SWEENEY

Isn’t there skiing there?

MICHAELA MELIÁN

Some Japanese and American tourists go there, but it’s mainly people passing by. So I made a trip passing by Innsbruck, looking out of several buildings or several landscapes where famous movies have been done. So perhaps we play it and you can see it?

TIM SWEENEY

But is all this music from the installation, or just this one track?

MICHAELA MELIÁN

Just this one track and it’s called “Panorama.” I tried to do a new kind of panorama, because in the historical panorama the visitor is always guided. You have a special moment of history and you have to learn about how this history was. There is a kind of link that you have to learn politically: what is the lesson? In my case I wanted to give people the impression that there’s an atmosphere or a mood, and you really can decide that there’s not just one moment in history – you're just passing by. So just play it and we can see it.

(video: Michaela Melián – “Panorama”)

That’s just the documentary about this one piece, and you can really see the whole subject. The art is very much about analog versus digital production. The drawings were slides and the slides were wandering around. The drawings were done with a sewing machine, because [I think] the sewing machine is one of the first computers – it makes a hole and a minus (draws line with her hand), which is like a zero and a one. And just to bring it away from that kind of handwriting, which is normally connected to this kind of “male genius” production of art, to have this kind of distance to the production. That’s the subject.

Also, it has to do with my way of producing music, because nearly everything I use is from the analog playing of instruments and we don’t really sequence things. We play the drum machine in real time into the computer. We are influenced by electronic music, but [we try to] bring it back to this kind of breathing, in a way. To have, like Steely & Clevie said, more of an “oval” mood in the music. Because sometimes if you program the drums it’s really like [makes stiff movements with her arms]. You have to do it really good. When I do a track, I first start out with a sample, so with this track you could hear that Alpine zither music, four old men playing these tunes. I cut out a really short piece and it was in 3/4 [rhythm] and I converted it into 4/4. When I had that, I made a sequence of that and then I played along with the other instruments to that. So the sample is the only thing which is sequenced and the rest is done by hand.

TIM SWEENEY

So for the kick you just [makes punching gesture with his hand] for the whole nine minutes?

MICHAELA MELIÁN

Yeah. Later when we hear some F.S.K. you will hear that I am really trained in standing on stage for ten minutes going “boom-boom” [makes bass playing motion].

TIM SWEENEY

Well, for this stuff it sounds like you have a lot of house and techno influences. Who were you listening to and who influenced you?

MICHAELA MELIÁN

I think for my music it’s a lot of influence from German music, from Kraftwerk up to Mike Ink [alias of Kompakt co-founder Wolfgang Voigt. Really, Mike Ink is a very big influence, and all the Kompakt productions, how they treat sounds.

TIM SWEENEY

So it’s a German thing? With F.S.K., there’s a lot of looking at American things, so this is more German – is it getting back to that?

MICHAELA MELIÁN

Well, you can’t really tell because I’m listening to so much music, like any kind of music. But in this one, I would say I often have some tracks of Mike Ink in my mind.

TIM SWEENEY

OK, so let’s go back now.

MICHAELA MELIÁN

Yes, I thought perhaps it would be a good transition to play a song. I have have a new track with me that is coming out on a compilation, so I could play that and then afterwards we could go on to F.S.K.?

TIM SWEENEY

Yeah, sure.

MICHAELA MELIÁN

OK.

Michaela Melián – “Kloster”

(music: Michaela Melián – “Kloster”)

TIM SWEENEY

So this was a new one?

MICHAELA MELIÁN

Yes, that was the world premiere. The track goes on a bit longer. I like to make these tracks quite long.

TIM SWEENEY

Was that part of another installation?

MICHAELA MELIÁN

No, it was made for this new compilation [Female Future: Transatlantic] when I got invited. I decided to make this music only for my installations or if I get invited, like for compilations. Like I said before, every track starts from music I plant into the track, like a hidden soul or hidden idea, and in this case there was a little sample of a record by the Monks, a beat band of the ‘60s. The compilation it was made for is about German and American influences. That band lived in Germany and were soldiers there and they influenced a lot of beat bands in Germany. So there’s kind of a link to that. I don’t know if you know the Monks?

