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An Interview with Sascha Konietzko and Lucia Cifarelli of KMFDM
Posted: Sunday, March 22, 2009
By: Ilker Yücel
Editor

For any musician to have survived 25 years in the entertainment business – an industry whose focus seems to center on making money and appealing to the new and current generation – is almost inconceivable, but for a band as prolific, forward-thinking, and consistently engaging as KMFDM to last a quarter of a century is a milestone. The industrial rock collective headed by Sascha Konietzko (a.k.a. Käpt'n K) have released countless albums, singles, EPs, and side projects, as well as started their own label imprint, KMFDM Records, and endured every form of turmoil imaginable for a band in the modern world. With their raucous mix of socio-political lyrics, tongue in cheek humor, and in your face aggression delivered by way of thunderous guitars and scorching synthesizer sequences, KMFDM have become one of the most respected and admired names in the underground music scene. Despite relocating to Germany after spending several years in the USA, thus disallowing a tour for the band's then-most recent album Tohuvabohu, Konietzko saw to it that 2008 would be just as productive a year for KMFDM, releasing the Brimborium remix album as well as continuing the re-release of their entire WaxTrax! back catalog through their current label, Metropolis Records, ensuring that KMFDM fans would be in no shortage of new material to sate their needs. Now, in 2009, the band release not only their 16th album, Blitz, an album that marks a return to the more electronically-dominated sounds of the early '90s and hearkens back to their initial rise to worldwide recognition, but also Skold vs. KMFDM, a collaborative effort with former member Tim Skold. As such, Sascha Konietzko and vocalist Lucia Cifarelli have a lot to talk about, from the themes and subjects explored in Blitz to the effects of European vs. American politics on the band's current outlook, as well as touching on how they've adapted to the ever changing market and the shift to digital media. Konietzko even lets ReGen readers in on his thoughts on what he considers the most significant event in KMFDM's history.

The new KMFDM, Blitz, is the first album of new material since your return to Germany. When you consider that you've spent the better part of your career based in the USA, how has living in Germany for the last year affected your writing style for the album?

Konietzko: To be honest, it really hasn't influenced anything at all, because I basically unpacked my container, set up my studio, and hadn't really left the studio ever since. So I've spent about a whole year completely holed up. I went out a couple of times to get a case of beer or go grocery shopping, but I hadn't really been out and hadn't really met anybody. I'm talking to people in the USA all the time, and I hardly speak any German.

Cifarelli: I feel like we're living in a little bit of a fishbowl right now. We haven't really experienced life in Germany since we moved here, so I think we're both in a little bit of a shock, and neither one of us were really quite prepared for what it was we got ourselves into. It's huge and big and scary, and it's never-ending, nonstop, all the time. It's not always easy to venture out and explore the city, so sometimes I feel like I have cabin fever, and I think he does too. As far as how it's affected the writing, I've really had to slow it down, because I move really quickly and I'm racing all over doing things that I needed to do for myself, for the band, for whatever, and I'm a go-getter. But in slowing down, I've really had a chance to think about what it is that I'm saying. I think being here has helped me to slow down and made me get inside the ideas of the songs a little more than I have in the past. I don't know if that's necessarily true, but that's what it feels like to me. Some of it is really heavy and really ugly, and some of it nobody might even get. When I think about what I've written on this record, whether it's understood or not, it's not pretty subject matter at all. But I'm an observer of life and the things that people do to each other and to themselves, myself included, and I'm documenting it all through song.

The rest of the band is based in the USA, and Tohuvabohu was not written with all the band members at once like Hau Ruck and WWIII were.

Konietzko: Yeah, let's put it this way. WWIII was written pretty much with everybody around, and Hau Ruck was a bit of a departure from that, and Tohuvabohu was even more so, since we hardly ever got together during the process. Blitz pretty much took on its own life, especially because I got started when everybody was quite busy doing other stuff. Sometime in June, I began working on the Skold vs. KMFDM album and put KMFDM on standby, and in the meantime, everybody had taken on other kinds of obligations. I pretty much wrote the whole thing with Lucia, and Jules just came on during the last couple of weeks. Steve basically contributed guitar riffs to one track, and Andy didn't do any drumming on the album whatsoever, but he did provide a few loops on the same track as Steve. It's a very electronic album, and it's an entirely different process than how the other albums were made.

