09-10-2009:

OOMPH!-"MONSTER" TRACK BY TRACK part I(titbits translation)

(Dero)Yeah, our new album, our 10th, “Monster? actually got its name because we looked at each other in the studio and said, Wow, after all this time in the studio we all look like little monsters!
STUDIOREPORT
(Dero)It s true that the lyrics and themes on this album are not quite as accessible as on some of our previous albums where there was already a complete concept or common thread in place like for instance “Wunschkind?or Defekt?
There were too many different topics for that. In spite of that, it still focuses on the darker side of the psyche, on human depravity, and the title Monster? fits.

(Crap)In our opinion, the music on the new album has gotten harder again.
And we definitely tried to be more experimental on this album than on the one before it. Particularly in regard to the sounds.
What else did we do differently, Mr. Flux?...

(Flux)We definitely also tried other things musically. For instance, we ve got a tango on board for the first time, we’ve got a blues number.
Of course, it’s all in an Oomph!-context, the way we would interpret a tango or a blues song. But for us, it’s definitely new for us to tackle those kinds of rhythms.

(Crap)We already started in the studio back last year in September, I think, and we actually had almost everything finished by December. But we added on almost another 3 months in the search for the ‘right single? so to speak.
And now we re actually really almost finished. At the moment, we’re adding the ‘final touches? and we re also working on the second single that we’re still thinking about. But the main work is actually done now, luckily!

(Flux)For my part, I’m responsible along with the others for the production.
Engineering is usually my role in the recordings, for recording the sounds by microphone, and then afterwards for the mix. I mix the whole album that the three of us have produced. So in that sense, each of us has their own ‘special field? but in principle, each one of us can do everything.

(Crap)I m responsible for any form of ‘sound design?in the band. I play the bass tracks and guitar tracks on the records, but I m also the guy when the issue is ‘sound design? I don t know if you’ve been inside the studio, but these days we really don’t have much stuff standing around anymore. We used to have loads of synthesizers and other hardware standing around, but nowadays you can do most of that by computer. I really like it because when we were still working with lots of different hardware, sometimes it would take almost an hour to upload all the sounds that we wanted in all the various machines. We also had some really old things like Minimoogs where you couldn’t store any sounds at all.
Sometimes we had to actually take Polaroid photographs of the instrument settings and then try to recreate them. But thankfully, you don’t have to do that anymore. Meanwhile everything works “virtually? so to speak. The power that today s computers have opens up endless possibilities. For example, all of our drum tracks are programmed, even if some people think that it’s played live.
And when you want to have drum sounds, you can take a program like this, for instance. This is “Battery?from Native instruments. This is a bass drum, a snare.
And you can take these sounds and work on them. You can shorten them, for example, and make the bass drum stroke shorter. Or longer.
You can add effects to them, and on and on ?br />
(Flux)We recorded the entire album naked just to capture the vibe and the inspiration better. That’s actually where the title “Monster?comes from. You can explain it in really elaborate terms, but the banal reality is that Dero looked down at me and said, What a monster!? Then I said, What a cool album title! Let’s take it.?br />
(Dero) What a disgusting little hairy monster.?
With us, production and composition are mixed together.

(Crap)There s not a separate ‘composition phase? no separate production phase? We re still composing during the production. And that always makes it difficult to take a break, to come out of the song. For instance, for a while we tried to work on several songs at the same time. But we couldn’t make any progress. It didn’t work at all.
Meanwhile, we’ve learned a lot through the years and we know how to use it.
And the way we work together really works very well. I always think if someone were to observe what we do from the ‘outside? they d be wondering how we ever get finished at all! Because we work in a very scattered way, everything is going on all at once.
I don’t think that chaos is really a problem for us. I also think that chaos is actually a driving force behind art in general. It always gets difficult when we try to organize all this chaos, like keeping the deadline for the album. That’s when things get difficult for us. Anything to do with “order?is difficult for us.
We actually have less problems with chaos!

TBC