StarVox: The night of the Das Ich concert in Dallas was a long one. The bands played, and finished the show early. Socializing afterwards drug out the teardown into the wee hours of the morning. Followed by a congregation at Denny's that lasted all the way until 4 AM, everyone was short on sleep. Early that afternoon, the folks from Das Ich, In Strict Confidence, Beyond Hope, some of the guys in another local industrial act, Replicate, the other employees at Café Cybre, and myself all met up at the Café for more. The musicians took turns in and out of the concert room, where Beyond Hope had their equipment setup in a makeshift studio. In another corner, people congregated for an informal chess tournament. Meanwhile, I had an opportunity to speak with Bruno Kramm one on one.

StarVox: You tour the United States quite often. What brings you back time and time again?

Bruno Kramm: Its because we bring out new albums and the organizers request it. We have a representative here in the United States in New York. He takes care of all our shows. He phones or emails us each time and says "Well now it's time again to do a tour of the United States." We love to tour the United States because it's really different from the way we tour the European countries. There we are really well-known so we have a big trailer and everything is great and well organized. We play in these big clubs, not like normal clubs but concert halls and stages. You sometimes lose contact with the audience because you have these big barriers everywhere. Its nothing like the original club atmosphere. That's cool about the United States when we tour here, it's like our early beginnings again. We play in these little clubs, and its great. It just brings you back to our roots.

StarVox: Right! Cool. Do you have any advice that you would pass on to newly forming industrial bands?

Bruno Kramm: First of all the best thing is to find a European label because at the moment Europe has the biggest scene for electronic industrial music. I know from my own experiences that American companies aren't so easy to work with. In Europe, I think the companies are organized better and there is more of a kind of major label appeal so everything works out fantastically.
And I think it's best for a band from here to have a good demo. I prefer a band from America to have already done all the production work. It should sound perfectly, and not just be a simple demo. Its just too expensive for a label to bring over a newcomer band to produce them in Europe. Its best if the band does the whole production work with a good, but not too expensive producer here. Have a kind of finished product with artwork and everything already.
Perhaps videotape your show, that's an important thing. ... There's the Internet. You can find all the addresses for all the major labels. So it's not so hard.

StarVox: M'kay. Right!

Bruno Kramm: Get organized, that's all.

StarVox: - laugh - Yeah! No doubt. You began releasing music about the same time that the Berlin wall came down. How did the Berlin wall's demise effect art and music in Germany?

Bruno Kramm: When it happened, it didn't effect it so much in the beginning about art. Its interesting because we have actually 10 years now since the wall came down

StarVox: Right! This month.

Bruno Kramm: There's a lot of discussion on German TV and radio right now. I watched a series on TV talking about what changed. Some basic influences from the artists of the Eastern part of Germany switched over to the Western part. Finally they had to say about literature, about theater, and about music that it's really sad that a lot of the stuff that came from East Germany got erased and oppressed by the Western culture. Its really sad.
I think it's not good because the same point comes up that a lot of people in Eastern Germany are really frustrated about everything changing. When Germany first unified again and the wall first came down it was like "yeah!" and a big, big rush, and everybody was happy about that. But finally everybody came down to the point that it was just a thing about economic systems, and how we tried to push our capitalistic system to the East Germans. So people in the East German are forming Communist parties, and trying some of their basic ideas again.
For a long time in America, Communism was the evil kind, or whatever. I think that was just to meet some kind of basic social ideas because everything is only based on egoistic masterplans for getting more money. For that reason, we need some more influence from the Eastern part.
But actually, on the artistic things it's like everything, even art, is now part of a construction of business. Today art is business, you know? If you can call yourself an artist, they ask "Are you selling?" Like that. So you see today it's also a thing about business.
I don't think that the Eastern art scenes get a big influence out of the whole of Europe. Its sad after 10 years when you see what happened. Its really sad at the moment.

StarVox: - very softly - Okay. Umm. Your music has been described as "the alienation of the individual"

Bruno Kramm: Oh no.

StarVox: And "the holocaust of self-contempt in modern human society."

Bruno Kramm: Oh my God. Yeah, I think that came from our bio.

StarVox: - blushing and laughing - Yes it did!