TIM SWEENEY

Well, aren’t they on the list of least known bands?

MICHAELA MELIÁN

Yes, that’s true. Shall I play another song I made and then we can pass over to F.S.K.?

TIM SWEENEY

OK, so what is this now?

MICHAELA MELIÁN

This is a Roxy Music cover I did for Baden-Baden and I chose “A Song For Europe,” because I decided when I do my own records and I do songs, I only do covers. There could be a problem with my own band, because the last recordings mainly use my voice, when there’s a voice in the records with F.S.K. It could be a problem if there’s always my voice, so I decided not to do my own lyrics or anything, I decided to just do a cover. There’s this huge influence on me, also on F.S.K., from Roxy Music, so I decided that if I do a song I always choose a Roxy Music song [laughs].

TIM SWEENEY

Oh, really? And this is now the one Chicks On Speed are covering?

MICHAELA MELIÁN

Yes.

Michaela Melián – “A Song For Europe”

And so on. I just stopped it because we have a lot to say [laughs].

TIM SWEENEY

With this new stuff, do you perform it out at all?

MICHAELA MELIÁN

Well, when I started I just wanted to make some music for these art concerts. When I compiled it for Gudrun Gut for the record, there were so many requests to perform it, so we really had to think about how we would do it. Now we've developed the concept of how we can bring it on stage, because normally I’d have to bring eight people on stage. I try to keep it very basic when we do it, but you still need seven or eight people to play cellos, guitars and things like that, and so I decided to have a different concept. I didn’t want to bring a computer, a laptop, so I did a version of some tracks mixed down and put it onto ADAT, so we have an 8-track tape on stage with a mixing desk. Carl, who did the studio work on the album, he plays along with violin and xylophone and does the mixing. So he can still influence what is on the 8-track and he can work on that, like a live thing. I play the cello, guitar, melodica and these kind of things. So we have a semi-live [set-up], but still the rest is coming from the tracks. But it’s not a computer where you have the feeling of music and time going by. That’s quite important, I think.

TIM SWEENEY

So it’s just the two of you?

MICHAELA MELIÁN

Yeah. It’s also a money problem. I played such a long time in bands that I like to have one product at least where you don’t have to share the money with five other people! And it’s easier because to play this music you really have to rehearse, because it’s basic on one side, but still you have to do it very precisely.

TIM SWEENEY

So how many performances have you done?

MICHAELA MELIÁN

I think only five or six, but I’m really looking to do it very [exclusively]. Two times in Paris, one time in Frankfurt, one time in Berlin. I try to select certain special events.

TIM SWEENEY

So shall we go back and talk about F.S.K. now?

MICHAELA MELIÁN

We can do that.

TIM SWEENEY

Can we give people an overview of how F.S.K. started? I know it’s a big story, there’s a lot to it, but how you guys formed – it seems like there’s a lot of concepts in F.S.K.

MICHAELA MELIÁN

Well, we could go from the very beginning and up to today.

TIM SWEENEY

Oh, you want to go backwards?!

MICHAELA MELIÁN

No, I think it would be better that way, and also, if you listen to the old records we did in this context, it might be interesting – you can hear how time goes by because of the kind of qualities you are able to produce in music, because it has changed so much in the last 20 years. We started out in 1980 and in that time when we started out, there were all these studios around and only these 4-track studios. All these small underground labels had to finance these records, so you can hear how difficult it was at that time to get a good sound, and how easy it is today with a computer. As a band it is quite expensive to go into a studio and make good records. We started out, like I said, in 1980, and we met at art school in Munich.

TIM SWEENEY

I don’t want to get too personal, but was that in your twenties then?

MICHAELA MELIÁN

In our early twenties. One of us is a photographer, one is a writer, I’m an artist and another one is now a curator, at that time he was also studying at art school. We started out with a magazine and we were very much influenced by Andy Warhol's Interview. All over Germany there started all these new wave bands – Neue Deutsche Welle, they called it – and punk bands, and we wanted to be a part of it. And in my case, I used to study music and I always studied art. I didn’t go to any pop or rock concerts. I came from this musical family so I went to some jazz concerts, but never to a pop concert. The first concert I went to was F.S.K., when I was on stage, so it was quite different for me. When I started with these other guys to put the newspaper together, they wanted to start a band and they wanted to have a woman in the band. They asked me because they knew I could play a lot of instruments. So the first bass I played I borrowed from another band, and for the first two years I had this borrowed Fender bass, so you can hear that it’s really different. It’s not so much about music in the beginning, it’s more a concept. You have to think about punk and not so much about being a very good musician. That’s not the idea behind it in the beginning.