Over the past 25 years, KMFDM have had this continuity in terms of the subjects you've tackled lyrically, but again now living in a different climate in Europe, and with the change in administration here in the USA, what would you say are some of the topics that Blitz covers?

Konietzko: That's a really good question that will pretty much be answered once you hear the album. It obviously doesn't touch any of the Bush-bashing topics at all, as that is pretty much over and done now, and too much was said about it. The political climate here just about sucks as it does in the USA, just in a different way. People there kind of feel like they're not really part of their political process and just stick their heads in the sand and ruin their lives a little bit every day, whereas here it's like everybody basically has something to say and there are so many people with something to say that nothing gets done really. Blitz is a very political record, but it's more dubious and about politics in general. It's definitely as cynical as ever, the quote from the first song being 'Last call on Planet Fucked!'

A line like that seems fairly apocalyptic, almost more so than on WWIII. Would it be fair to say that you've gotten more cynical than usual on this album?

Konietzko: I would say that irony is my weapon against falling into a sarcastic hole.

One of the standout songs is 'Bitches,' and it's very reminiscent of 'Sucks' with its mix of KMFDM's self-aggrandizing and self-deprecating humor. What is it about those songs that you seem to have a knack for writing?

Konietzko: It's definitely along the lines of 'Sucks' and 'Intro,' except this time it's not so much about us. It's about the bad fans.

Between songs like that and some past public statements you've made against people that have stolen your music via illegal downloads and such, has it ever been a concern that you might alienate some of your fans?

Konietzko: I don't give a shit. I'm an artist, and I live for my art and from my art, and if some knucklehead thinks that everything can be stolen, then they're definitely wrong. It's a passing phenomenon, I think, and eventually something will happen and someone will come up with some kind of code where all these sorts of copyright issues are going to be reinstated and prosecutions will be possible. And you know what? I will prosecute, absolutely! Call me Metallica, but it's really not fun. I went from having a pretty OK lifestyle to having to work 25/7 and not make a decent living anymore. But obviously a song like 'Bitches' is funny as hell, at least I think so. If anybody is going to feel alienated by it, then they're not KMFDM material anyway.

On that song, and especially on your cover of 'Being Boiled,' you actually do a lot more singing and employing a different vocal style from your usual aggressive and distorted style. What's prompting you to focus more on that vocal style now?

Konietzko: Not to say that you're not right, but if you go back into the past, there actually are a lot of tracks where I'm actually doing a lot of that kind of singing. Some tracks that come to mind are 'Mercy' and 'Leid und Elend' and a bunch of stuff where I'm doing vocals with En Esch or Raymond where I'm just sort of in the mix, and I'd fit myself in there and sort of do a stabilization of things. Basically, now I have the liberty to come up with styles and forms of expressions as I want to, because I don't have any collaborators on the vocals besides Lucia, so why not?

Cifarelli: It's pretty cool when Sascha sings like that, isn't it?

Lucia, how much do you think you're influencing Sascha's ability to sing, because his style is usually pretty aggressive whereas yours is usually more melodic?

Cifarelli: I feel like my style is much more aggressive, and I feel that I wasn't aggressive enough on this record. I don't think I have influenced him. Sascha influences me more than I influence him. He's very strong artistically, and he really begins to shape his vision of what he's going to do even before he begins a record. He's always looking to stretch and pull and bend and weave in a way that he maybe hasn't on a record before, and I think he's just taking stock of what it is he's done before and what it is that he wants to do on the new record. There's a lot of forethought that goes into trying to make a record that has a lot of dimension to it, and that would require him to do a bit more singing. A song like 'Being Boiled' he could do in any number of ways, and he could have done it in any number of ways, but the way he does is a lot more interesting, because it would have been so easy to just bang it out and be really tough on it. That would've been the easy way out, but he decided to do something that he didn't do before, and I didn't have any say in that whatsoever. I didn't give him any advice, and when he told me the song that he was going to do, I just flipped out, because I've always loved that song. I thought, 'That's just fucking great! How are you going to do it?' That's always what I say: 'How are you going to do it? What are you thinking?' That's where I come in, and if anything I try to focus him by asking him tons of questions. Everything that he does I find to be really good. I think I'm really biased because I'm a bit of a fan girl myself when it comes to him, so I certainly wouldn't want to say, 'I don't think that's cool. I don't think that's going to work.' I just say, 'Do it! And if it doesn't feel right, try another way.' I'm encouraging him to try everything simply because he can do anything he wants. He's a much better singer than I am when he wants to go down that singer road.

