Cloudland Canyon1. What's the first piece of music you listened to today?
Something by Bukka White
2. What are your vices?
I am not very proud of my vices, but I made the experience that people without vices usually don't have virtues either.
3. What is one of your prejudices?
Animal Collective ruined a whole generation of music journalists.
4. In what way do you think music has the ability to change the way people live their lives?
In general I'm not even sure if music still has the power to change the way people live. I think that taste is an expression of what people already are but people's lives are not an expression of what they are listening to. It works like a mirror of what they believe in, of what they are longing for and what they have experienced and wouldn't all of that still be there without the music? I really don´t know.
Soup tastes good but without a bowl you're fucked.
Maybe it gives people strength and hope so they can achieve something they wanted to achieve anyways and weren't able to. It accompanies them along their road but it won't tell them where to go. Although sometimes it will show them something they knew before but just didn't realize until the very moment they hear a certain song or sound.
To make the decision to play music and go on tour might be something different, but then again I am sure I would have found other reasons to travel and get intoxicated. For me basically music works as a chariot.
5. At what age did you first feel distrust?
I can't really see how my answer to this question would be interesting for anyone.
6. Do you think that your name is appropriate for you? (If not, what name would be more appropriate?)
I like our name. Some years ago, Kip and me went to Cloudland Canyon, which is one of Georgia's state parks displaying absolute beauty and eternal bliss through endless forms, colors and species as rough as nature's breathing it. Basically, what we're trying to do with music is to create sonic beauty using pretty much the same parameters.
7. What is the best piece of music you've ever created, in your opinion?
If I start thinking about things like that, I might as well stop playing music.
8. Right now, how are you trying to change yourself?
I guess I'll get a haircut one of these days.
9. If you had the time, what else would you do?
I would move to the south of France, marry a beautiful girl and make love to her all day and all night long.
10. What social cause do you feel the most strongly about (negative or positive)?
When I moved from East to West Germany shortly after the wall came down a lot of my friends fell for right-wing theory and fascist propaganda 'cause they had nothing except their pride and were used to an absolute system. In the meanwhile, I continued to grow up in a group of immigrants who had nothing either and of course hated Nazis. So I was stuck in the middle of two groups who didn't even understand that they were sitting in the same boat. This problem seems very coherent on a lot of levels somehow. Instead of realizing that the problem is a vertical one, people are fighting on a horizontal level which makes no sense at all. Blinded by pride you can't take away from them cause it's all they got.
Things got a little better in the East now but still, visiting my hometown and its surroundings makes me feel like I'm floating through a dead ghost zone of abandoned houses, dead cities and empty streets dividing Eastern and Western Europe. It makes me wonder where this is going. Being able to look at it from a certain distance the whole decay almost has a tragic beauty to it. Unfortunately the people living there don't have that distance.
11. What are your fears?
Religious fanatics with balls bigger than they can handle and old greedy men who have children's blood running through their vains.
12. What is your favorite joke (tasteful or tasteless)?
Whitehouse
13. Who is your favorite author?
I don't really have a favorite author, but amongst the books I've enjoyed the most throughout the last couple of months were Jean Genet's Notre Dame Des Fleurs, Emmet Grogan's Ringolevio and the short stories of Jorge L. Borges.
14. What is your favorite movie?
Alejandro Jodorowsky's Holy Mountain is definitely one of my favorite movies of all times. Nowadays, Jodorowsky is living in Paris and besides other things does Tarot readings in this bar every Wednesday. You have to go there in the morning, get one of 20 available tickets and come back in the evening. He will ask you a couple of questions to find out why you are coming to him, then he'll read your tarot and prescribe you a psycho-magic act that you have to fulfill to overcome your personal fears. I tried to go and meet him once, but at the time he was travelling in Argentina. I will try again this year though. I am also dying to see Matthew Barney's Cremaster Cycle.
15. Favorite album(s) from the last few years?
Sensational - Corner The Market
Mazzy Star - So Tonight That I Might See
The Black Lips - Let It Bloom
Delia Gonzales & Gavin Russom - Days Of Mars
Sleep - Dopesmoker
The Gris Gris - For The Season
Jan Jelinek - Everything
Marilyn Manson - 667 The Neighbor Of The Beast
Vibracathedral Orchestra - Everything
Mouse On Mars - Instrumentals
The Spits – E.P.
Kieran Hebdan&Steve Reid - The Exchange Sessions
LCD Soundsystem – When Will I Be Famous? – The Bros Remixes
16. What would you like to know more about?
Asia
17. What is one thing you would like to do/see/accomplish before you die?
I want to have a family, raise kids and make sure that they'll have all the possibilities and choices they don't need.