TIM SWEENEY

So how many people are playing in this?

MICHAELA MELIÁN

It’s four people. It’s me, Thomas – he’s the writer, Thomas Meinecke – and Wilfried Petzi is playing guitar, and Justin Hoffmann is also playing guitar. I will play it for you. I don’t think we should play to the end, because perhaps you might not understand the lyrics, but to get a feeling.

TIM SWEENEY

Yeah, we’ll just get a feeling.

(music: F.S.K. – “Moderne Welt”)

So that was from 1980?

MICHAELA MELIÁN

Yes, and the refrain always ends with, “And we say yes to the modern world.” It starts with, like, “Peter says he likes to stay alone at night at home and that’s okay for him.” And, “Tina likes very high heels ’cause she likes to be sexy,” and things like that.

TIM SWEENEY

Huh.

MICHAELA MELIÁN

Haha, “huh”! So you have to see this in the whole context of punk. Everyone is playing on stage, sweating, and we are playing this kind of music with uniforms and no one playing the drums. I should play you another piece with this kind of drum machine, so you can see what I was talking about.

TIM SWEENEY

With the most recent stuff you’re doing, there’s this analog and digital, modern versus classic stuff, and with this there’s sort of the same thing, where the sound of it is very… I don’t know how to describe it. But you're talking about the modern world, so you're still having this dichotomy, I guess. Is that there, or am I making this stuff up?

MICHAELA MELIÁN

Well, I’m not sure I’ve got what you meant, but F.S.K. is very much about the concept of being a band and making music. So it’s really the whole story of 25 years of friends making music together. It’s music about music, how we listen to music and how we react to it and how the whole music world develops. We are not a band who are inventing a sound and staying doing it. We do all the time very different stuff. But it’s always us four – or five, for 15 years now – doing this kind of music. And you might hear how we treat the instruments and how we quote things, so people really know the sound now. But I wanted to play you another track off this first single so you can see the range of the single and why people thought, “What was that? ‘Cause that sounds really different.”

F.S.K. – “Herz Aus Stein”

(music: F.S.K. – “Herz Aus Stein”)

TIM SWEENEY

Who were the other German groups that influenced you when you formed the band? I mean, you’ve said Kraftwerk, but who were the others who were playing then that influenced you into starting?

MICHAELA MELIÁN

I think from the concept, the band concept, really Kraftwerk and Can were the most influential to us, as far as being artist bands. But there were not many German bands that influenced us, there were more American and English bands. It’s very much about the reception of music we liked, so we liked Gang Of Four and Velvet Underground, also the Raincoats and all this stuff that was around at this time. But Gang Of Four was really a big influence. I could play a song from ‘82. You can hear how we adapted these jazz quotes we liked a lot, that is quite funny.

TIM SWEENEY

When you first started, you had a magazine that you guys were doing, right? That was trying to be like Interview and Andy Warhol?

MICHAELA MELIÁN

The idea was a bit like Andy Warhol’s Interview, but that was very much interviews [laughs]. We were just people, still students, but everyone we liked we asked, “Do you want to do something for the magazine?” So it was mainly people who were writing about something, or people who wanted to make fashion or take photographs of their fashion, or artists with photos or drawings. So it was more like an art fanzine, I would say.

TIM SWEENEY

And how long did that last for?

MICHAELA MELIÁN

It lasted from ‘78 to ‘86. But the whole idea was that whoever wanted to be part of the party, he had to pay for it. So if there were ten people doing the magazine, then we split the cost between ten people. If someone wanted to contribute, he had to pay. And at the end we had like 1,000 copies, so everybody got like a hundred copies and what you do with it, that’s your problem. Some people gave it to shops, others just gave it to some friends, so it was a kind of funny distribution. The next one I wanted to play is from ‘82, and it’s called “Melody To Shoot You In Your Heart.” In Germany we have this funny thing where we can put three or four words together and make a new word out of it, so it’s “Herzschussmelodie” – I don’t know how to translate.