'Being Boiled' is a cover of a song by The Human League, one of the earliest electronic pop songs in the late '70s, and it's been inspirational to a lot of people. Ironically, they say that's the song that inspired Vince Clarke to start Depeche Mode.

Konietzko: I can definitely see that. I think I bought the Travelogue album by The Human League based on the cover because the dick in the record store wasn't playing songs anymore, so we'd be in there saying, 'Now play Gary Glitter' or 'Now play T-Rex,' so the fucker didn't want to play anything anymore. I put the record on, and I thought, 'Oh, that was a shit buy,' but by the time it got to track seven or eight, I start hearing, 'Listen to the voice of Buddha,' and I thought, 'Fucking hell! This is great!' And it became one of my absolute favorite albums of all time. I never listened to the rest, just that song. They got pretty terrible later on when they started playing the lighter pop fare.

Also on the subject of vocals, Cheryl Wilson does lead vocals on 'Strut,' and you've worked with her since the Xtort album. What's the working relationship with her been like over the years, as she seems to be one of the more consistent guests to appear on KMFDM's music?

Konietzko: Cheryl is a very professional studio singer in Chicago, and she goes around to all of the Chicago studios and gets hired professionally, and she makes her living entirely off of her voice. This song was the odd job in the whole album where everything else happened in the flow of things without thinking too much. At some point, Andy called me up and said, 'I really want to work on something.' I said, 'What do you want to work on? Why don't you come up with something?' And he said, 'I've got some pretty funky ideas.' And I had just recently recorded this sort of P-Funk bass that somehow felt like it could be the chorus of a pretty funky song, like an old school KMFDM song, so we exchanged our materials, and lo and behold, it all fit together perfectly. Andy created some sort of a piece of the puzzle, and at some point I was talking to Tim Skold, and he said, 'I've come up with something, and I don't know if it's anything we can use. I don't know what to do with it, because it's pretty funky.' And I said, 'Well, what key is it in and what's the BPM?' He said, 'It's in E and it's at 124.' 'That's funny because I have a song in E and 124 that's pretty funky.' So he sent me his pieces, and I fit them in, and he made the list, and basically everybody had created a piece of the song. Lucia came in and started writing lyrics for it, and she said, 'This really needs to sound Cheryl Wilson-like.' So we called up Cheryl, and she was in the studio in Chicago with our longtime recording engineer, Chris Shepherd, and they put her vocals on the existing material. I said, 'Great, but now, it almost reminds me of material from 1981, so I think we need to have some Steve White freestyle guitar playing.' That's when Steve under Jules' guidance did the guitars, and the song was done.

And Lucia had done a duet with Dorona Alberti on the 'Asleep' track on the Attak album, and KMFDM has had a long association with her as well. Obviously, you're used to singing with other people like Sascha and Raymond Watts, but what's it like to work with someone whose history in KMFDM is that much a part of their unique style?

