Interview: Sascha Konietzko of KMFDM
07.15.15
Some bands come and most bands go. But German industrial rock band KMFDM has managed to stick it to the industry for an impressive 31 years, pumping out their signature ultra-heavy dance beats over the course of 19 albums. We jumped at the chance to chat with the band’s founder and leader Sascha Konietzko aka Käpt’n K – the only original member – before they hit the stage of The Showbox this weekend to kick off their 2015 Salvation tour.
SMN: So, are you excited for this tour to start?
Sascha K: Yeah, totally. We’re in rehearsals every day and just getting the show on the road.
SMN: I didn’t realize that you actually lived in Seattle for some time. Does it feel nostalgic to be back or do you visit Seattle often since you’ve moved?
Sascha K: Not really. Only when we’re on tour. I lived here for 12 years. I moved away in late 2007. To me, it’s changed a lot. I mean, a lot. It’s very dense in terms of population, traffic, architecture. Downtown used to be basically flat, you know?
SMN: Yeah.
Sascha K: Now it’s completely … the whole city has undergone so many changes. Seems like it’s almost too small and its bursting out of the seams with everything that’s going on here.
SMN: So let’s talk a bit about the Wax Trax documentary. What’s your stance on it? How do you feel about it potentially being made?
Sascha K: I partook in the interview section of the documentary. Strangely enough, when the actual reunion show, or whatever it was called, happened 3 or 4 years back, I was invited and then I was uninvited. I’m not really sure what that’s about. I’m in contact with Julia Nash, the daughter of one of the founders of Wax Trax and everything’s good. Just kind of odd that they would invite me to partake at the reunion performance and then go, “Nope, we don’t want you to come.” That was one of the stranger things in that regard.
SMN: Yeah. I could definitely see that. So you just put out the Salvation EP. And noticed that [Jimmy Urine of Mindless Self Indulgence] did a remix of “Salvation.”
Sascha K: Yes.
SMN: When bands do remixes of your songs do you work alongside them, do you hear any of it as it’s being made, or do you hear it all post-production?
Sascha K: I get to hear it when they’re done with it and then I decide whether to put them on my release or not. That said, usually there are more remixes done than actually end up on any given release.
SMN: Are you friends with a lot of these groups or do they reach out to you and say, “Hey can we remix this?”
Sascha K: Jimmy Urine from MSI and I, we go back for some time with remix histories. We’ve been remixing MSI songs, I think 2 or 3 over the past 4 or 5 years. Now it’s time to pay back the favor.
SMN: They’re a great band to see live too. They came to Seattle, I think, last year. With that said, what new music do you listen to? Do you have any new favorite industrial EDM bands?
Sascha K: I’m going to try to stay away as much as I can from EDM, industrial, that kind of stuff because my whole life revolves around that kind of KMFDMish. I think my favorite band currently is probably Die Antwoord from South Africa.
SMN: Oh. Nice.
Sascha K: To be honest, my musical programming has been taken over by my daughter and she has eclectic taste. We’re listening to a lot of chant, a lot of
KMFDM. She just can’t help but put it on. It just goes through kind of weird pink pony songs and … whatever.
SMN: Yeah.
Sascha K: Time for a joke.
The mother asks the little girl, “What do you want for Christmas?”
She says, “I want a Barbie doll and a GI Joe.”
The mother says, “Oh, I thought Barbie comes with Ken.”
She says, “No, Barbie comes with GI Joe. She fakes it with Ken.”
SMN: Oh, man! Did you make that one up?
Sascha K: No, no. It’s a joke I’ve heard somewhere.
SMN: That is awesome.
Sascha K: If I could make up jokes, I’d be a millionaire, right?
SMN: It’s a hard trade, from what I’ve learned, speaking to a few comedians. I’m not that clever. I feel like there’s almost a separate compartment in your brain for that.
Sascha K: I guess so.