F.S.K. – “Herzschuss Melodie”

(music: F.S.K. – “Herzschuss Melodie”)

TIM SWEENEY

So what jazz music influenced you guys?

MICHAELA MELIÁN

I think in that case it was a funny quote of free jazz. But this song I chose because it can tell you a lot about the production situation at the time. We went to the Sandbox Bass Studio and these guys normally make heavy metal and rock music. They’re totally leather outfit guys, who were doing a lot of drinking and they were like, “What are you doing here?” They had a 16-track desk and they used like every track for three or four different instruments. So when we did the mixing at the end, every one of us had like four [faders] and had to do it like, “OK, this instrument [goes up now] [mimes sliding faders up and down]. We had a whole concept of what everyone had to do. This song was like four times as long as it was when I played it now – we had this jazzy track and trumpet and xylophone and the cello and things like that. On the same track there were different instruments, so you had to really plan what you do with the tracks. And today that would be totally easy to do, but at that time, to be three days in the studio and to do four tracks, it was really hard work.

TIM SWEENEY

What made you guys decide to go to that studio?

MICHAELA MELIÁN

Because of Alfred Hilsberg, who ran the label [Zickzack]. He always had special deals with funny studios [laughs]. We didn’t have to pay so much. Very silly reasons.

TIM SWEENEY

You said you had a classical music background, what background did the others have?

MICHAELA MELIÁN

Very different backgrounds. Justin has been playing in bands since he was 11 years old, and he's a very good player on guitars and keyboard. And then there’s Wilfried, he is also playing the guitar and the trombone, and he has a funny history – he started out playing in these Saturday night event bands with people demanding songs. He earned his money. He’s a photographer but he used to play for years when he was young. He comes from a very rural part of Bavaria and he played in these bands. So we should hear a song where he is singing, because he has this very troubadour [style of] singing and he has this background where he can play many songs by Elvis Presley or whatever, the Beatles. He can do it. And then there is Thomas, he is like a total nerd and addict of every type of music, so he doesn’t play any instrument, but if he tries to do something, he can really do it.

TIM SWEENEY

So in F.S.K. you have all these different styles of music. Was [Thomas] one of the ones listening to all these things?

MICHAELA MELIÁN

Yes, he has the whole collection and introduced many things to the others that we didn’t know. And I think we met because we were really interested in listening to music – it was a group of people that liked to meet and just listen to music and that’s the way the band started. And I think that’s the secret behind it, that we have been doing it now for 25 years and it’s still not boring. But I should play you one with the troubadour singing. And that’s more of a kind of a pop thing. It’s called “Hymne”. Anthem?

F.S.K. – “Hymne”

(music: F.S.K. – “Hymne”)

TIM SWEENEY

When did you first do a Peel session?

MICHAELA MELIÁN

1985.

TIM SWEENEY

And the last one you did?

MICHAELA MELIÁN

That was November last year. And it was really sad, because we arranged with him to do the session in the spring, and he phoned several times to say we should come and do a session again, and we always wanted to come when he was in town. Because with us, everybody is always doing something else, not only music – it was quite difficult to get a time to go there. And then he arranged it for November and when we came over he had just died four days before. So it was a really sad coincidence to do it then. We recorded it when we learned that he was dead.

TIM SWEENEY

Do you have a favourite Peel session that you did?

MICHAELA MELIÁN

Not really, we did kind of strange things. We did four Beatles songs for him.

TIM SWEENEY

Were those released?

MICHAELA MELIÁN

They were released, but most of the stuff wasn’t released. Because you have to buy it off the BBC and that is kind of expensive. We should talk about that because what I play now to you with F.S.K. was always German lyrics and it was really this time when we started that this German new wave – Neue Deutsche Welle – started out, and we really used the German language. And after ‘83 all these small labels were just breaking down, so it was really going down, this situation for independent music.

TIM SWEENEY

Why was this happening?

