Neue Deutsche Wellen
- Issue #159 (May '97) | Interviews
- By: Rob Young | Featuring: Bernd Friedman, Mouse On Mars, Pluramon, Wolfgang Voigt
- Printable version
Cologne and Düsseldorf are hives of musical activity. A loose community of musicians, label owners, club runners and sonic theorists is building on the legacies of Can, Kraftwerk and DAF, creating the electronic soundtrack for a united Europe. Rob Young meets the stars of selten gehörte Musik: Mouse On Mars, Mike Ink, Dr Walker, A-Musik, Pluramon and more
'Selten gehörte Musik'. It means 'seldom heard music', and it defines the music policy at Liquid Sky Cologne, a former Persian disco in the centre of this lively city close to the French border. Since opening in August 1996, this long, thin bar and its listening room, complete with graffitoed blue walls, has become a nexus for an extraordinary synergy of musical activities which have been bubbling away in Cologne for some years now, and which are finally surfacing via a number of mainly underground, self-financing record labels, record shops, collaborative networks, gigs, and ambitious festivals planned for the rest of this year.
To penetrate this scene, there's no better place to start than Liquid Sky, which rolls out every night. On the decks tonight is Georg Odijk, the unassuming manager of A-Musik, which is both label and a tiny shop in the heart of Cologne's Belgian Quarter. Earlier in the evening, as Georg realised he was late for the DJ date, I watched as he plucked records almost at random from his stock; nevertheless, he weaves them into an incredibly-paced arrhythmical set that glides from Webern string quartet serialism to electroacoustic drones, ultra-woozy dubs from Lee Perry (Black Ark period) and Scientist, deep pulsing Teutonica from Germany and Austrial, Ennio Morricone, Godflesh, Jim O'Rourke/Derek Bailey-style acoustic plucking. What's more, I don't seeany disapproving glances from the assembled club goers; no one asks him to play something they can dance to or attempts to pull the plug. The only criticism, he tells me the following day, came from the management. "They siad it was not curious enough. they told me, 'Your job is to make it more strange!'"
Maybe this isn't so surprising: the manager, after all, happens to be Ingmar Koch, aka Dr Walker, one half of German Techno outfit Air Liquide and participator in any number of rolling Electronica projects involving such Transatlantic co-conspirators as Jammin' Unit, Khan, Frenk Heiss and even Holger Czukay. Even among his closest collaborators, Walker has a reputation as something of a loose cannon. "The whole thing here with Liquid Sky is about communication," he tells me. "It's not about being alone, if you come in the club here and sit on your own for four hourse, you're, like, master of disaster." The music that gets aired here is loose, improvised, exploratory, distorted, 'fucked up'; the lounge atmosphere promotes interaction, co-minglingnetworking, all reflected in the Friday night live improvised collaborations, like the marathon featuring Walker, Holger Czukay, The Bionaut (aka Jorg Burger) and Frank Heiss that happened the previous week. "I want psychedelic trip parties," says Walker. "The good thing is that the people from Cologne, they are party people, they want to go out, they want to drink Kölsch [the locally-brewed beer], they want to get fucked up, they want to kiss each other. It's insane, but it's big fun."
To penetrate this scene, there's no better place to start than Liquid Sky, which rolls out every night. On the decks tonight is Georg Odijk, the unassuming manager of A-Musik, which is both label and a tiny shop in the heart of Cologne's Belgian Quarter. Earlier in the evening, as Georg realised he was late for the DJ date, I watched as he plucked records almost at random from his stock; nevertheless, he weaves them into an incredibly-paced arrhythmical set that glides from Webern string quartet serialism to electroacoustic drones, ultra-woozy dubs from Lee Perry (Black Ark period) and Scientist, deep pulsing Teutonica from Germany and Austrial, Ennio Morricone, Godflesh, Jim O'Rourke/Derek Bailey-style acoustic plucking. What's more, I don't seeany disapproving glances from the assembled club goers; no one asks him to play something they can dance to or attempts to pull the plug. The only criticism, he tells me the following day, came from the management. "They siad it was not curious enough. they told me, 'Your job is to make it more strange!'"
Maybe this isn't so surprising: the manager, after all, happens to be Ingmar Koch, aka Dr Walker, one half of German Techno outfit Air Liquide and participator in any number of rolling Electronica projects involving such Transatlantic co-conspirators as Jammin' Unit, Khan, Frenk Heiss and even Holger Czukay. Even among his closest collaborators, Walker has a reputation as something of a loose cannon. "The whole thing here with Liquid Sky is about communication," he tells me. "It's not about being alone, if you come in the club here and sit on your own for four hourse, you're, like, master of disaster." The music that gets aired here is loose, improvised, exploratory, distorted, 'fucked up'; the lounge atmosphere promotes interaction, co-minglingnetworking, all reflected in the Friday night live improvised collaborations, like the marathon featuring Walker, Holger Czukay, The Bionaut (aka Jorg Burger) and Frank Heiss that happened the previous week. "I want psychedelic trip parties," says Walker. "The good thing is that the people from Cologne, they are party people, they want to go out, they want to drink Kölsch [the locally-brewed beer], they want to get fucked up, they want to kiss each other. It's insane, but it's big fun."