SMN: I know when I originally got into you guys it was from a bunch of movie soundtracks. I started hearing you throughout a bunch of movies that I love and cherish, like Mortal Kombat and Hell Raiser.
Sascha K: Street Fighter.
SMN: Yeah. Were you asked to make a song specifically for the movies or did they just happen to hear something and ask to put it in the movie?
Sascha K: The way that that works is you have people in record companies that specifically work in the field of syncing music to movies and commercials and games and what not.
SMN: Mm-hmm.
Sascha K: Typically you don’t really do stuff for them. They choose from existing music to put in their, whatever production, movie, game, commercial. However, sometimes it’s music made to order. We did music for the Spider Man video game. That was stuff that was just exclusive for the game. It was made to order, so to speak. Which is kind of always a pain in the ass because then some music supervisor comes back to you and says, “Well, that kind of loud pumping sound, that’s kind of irritating.”
You go, “Oh, you mean the kick drum?.”
“Yeah, can you take that out.” It’s like, “There’s this other kind of pumping sound that’s annoying.”
“Oh, you mean the snare drum.”
“Can you take that out?”
“Sure.”
In the end it’s just something that you’re not happy with anymore. You got paid already and you aren’t happy with the song. I kind of despise that part of the business.
SMN: Yeah. Actually, I can see that knowing that now.
Sascha K: Actually, that said, I despise pretty much every aspect of the business, quote unquote. If I were doing this for money I would be a fool, you know? There is no money in the business unless you’re some sort of fake, sugarcoated product made up somewhere in Hollywood or at Universal Records or something like that.
SMN: Something super, super polished, yeah.
Sascha K: You become a product, you know? You want to do what you love and you’ve got to live with the fact this is about bitter poverty.
SMN: What do you think you did right as an artist and what do you think you did wrong as an artist?
Sascha K: I made a couple of decisions on the go that turned out to be really crucial and right. That was to stay away from getting pushed into some sort of unknown territory. Back in the day, obviously, MTV was something very important for commercial success. I think in hindsight I can say that I’ve done my best to avoid KMFDM’s commercial success over the years. Try to keep it really down to earth. Without being a control freak, but to keep it controllable. To not be blown up to be something that we’re not. Then rise sky high and fall into the pit of doom shortly after that, which is the case with many bands. A lot of one hit wonders. It took actually some deliberation and sometimes difficult decisions to be around and kicking it hard after 31 years. Still have an expanding base and draw up to 3 generations to one show, at any given place. I think refusal of temptation is a very important thing. I believe that I’ve done my best in that segment, so to speak.
SMN: Okay. Yeah. You guys have been around for awhile so you clearly were doing something right, you know?
Sascha K: Yeah. Back to the Wax Trax thing, it all really began with a bunch of coincidences and flukes. Being at the right time at the right place and having been signed early on our license by Wax Tracks really helped KMFDM’s career. Coming out of nowhere Germany. All of a sudden we’re standing on a stage in front of 2,500 kids opening for Ministry. That led us into the consciousness of American Industrial, let’s just call it that for lack of better explanation. Audiences back in the 90s, it was the beginning of a career that could have gone quite steeply, especially with the hostile takeover of Wax Trax by CVC Records. That’s what I was talking about earlier. That’s why I started gauging very carefully, okay, how far do we go here? Where does the sacrifice end, so to speak.
SMN: Seems like a very intricate process. Imagine if you had picked doing one thing versus the other. Wow.
Sascha K: You’ve got to weigh your options, sweetie. What good comes from this, and what good comes from it if you don’t do it? Maybe it’s better to not do it. Maybe it’s better to walk away from the promise of a million bucks and maintain your roots, your level-headedness. That’s the kind of decisions I was talking about. Money is always very tempting, especially when you don’t have it. Money, by far, isn’t everything. As we all now, it surely doesn’t buy happiness.
SMN: Yeah, yeah. Definitely. That’s nice to hear from an artist. For some bands it’s a career decision. This is how we survive. It seems like to you, it’s really for the art.