MICHAELA MELIÁN

I think it had to do with the big music industry taking over the ideas behind the concept. It wasn’t only music-wise, it was the whole fashion. Like, they took over punk gestures into advertising, so they took away from this underground movement these kind of codes, and all these German bands who started out with us got taken over by the industry. They got really big offers, got 100,000 marks [to sign a deal] and [were told], “We’ll do three albums with you.” And then they would only do one album and the band would vanish somewhere, and it really died out, the whole scene. And then artificial products would do kind of a quote of this development - Nena [singer of “99 Red Balloons”] started out then – and took over the business. I think these are the reasons, it’s quite complicated to tell. But at that time all these small labels had problems getting in the record stores and it was a hard time. So many bands changed to English and tried again to sound like an English or American band and not to be something different or anti-music business or whatever. For us, we wanted to keep on the concept and because I lived in England, we had a deal with an English label, Red Rhino in York, and we thought, “How can we get this concept of the band to an English audience, but with our German lyrics?” So we began doing cover versions of songs that we have chosen to tell the people what the music is about, how we treat this material. I could play one to you and I think we did this also for a Peel session, but I have it for a different one.

F.S.K. - “My Funny Valentine”

(music: F.S.K. – “My Funny Valentine”)

This one I know that John Peel really liked very much.

TIM SWEENEY

So this was from ‘83?

MICHAELA MELIÁN

This was on that record, yeah.

TIM SWEENEY

And is this when you guys are wearing the plaid uniforms?

MICHAELA MELIÁN

Yeah, we changed to these kind of checked shirts and blue jeans, a different uniform.

TIM SWEENEY

And what did this uniform mean?

MICHAELA MELIÁN

That was kind of a gesture against new wave in a way. When new wave had taken over the whole system, in a way, we wanted to make a different quote. Thomas had bought himself a trumpet and Wilfried got a trombone, so we had this brass section. So that started then [laughs]. And you always have to see it in a concept, that was ‘82 and ‘83, that was really this time of heavy new wave…

TIM SWEENEY

So you were trying to do a reaction to that?

MICHAELA MELIÁN

Yeah, we always think, “OK, what is going on?” and we go left, or something.

TIM SWEENEY

So after this period, what did you start doing after this?

MICHAELA MELIÁN

It’s hard to explain, I’ll just play you from our first Peel Session another example so you can see the range. We also did the Bert Kaempfert song “A Swingin’ Safari” and it was our first concert in London – we played the ICA Rock Week. You have to imagine there’s a drum machine and three German guys playing guitar and I was playing the melodica on stage, so it was really strange.

TIM SWEENEY

This is from the same year?

MICHAELA MELIÁN

No, it’s later, it’s ‘85.

F.S.K. – A Swingin' Safari

(music: F.S.K. – “A Swingin’ Safari”)

So this was from our first Peel session. I don’t know if you know how the production situations were in Peel sessions, but you just go to the BBC Studio 1 and it’s a huge room, half the size of this room, with wooden panels. A really beautiful room with a grand piano in there and really good situation. But you have to play it like jazz, in one take. Perhaps they do an overdub for the voice, but you have to play it really like a jazz band. It’s a live situation in a way.

TIM SWEENEY

At what point did you start working with David Lowery from Cracker?

MICHAELA MELIÁN

That happened later. In between we did some collaborations with The Mekons, a band with the same story, I would say. We also did some records for English labels and people from the Mekons produced them.

TIM SWEENEY

How did you get connected with them?

MICHAELA MELIÁN

I don’t know, by accident. By liking the same music, and getting in contact through the English label and living in England, it happened like that. Always, if you do something and you meet at the end, the people are interested in the same thing. We managed, funnily enough, to get one song, “I Wish I Could Sprechen Sie Deutsch,” in this listener chart of the Peel show and the BBC Radio 1 charts, so it was quite funny that this happened. But then in 1990, we decided to leave Zickzack Records in Hamburg and we changed to Munich – to Disko B and Peter Wacha.

TIM SWEENEY

Why did you decide to do that?

