by Uwe Marx | Jan. 15, 2018 |
What is the basic concept of “Vintage Recordings”? Is it a “real” Best Of-Compilation? Or is it some sort of anniversary? I think, it is rather your very personal “Best Of”-Compilation…
This is a selection of some of our old songs, so it’s not a “best of” in that sense, it’s more a selection of songs that we felt could be good on vinyl, and that had a sort of an “old school” vibe. All the songs are mixed again and some sounds have been replaced, and the record is mixed in a more analog way than in a digital way.
I am pretty sure, a dream become true for you releasing a proper 12”Inch-Vinyl. Black wax! Are you serious record-collectors?
We grew up in the vinyl era and we started collecting vinyl from our heroes when we were young, so the fact that we could actually release our own vinyl has been a dream come true, but as years go by our collecting habit has decreased and the way to consume music has changed. But, it is a very nice feeling to put in your own vinyl record and hear the songs, it’s fantastic.
How did you choose those tracks? Fans will miss some of their own ADF-favourites I guess. How did it feel to look back on 10 years of ADF?
Wow…it has been 10 years…(soon) we have had an amazing time and the selection of tracks was mutual in the band and we thought that we could have a nice range of songs that still was suitable for vinyl, we basically thought, these tracks will sound good on vinyl.
A song called “No Future” would have been great on an album called “Vintage Recordings”… The expression “Vintage”, does it stand for your sound? Or your equipment?
It’s a combination of things, we have some vintage equipment that we wanted to use, we have had a Roland TR-707 for ages but never used it for recordings, we used samples before, but we plugged it in and put it through som pre-amps and compressors and the recorded it to get the sound we wanted for some of the tracks. But for us, vintage is more about the equipment and the way of recording records.
Let’s talk about OLD and NEW – When recording NEW tracks, do you look back in the history of music? Today’s music isn’t any interesting for you?
We don’t sit down and think that we should do a song that sounds like this or like that, off course we are influenced by a lot of music and mainly OLD music, but we are influenced by new music too, it’s so much easier to listen to music today compared to 20 years ago to find something new or interesting. But sure, there’s some new music that are interesting.
I do not like the term „Old School-EBM“… Anyway: Somehow it fits to your music, somehow it does not fit at all… What do you think?
I think, it’s something different, you create. Thank you, we have always made music we like ourselves, and we listened a lot to both Front 242 and Nitzer Ebb when we were young and still do sometimes, and off course we know that this can be found in some of our songs, but also, we hope that we have developed during these 10 years, there have been so much different influences and that in turn influence our music, and off course we like to create something different and we will continue to do that, we hope.
Because the sound is very unique. Your sound is very special. There is a certain New Wave-style in your music. Are you old DEPECHE MODE-fans? Do you love bands like Fad Gadget or Absolute Body Control?
Yes, we are old Depeche Mode-fans, but during that time, there was so much more around, technology was new, samplers, synths (both analog and new digital ones). We listened to both Fad Gadget and ABC when we were young, and most of the mute-records stuff was ace, but a lot of other music too.
This special sound you create do has a bit of science in my eyes: Is it hard work to develop this very special sound over the years?
Thank you so much for your kind words, yes, there have been many hours in the studio tweaking synthesizers, finding the right sounds for us, and also learning and develop the general sound when recording and mixing our records, we have been involved in a lot of different music projects during the years before Autodafeh that probably have formed us to the sound we have today.
Or is there any Belgian blood in your veins? Indeed your music sounds very “Belgian”.
Hehe…no, no Belgian blood in our veins, some Finnish, and sometimes some Danish, when Anders have had a few beers.
Very early in your career you have played with Front 242 … Did this had any influence on your further way?
That influenced us in a very big way, not only have they been a big part of our musical life, both as pioneers for the EBM scene but also in style; roughness and toughness on stage, and having the opportunity to play with then learned us a lot, they have so much experience.
Let’s stay in Scandinavia … You did a lot of different remixes for Leæther Strip. More remixes than for any other band … WHY? Is there some sort of scandinavian brotherhood between you?
Not sure if it’s a Scandinavian thing, but we got to know Claus very early in our carrere and he is such a nice guy, always so friendly, but there is no special reason that we have made more remixes for him than any other one, we like to remix and still do, and Leather Strip was releasing a lot of stuff during the beginning of our career and he really liked what we did with his songs.