Bruno Kramm: My God! - chuckle - I have no idea who wrote that!

StarVox: - giggle - Can you go into a little more detail of the ideas of your music?

Bruno Kramm: I have no fucking idea. You know? - chuckle -

StarVox: - cracking up -

Bruno Kramm: That must be something the label manager wrote. Just listening to the music getting drunk and writing some cool lines. The basic idea is to just do music and to bring different styles together. Privately I came from classical music.

StarVox: Myself as well.

Bruno Kramm: Wow! Cool. Yeah, I've always wanted to bring that to the music. I just hate that really boring, simple electronic music. You know that "BOOM BOOM BOOM" where nothing happens about harmonics and melodies. That was the basic point; to bring that in.
Also, we tried hard to work again with the German language because after the second world war it was kind of erased. Nobody worked again with German language in their own music and culture.
If you watch the German scene, it's only a kind of 4X music and that kind of stuff. In the last 10 years it came back in, and some people tried working with their own mother language. Like the hip hop we have now is kind of German hip hop. Its really interesting because it has its own culture. Like in France, they have a French hip hop culture.
And in the darkwave/electronic industrial scene, it comes up now a lot and people are working more and more with the German language. There is no basic meaning [to our albums], though. There is nothing behind it. We have a different concept from album to album.

StarVox: Good deal. Umm.. Now, I understand that Stefan attempts to capture the same theatrics from dance and theater into your shows.

Bruno Kramm: Yeah, I think Stefan is always doing the show by reacting to the music, and expressing the music in his own dancable way. He has no real concept about that. Its a lot of intuitive dancing. When he speaks about that he says only that he tries to improvise on himself. It comes like that. He just has the talent.

StarVox: Now, I heard that you in the 80s you had a band called Fahrenheit 451.

Bruno Kramm: - grin - Oh yeah, a long time ago, yeah.

StarVox: Did you name it after the book?

Bruno Kramm: After Ray Bradbury's book, yeah.

StarVox: What inspired you to name it after the book?

Bruno Kramm: At that time, I loved that book. It was a great influence. It was the same time that I was reading books like George Orwell's "1984" or Aldof Haxley's "Brave New World." I got really inspired about the future logic.
That's not science fiction, it's only analysis of how the future can go on. I was really inspired by that, and so I came up with it. But I only released some tracks, and Fahrenheit was canceled after 3 or 4 tracks. Then it was called Alva Novalis. I started doing a new album for that new band, and then the whole album was erased by the computer. I never did it again because there is no time.

StarVox: Yeah.

Bruno Kramm: I get so many production jobs in the studio that I have no time for doing other projects.

StarVox: Right. In your studio, you've done quite a bit of work with the death metal band, Atrocity. What do you enjoy most about that kind of music?

Bruno Kramm: Its kind of strange. About five years ago, we did a joint album with them called "Deliver." It was kind of a cross-over. I started doing my studio professionally 10 years ago, so they liked my studio and asked me to do their next records. I just produced them, and the third record I did for them was really successful. It was called "80s," and it was an 80s cover version album. It went really high on the German Billboard Chart lists. It sold more than 60 or 80,000 records from that album. So from that point it became that all the metal bands were asking me to do production work. And actually, I fucking hate metal music.

StarVox: - laughing -

Bruno Kramm: But you know, after that successful album there are now other bands like Crematory, like I had this American band called Saviour Machine in my studio. Many, many other bands in this dark metal whatever kind of stuff think that when they come to my studio they will have a similar success like Atrocity. Its really sad at the moment. I'm just doing metal bands, but I don't like it. - grin - But it's good for income because I get a lot of money from doing those bands.

StarVox: Right.

Bruno Kramm: But it's definitely not my music.

StarVox: Tell us more about your studio, Danse Macabre.

Bruno Kramm: I started it 15 years ago, but at that time it was not professional. The first step to being a professional studio was about 10 years ago, and it was in the beginning just a project studio with like 16 tracks. In the last 8 years it really got bigger and bigger, and really professional. So now, it's a really high quality studio and there are not many in Germany for that kind of style.
Its completely digital. We have more than 120 channels there. We have a really huge mixing desk. For electronic people it's a wonderful studio because we have synthesizers from all decades. We have tons of synthesizers there, and samplers. The same about recording equipment. All kinds of analog and digital recording systems. So it's getting bigger and bigger.
2 years ago I moved to a new place, a castle. What's so great about that castle is that I have more and more recording room. So I have a big recording booth for every project, and one for extra stuff. Its really getting to be a huge complex for production, and that's cool.