MICHAELA MELIÁN

We were ten years with this Hamburg label and it was kind of bankrupt at that time and it was difficult to get money to go to the studio. We were no longer like a new band, and if you are a label you always want to get someone who is new and helps to make money. So we decided we wanted to have a change and Peter Wacha offered us more money to go in the studio. By that time we had met David Lowery of Camper Van Beethoven, and he invited us to come to the US – he has a studio there. He said, “Why don’t you come over and record in the States?” A good idea about the whole concept of picking up American or English songs and doing a cover version – he liked to do that. So we went there in ‘91 and we did…

TIM SWEENEY

You went to Virginia?

MICHAELA MELIÁN

Yes, we went to Virginia, to Richmond, and started recording with him, and this collaboration lasted for five years. We did at least three albums with him and we also did several tours with him, so he came to Germany and we had this European tour with him taking part in F.S.K. Also, he invited us to do the US tour with his management that we got through Bill Graham, that was really funny. We got this night liner and we played Washington, Chicago, Atlanta.

TIM SWEENEY

What size venues were you playing?

MICHAELA MELIÁN

Big clubs – Mercury Lounge in New York. It was quite nice because it went all through him, so it was not so bad.

TIM SWEENEY

Right. So Mercury Lounge, that’s like 300 people or so?

MICHAELA MELIÁN

Yeah. And up to 500. And we played a big festival in Atlanta. I think we played 14 dates, so it was really a big tour.

TIM SWEENEY

So then you were getting these American songs and giving it a more German flavour?

MICHAELA MELIÁN

At the time we had this concept, we called it “transatlantic feedback.” Because in Germany, after the second world war, the whole pop [scene] started out just looking to the States. You have so many influences coming from there, and we wanted to… Well, it had to do with the reunification of Germany, and starting a new kind of nation, a national feeling in Germany. We wanted to do a quote on that, and at that time it started again that so many bands were singing in German, because of this kind of new national feeling, and we wanted to bring in a kind of question about that. Thinking more about the influences we had from abroad and feeling international, and not so much German. So it’s always like I said before, there’s something happening in the whole cultural landscape and you reflect on that.

TIM SWEENEY

What happened with this transition that happened in the mid-90s, when you went into Detroit techno?

MICHAELA MELIÁN

Perhaps we should first play something that David Lowery produced with us, because it sounds totally different. We had really good conditions in his studio. In the first recordings we did with him, we had this opportunity to invite a lot of musicians to come to the studio and play along with us. On this one record we had Mark Linkous of Sparklehorse, and Michael Hurley joining in. I don’t know if you know him, but he’s kind of a beatnik musician in his 60s, and he did some backing vocals for us, so it was really a very nice collaboration, fitting into the concept we wanted. The first record we made with David was Son Of Kraut, and I’ll play you now the national anthem of the GDR. We did a kind of unplugged version of it. That was the time when the GDR had already vanished from the map – you know, the East German part. And so we had a lot of guest musicians from the US like Mark Linkous.

(music: F.S.K. – “Nationalhymne Der DDR”)

TIM SWEENEY

How long would it take you to record an album?

MICHAELA MELIÁN

When we did it in Germany, we really did it fast. We never used a producer, we did it on our own. We went to the studio and didn’t want to spend too much money. In Virginia, we had two weeks and it was really nice to sit around and say, “Can we try this, can we try that?” But mainly it’s always done in tracks with some special overdubs. So we really used to do it like a band, to play all together – to get it right with the feeling. But I wanted to play you one interesting track. David Lowery had this song that was in the top 40, he got a gold record with it, called “Eurotrash Girl.” He made it with Cracker, a new band, and we did an adaptation, a cover version in a Kraftwerk kind of way. Funnily enough, two or three years later – we did it in ‘95 – Chicks On Speed took it over and did a different version of that song. It’s quite interesting, so I would like to play both songs. It also marks a new story again when we changed very much to this influence of electronic music.

TIM SWEENEY

And that happened when?

MICHAELA MELIÁN

In the mid-90s.

TIM SWEENEY

As a result of the Chicks On Speed remix?

MICHAELA MELIÁN

No, it happened with that record, International – that was the break where we changed to these influences.

F.S.K. – “Euro-Trash Girl”

(music: F.S.K. – “Euro-Trash Girl”)

TIM SWEENEY

What kind of records were you listening to when you made this? When the more electronic influences happened?

MICHAELA MELIÁN

We listened to a lot of house music.

