Creating.paradise is an upcoming electronic/EBM band from Germany. They made a positive impression on me with their first cd Killing Dreams. The two bandmembers, both called Bjoern, were so kind to tell us more about their musical project.
bm: Well, there’s Bjoern Honert responsible for vocals and lyrics and me, Bjoern Muehlnickel as the project’s mastermind. I do all the other stuff, from sampling to programming.
bm: Why do you think it sounds positive? Then you must believe in god. The meaning is more kind of the opposite that it may sounds. The name comes from a part of the lyrics of haujobb’s “Final Race”. This has been many years ago already. I don’t believe in god and when looking at the church and it’s history it always comes to my mind that some misery could have been avoided. That’s my way of thinking about it but everyone has to make up their mind themselves.
bh: When we were in school we used to talk about matrixes. Somehow bjoern said it had also something to do with music. I became very interrested and we started to meet every once in a while. He showed me his self-made sounds and we decided to start with some music. That was in the early 90ies and we were very young!
bm: Afterwards we played some self-modded toy-keyboards (resetting by just shorting some of the pcm-chips pins) so that strange sounds came out and recorded them. Only a few months later we had some tracks finished. Then we bought our first synthesizers and a atari, in early 1996 I already owned my own pc I bought from bjoerns dad. We were able to record in digital quality. From this point on I was always looking for music software for my pc. That was quite the nearly the point creating.paradise was born.
bm: Well, after all those years we have changed our description a few times. We were labeled as “experimental synthie-pop”, “dark electro” and many other, so today we call ourselves “progressive electronics” as long as we think it fits our music.
bm: For the music I only use a quite simple sample-player on my pc. That’s all. I’ve sampled a lot of our old hardware so we have a few strange sounds. We’re rarely using presets.
bm: That’s true. Most of our reviewers agree with our album and rate it accordingly. It was an awful lot of work to get this album done, just imagine we did the whole planning and shipping by ourselves so most opinions compensate this all. It’s great to see how other people think about us. This album and all the feedback we’ve received gave us back the strength we’d lost over the years.
bh: I am really satisfied with what we came up. And just like Bjoern said all the positive reactions brought us back on track.
bm: For “Killing Dreams” and “Pain Processor” I took samples from “The 13th Floor” for example, a very impressive story based on the book “Simulacron 3”. Vocals on “Sleeping In Concrete” are made from “Casablanca” which should be known by everyone. “Fingerprints”-Samples are taken by “Gattaca” and some are self-made. And, believe it or not, “All The Time In The World” contains samples from some porno-tape. :-) I often find interesting dialogues or scenes when I’m watching films and afterwards I sample them. They give a special atmosphere. Some of them are well known because they were used by many others before, but I guess most of them were never heard before.
bh: Well, actually i am a quite happy person. Somehow all my lyrics tend to drift into the direction of melancholy. I guess it comes from deep inside. For me I can say that it is easier to write lyrics from a desperate point of view. I can’t imagine to write about rainbows and sunny beaches. And I think it is much more important to show the people what’s wrong with the world instead of telling them about the fun of life.
bm: Me neither. I’m not depressed but I keep my eye open for some things. In some things I have a very lousy behavior too. We’re just humans.
bm: Yes, of course we sound like that! I guess most people who witnessed the dark electro-scene in the early 90’s would find anything special in our music today. I really love old bassdrums and percussion that were used by Skinny Puppy or especially Alien Sex Fiend. They have a real punch, sound slappy like hell and rock even if you do not excess the 150 bpm mark. I mean power is something completely different compared to speed but is a main thing in our music. So a slight reverb and tight compression can be found in many tracks. It simply rocks. But we also use modern, techie-sounding drums. They’re often layered and played in different ways, as you can hear for example in “My Pet Fuel” which only has 123 bpm. That’s true midtempo and even sounds well at 80% speed. In fact I often listen to our tracks pitched below 100% speed and most of them sound pretty cool. :-)
bm: Well, it sure expanded our horizon. We made the 47th place and hell only knows why. Maybe because we are not evil enough, we didn’t sing about how evil and devilish we are but about some political events. Most people who voted for the contest maybe didn’t get the message, I think. The track is called “Render Inconscious” and can be mirrored upon the american president. It’s mp3 and lyrics are available through our website. Maybe the track was just too lousy, I dunno.
bh: Not really, compared to what kind of music other bands came up with. Sometimes it is hard to understand what the listener likes.
bm: Yeah, at the beginning it was the most important thing of course. We reduced the quality of our mp3’s to acceptable 112 kBps so people who want to have it in real good quality have to buy it. Although 112 kBps is a good quality either and we offer our tracks in whole lenght, even the newest ones, for free. Often you can find the final versions only on cd.
bh: Definately, downloads are an important medium in order to show our fans what we are working on. So the website is always up to date.
bh: Compared to the music Bjoern listens to, I must say that I really like with what he comes up. I think his style is not the style I like nor is mine the stlye he likes. It is his style and I like it.
bm: I won’t compromise. I know how the music I make “must” sound like and we keep our own style for over 10 years now without putting ourselves into a musical cage. And even if there is a slight different meaning about anything we talk it over and afterwards agree with each other without compromising.
bh: We are thinking about to play live this year, but we have no detailed plans!
bm: Yes, of course. Not only the sound. It all changes – one’s habit, mind and ability to see things in a different view although we sometimes listen to our first tracks and just think ‘Wow! This is incredible music!’.
bh: I would not say our first demo. The music we made back then was not really meant to be demosongs. We always thought of it, but never actually went in this direction. We only made about 30 copies of the tapes and gave them to our friends.
bh: I am going to university and study economics, besides that I try myself in playing soccer. That’s about it!
bm: My daily grind is some it-support and excel-related work.
bm: Of course. Sure it’s one of the most inspiring things to support the scene with new music they might love.
bh: Yeah. Music is a big part of my life.
bm: I’d choose haujobb’s “Freeze Frame Reality”, at the moment Run Level Zero’s “Walk The Psychopath”, Alien Sex Fiend’s “Another Planet”, Trevor Horn’s Soundtrack of Dark City and Chris Isaak’s “Baja Sessions” with me. I think that covers all. Where did you get the information from that there will be a cd-player? :-)
bh: Depeche Mode: “Violator” and “Songs of faith and devotion”, Smashing Pumpkins “Adore”, U2 “Achtung Baby”, Wir sind Helden “Die Reklamation” in order to remind me of my girlfriend! :-)
bh: Work on and get on!
bm: One never knows what’s going to come up next. Finally finding a label maybe, making even better music!
bm: Of course: visit us at www.creatingparadise.com and just do yourself the favor and listen to our music!
bh: Stay tuned! :-) Thanks for the interview!
Link:
Creating.paradise website.