There was an interruption due to a telephone call from a DJ at the local gothic club inviting everyone out to the club for the evening. It took a little longer than expected as there was a bit of confusion regarding the spelling of the German names of all 7 touring artists.

StarVox: Alright, so we were just talking about your studio. Let's see. Often when you know someone in town, you will stay in people's homes instead of hotels. What is your draw to that?

Bruno Kramm: We love to meet people. We have met a lot of really cool people. Everybody spreads out. That guy wants to stay with this person, and that with that person. Its just easier than having one hotel room. We try to have on normal show days hotel rooms because then everybody is at the same place. But when there's an off day like today, everybody spreads out. Its just fun having parties, you know? Its just not only business on tour. We want to have fun. We do not get a huge profit from touring the United States. Its just having some fun and a vacation.

StarVox: You mentioned that you recently moved into a castle. What's the history of the place, and how did you end up moving in there?

Bruno Kramm: We moved in because it was just so neat. We had such high costs for rental of the old studios. It was a really huge place, and it was getting bigger and bigger. I had to rent extra space for it. Then I had an apartment, and a second apartment for my girlfriend, and all that. It was growing and growing, so I finally ended up paying about 5,000 DM, that's around $2500, only in rental. So I said "That's too much money! I need to find a place to buy." And so the bank offered me, and actually my mom who bought it with me, a good deal where I pay around $1000 a month for a place. We were in search for a really huge place that everybody could live. There is me, my girlfriend, my sister, my mom, everybody because we're kind of family, you know? And Stefan also, and all the big studio recording rooms.
That wasn't easy because in the city you pay more than a million for a building like that. So it was just luck that we found this place. Its a castle located in the deep forest. Its really cool there. We got it really cheap, for about $150,000. That's great.

StarVox: That's really cheap!

Bruno Kramm: Also that means that there's a lot to rent away there. There was a lot of stuff broken so we had to do some renovation work, and it's still not all finished. That should take about 2 more years. Its the most beautiful plot in the world for us. Its from the 12th century, so we have really old cellars there, and a medieval prison there.

StarVox: Oh that's cool!

Bruno Kramm: It is, right! Its really funny. The thing is, it burnt down in the 16th century. It burnt completely to the ground, but the cellars were still there. Then they reconstructed it in the 16th century, so it's still old. Since those times, it broke down so we had to do a lot of work.

StarVox: I would imagine!

Bruno Kramm: Now it's doing pretty fine.

StarVox: If you're ever in need of more roommates let me know! - laughs -

Bruno Kramm: - laughing - Okay!

StarVox: I'd have to brush up on my German, though.

Bruno Kramm: - lauging - I tell you something, the winters there.. It snows, and everything like that!

StarVox: You know, I've never seen more than 6 inches of snow in my life.

Bruno Kramm: Its up to here in snow. You open the door, and kabloom! And I phoned home, and actually yesterday it started snowing like hell up there.

StarVox: Oh really? Glad to be in the warm weather??

Bruno Kramm: Yeah, sometimes. Actually for me sometimes it's too hot. Especially in Florida. I fucking hate it!

StarVox: What's one question that you've never been asked in an interview before that you've always wanted to answer?

Bruno Kramm: Oh! The problem is that we've had so many questions asked of us! - thinking and humming - Oh yes. If we have girlfriends, nobody ever asks us that.

StarVox: Okay! Do you have girlfriends? You mentioned yours.

Bruno Kramm: Yes, we have! - laughing - We have, Yes. We all have kind of fiancés.

StarVox: Well congratulations!

Bruno Kramm: Thanks! Sometimes we go out on tour, and everybody's doing some things that aren't okay. So we come home like these dogs that know they had done something wrong. Like bawoooooOOOOOO!!!! - laughing -

- everyone in the room laughs -