Sascha K: Right. It’s about staying true to yourself, really.
SMN: Is this how you’re able to push out so many albums? You have such a library. How does your writing process go?.
Sascha K: Really, it’s the interaction between making an album and then taking the album out on the road. It’s this constant rotation, this constant circle. Make an album. Go back on the road. Meeting all the people you know. Meeting new people. Gauging their reactions to what you’re doing. Having new impressions. Having insights, of sorts. Be out there, see the world. Then pull back up in your studio and work out the things that you bunkered, hoarded in your mind. One fuels the other, so to speak. Making an album fuels the desire to go out and play it, perform it. All the impressions that you gather while being out there, that’s what you take with you when you go back in there. Turn it around, spit it back out.
SMN: If you had a choice to tour all the time or be in the studio all the time, what would you choose?
Sascha K: It’s impossible. If you’re in the studio all the time, then you lose contact with your fan base. Clearly we wouldn’t be performing, we wouldn’t be making records if it wasn’t for our fans. This is what keeps the whole thing going. The enthusiasm, the dedication. It’s just really what keeps the thing spinning. Let’s not kid ourselves, if nobody came to our concerts, then what would be the point of making records and playing shows.
SMN: That is awesome.
Sascha K: I think that actually part of the early success of KMFDM was because we came from Germany. We were touring in a car. We had a station wagon or something with a few pieces of equipment. We’d play a show and someone would say, “Hey, let me buy you a beer. If you want to crash somewhere, I’ve got a spare couch.” When we came to the US we were confronted with nuts. Not 20 people in front of our shows or in front of our stages, but 2,000. It didn’t change the attitude towards the people , we were always very outgoing and I could never understand bands where the members of the bands thought themselves better or removed from their audience or treated their audience with disrespect. We’ve always been open, approachable, and humble, grateful. I think that reverberated really well with our fan base over the years. It’s been something we’ve been maintaining ever since.
SMN: It’s nice to see the intimate interactions with fans, to see there isn’t a necessary separation.
Sascha K: One wouldn’t work without the other. If they didn’t have KMFDM they would like some other band.
SMN: Yeah. Exactly.
Sascha K: We get our share of the pie of people that are ready to hear good music. Presume that KMFDM was good. Good for you music, let’s say.
SMN: Yeah, it is good for the music.
Sascha K: Also, of course, it has to do with the message. It’s always this fine balance between very clear and direct political messages, political stances and self-deprecating dark humor. That seems to fly really well. Often times I read this and that, hear someone saying that it seems KMFDM are making the same album over and over. Which of course is not true, but in a way it is of course true because this is who we are and this is where the stuff comes from. Why would we all the sudden make a new age album or swing jazz?
SMN: Yeah. There’s always going to be that one person.
Sascha K: Obviously, you can’t do it right for everyone.
SMN: That’s for sure. This is going to be our last question and it’s one that we ask every artist. If you were stuck on an island and you could only bring one album, one movie and one book, what would they be?
Sascha K: Had you asked me that a month ago the answer would have been different. Today I tell you it would be the book The Goldfinch by Donna Todd. The movie would probably be Chappie.
SMN: I’ll go see that.
Sascha K: Do you know Chappie?
SMN: I’ve seen the previews. I know Die Antwoord’s in it. I haven’t gotten the chance yet.
Sascha K: Yeah. Okay, Chappie would be the movie today. The album would be T-Rex, The Slider.
SMN: Okay. Nice. I think a lot of times when we ask this, it’s really for artist recommendations so we can get into new books, movies and music.
Sascha K: Yeah. The T-Rex album, doesn’t really fit the contemporary context of the other two, but that’s the honest answer.
And honesty really is the best policy. For more from this uniquely passionate and thoughtful band, check out their latest 2014 LP Our Time Will Come.
KMFDM will be opening their tour on Saturday, July 18 at The Showbox. Find your tickets here.
Interview by Sunny Martini