TIM SWEENEY

Were there any key tracks back then that you guys were always listening to?

MICHAELA MELIÁN

It’s hard to tell now – we always listened to so much different music. I know that at that time we really looked to Chicago and Detroit and what came out of these cities. We were interested in these kind of producers. You still have this quote [in “Euro-Trash Girl”] of a yodelling Japanese woman who was doing this kind of Alpine style, we mixed it in that song, but still we tried to produce different sounds with our instruments. This is the record where you have the change. But I wanted to play you the Chicks On Speed track.

TIM SWEENEY

Did you guys listen to any Chicago and Detroit stuff from back in 1986? Was that on your radar back then?

MICHAELA MELIÁN

No. It started getting in focus in the middle of the ‘90s. We knew about it at the time, but I think in the first half of the ‘90s we really tried to keep on that band concept. So it started quite late, but in the mid-90s. Do you want to listen to that Chicks On Speed version?

TIM SWEENEY

Yeah.

Chicks On Speed – “Euro-Trash Girl”

(music: Chicks On Speed – “Euro-Trash Girl”)

MICHAELA MELIÁN

It’s difficult to come back to the band sound with this kind of music!

TIM SWEENEY

So is that when you decided to split with David Lowery?

MICHAELA MELIÁN

Yeah, I think because of his band Cracker, he had a different concept of what he thought about us, so when we did the song, he decided to have this Japanese yodelling, and it was really a problem for us. Now I like it again, but at that time we thought, “We want to leave this yodelling behind!” And he still wanted to keep on with that thing. And then in the mid-90s in Germany there were so many interesting things going on. Very close to where we live there’s this small city of Weilheim where all these bands were coming from. There was a very good studio, so we went there and worked there. I could play you one track, which is very much influenced by house music, and just talk a bit about how we adapted house music and did it on our instruments, this electronic-produced music that we played analog, in a way.

TIM SWEENEY

And is this with Anthony “Shake” Shakir?

MICHAELA MELIÁN

No, Anthony came last year. So what we’re listening to now is from the mid-90s. It’s called “Odenwald” – that’s a forest in Germany where there used to be people smoking mushrooms and things like that. It’s on Disko B.

(music: F.S.K. – “Odenwald”)

TIM SWEENEY

So was that the drummer playing that beat?

MICHAELA MELIÁN

Yes, just one drummer and I’m playing the bass, and we have one keyboard and two guitars. That’s the band line-up. But it’s really about the kind of music we really like. House music you normally produce differently.

TIM SWEENEY

Right, now you’re doing it as a band.

MICHAELA MELIÁN

Yes. Because we’re talking about these influences I could play you another track. It’s called “The Key Of Busta Rhymes,” so you have another influence.

TIM SWEENEY

And were you performing these songs out at the time?

MICHAELA MELIÁN

Yeah, yeah. So, like I said before, I’m really used to staying on one bassline for ten minutes when we play live, so I’m trained to do that. Because when we’re playing this music, or when you’re producing this music in the studio, you have all these loops and things like that. But if you play it you really have to – each of us is playing like a machine, in a way, but it’s different because we’re playing it. So let’s listen to “The Key Of Busta Rhymes”

(music: F.S.K. – “The Key Of Busta Rhymes”)

TIM SWEENEY

So on your latest album, you worked with Anthony “Shake” Shakir. How did the meeting with him come about – a Detroit techno producer who worked with Juan Atkins and Carl Craig and Metroplex? How did you meet him?

MICHAELA MELIÁN

At that time we had done two albums which were heavily influenced, as you heard, by R&B and techno and house music. So then we thought, as a German band, to make a statement where we’d get somebody to come to Weilheim, to the studio. We would first do the recording on our own and then the producer would come in, like in the ‘60s and ‘70s, to be a producer to do something with the material. We wanted to have this kind of culture clash. The contact came about because Peter Wacha of Disko B – since 1990 we have been on Disko B – he did some stuff with Anthony, and he asked him if he might be interested to do it. And he said yes, so he flew into Munich and stayed with us and went for a week in the studio and got the tracks to do something with. That was quite interesting – the album is called First Take Then Shake, because we did everything in one take and then Shake came in and did something with the material.

TIM SWEENEY

So were you there when he was working with the material?

MICHAELA MELIÁN

It was him, but mainly Thomas and I stayed with him, because he was staying with us and we had to drive him to the country studio. But he decided on his own what he wanted to do.

TIM SWEENEY

What kind of things was he doing?

MICHAELA MELIÁN

It was quite interesting because there were ten tracks. I think five tracks he didn’t want to touch and then with the five others he did something special to every track. So on one track he only replaced the bass drum. Or on another track we start to play and in the middle he comes in and does a remix at that moment, playing along with us and taking over. And on another track, a song I was singing, he was just joining in with some scratching and strange sounds, and another track he did a new rhythm section for it. And then there was this very funny thing that we did – [we thought] let’s do one track we think he would really like, do some techno thing that he might think, “Oh, that’s something I would really like to produce.” When he heard it he said, “Oh, that’s not techno, that’s a polka!” [Laughs] He didn’t want to work on that, he just did a remix of the whole thing. So on the record it’s called “Tiger Rag,” after this famous ragtime, and he did “Tiger Rag Remix.” So that’s quite funny. Perhaps we should listen to the track “Salt Peanuts,” where he takes over, and then the two different versions of “Tiger Rag.”

TIM SWEENEY

OK.

MICHAELA MELIÁN

So this is where F.S.K. starts out and in the middle [Shake] comes in.

(music: F.S.K. Meets Anthony “Shake” Shakir – “Salt Peanuts”)

Audience Member

So did he just take over the session?

MICHAELA MELIÁN

Yes, with the track and the remix of the track. I like that idea. So he just took over what we did and fed it in his sampler and then he mixed it with the track we did. So the whole length of the track we did, but in the track is his remix. Perhaps we should also listen to how he treated a song of ours because it’s quite different.

TIM SWEENEY

OK. So what was he using for that?

MICHAELA MELIÁN

We had to get him a sampler, and he was just sitting at the mixing desk with the sampler.

TIM SWEENEY

It’s interesting, because you hear with this one how it starts out with the live drums, and you hear once he takes over with the sampler.

MICHAELA MELIÁN

He was feeding in the material we did, and then he treated it, so it was really nice how he went into the material. And he was very precise and he did different things to every track, what he thought he could do to it. He was very funny, he always asked, “What do you want me to do?” And we’d say, “Oh, do what you want. What you think it needs.” We like this idea of collaboration and just giving him the material. So perhaps we should play this short song. He went into the whole drum section and worked on that.

(music: F.S.K. Meets Anthony “Shake” Shakir – “Tiger Rag”)

F.S.K. Meets Anthony “Shake” Shakir – “Tiger Rag Remixed”

(music: F.S.K. Meets Anthony “Shake” Shakir – “Tiger Rag Remixed”)

TIM SWEENEY

I guess we’re running out of time, but that kind of takes you through the whole history of F.S.K., there’s a lot there. Does anybody have any questions that they want to ask?

Audience Member

You talked a lot about using drum machines at the time. Since a lot of the people here are into techniques and the specifics of those kind of machines, can you tell us a little about what kind of machines those were?

MICHAELA MELIÁN

Like I said, the first machine we used we just bought it in a music store, it was like what music entertainers used. Like, you have a switch for swing and rock & roll, and you have an extra knob for extra conga or something. We used that for the first two years, and then we changed over to the Roland 606 and the Roland Dr. Rhythm – we used both. And then we used a lot of Oberheim for like two records, and then we changed to the Alesis because we wanted to have the real drum sounds, no more artificial sounds, and then we changed over to a real drummer.

Audience Member

What about now? The music we heard at the beginning of the lecture?

MICHAELA MELIÁN

Well, our fifth member is a drummer, so we always play…

Audience Member

I mean the music that was played in the movie at the very beginning.

MICHAELA MELIÁN

Ah, OK, you mean my music. We don’t use a drum machine, I just use a Waldorf synthesizer, and we just play along and then correct it by hearing if it’s really in the beat. So we don’t really program it, we just produce the sound on the Waldorf but we play it by finger. And I like the Waldorf very much, so all the music I do is a cello, a guitar, the Waldorf and a Casio or piano.

Audience Member

Thank you.

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