Cifarelli: I don't really see it as a duet, and a lot of people contributed to the writing of that song. By the time I got the music to that song, I really loved it, and Sascha told me the style that he was going for. When I wrote the lyrics for that, it was becoming blatantly clear that I wasn't the one to sing it. We started to think about who should sing it, and we didn't have the luxury of months and months to think about every female that's ever sung in KMFDM or every female that we would ideally like to work with. We just thought about the voice that could do this, and that was Cheryl. She was the one to sing it; I certainly couldn't sing that, as I don't have that kind of voice, and that's a fact, but I knew that the song I was writing was going to be for her even before I wrote it down, because the style isn't really a style that I can sing. How did I feel about sharing vocal duties? I don't feel like I did share vocal duties. I really see it as Cheryl is the singer of that song, and I'm in there just to fatten it up a little bit in certain places. But as far as the history, you know, man? I've got to be honest with you, but I feel like I've been in this band for long enough now that I can let a lot of that go, and I don't feel intimidated by any former member. I feel that I've definitely carved out a very important place in KMFDM history, and it was an honor to have her perform on that song, not so much because of her history in KMFDM but because I see her as an unbelievable singer. To me, that is more intimidating than the history, because she has a voice that is...you know, the grass is always greener. She's got this big soulful voice, and I would've liked to have been born with a voice like that; unfortunately, I wasn't. It's a very weird feeling of being excited that I could write a song that she could sing and being a little envious that I didn't have the type of voice to do it myself. I always tell people that if I can do it, then anybody can. That's really how I feel, and that's not me being humble. That's where I started from, with just a sheer desire to do it. I didn't wake up and pearls fell out of my mouth; I had to train long and hard, and I had to go through a lot of emotional stuff to find out who I was, and in finding that out, that's how I found my voice. There are some people that are born with these exquisite voices, and they don't have to do anything but open their mouths. For most of us, we have to work at it, and it's an honor when anybody says that they wish they could sound like me. I've got to work at it myself. [Laughs.]

There is also the song 'People of the Lie,' which is also the title of the M. Scott Peck book. Was that book a direct influence, at least lyrically?

Cifarelli: The title certainly was influenced by Peck's book. I'm actually very surprised that you picked that up, because a lot of people don't know about that book. I'm sure there is stuff in the book that could tie in with the song. It's been so long since I've read the book that I can't really pick up on the particulars. I was thinking more in terms of...I guess I was influenced by the election in a way, and my reaction to the activities of that Sarah Palin woman and all of these freaks that were coming out of the woodwork. It's incredible to me that if a person could tout religious beliefs or any beliefs whatsoever and what's in vogue at the moment, whether they actually believe in it or not, but if they're selling it and it happens to be popular at the moment, people get sucked into it. The book talks about a lot of evil if I remember correctly, and I guess in writing the song and having this book sitting on my bookshelf as I was writing this track, I was coming up with a pattern of ideas of what I thought it could be about and all of these characters floating around in my consciousness and in life in general. I kept seeing the title of this book above my bed, and I thought, 'My god! That's the title!' It just really started to write itself. Whenever I write a song, it's very rare that it's about one specific person or one specific event, but it's usually a tapestry of what's going on in my mind and images and I'm pulling from all sorts of intangible things.

Konietzko: I don't know. The way that song worked was that I hated the way it sounded. I thought the groove was really nice, but it sounded like shit, so I just chained up every piece of distortion and compression that I had in my studio and ran the drum track through it, and all of a sudden it sounded really good. Probably about two hours later, the track was done in such a way that you hear it on the record. Nothing was really changed; a couple of things were tweaked a bit, and I think an edit was made, but it just sat right. I gave it to Lucia and we recorded the vocals, and I thought, '"People of the Lie," cool!' It reminded me of something, but I didn't really know what it was. What is it now?

It's a book written by M. Scott Peck in 1983 about people who come in and seem resistant to help, and so he came to think of these people as evil and the book is him trying to define evil in psychological terms.

Konietzko: I see. Well, the lyrical content is about people trying to push their religion on others, hence the line, 'Don't push your baby on me.' It's pretty much an anti-Christian song, or rather an anti-organized religion type of song. I think the whole idea stems more or less from expressions that we frequently have about we how we hate people who wear their beliefs on the outside. Ever since we moved to Germany, you see so many Turkish ladies here clad from head-to-toe, and you see these fucking Protestants running around with their crosses, and there's the constant discussion of can teachers of Turkish origin wear headdresses in class or not, or are the children allowed to wear the head garb, or is it okay to have crosses on the walls of the schools. And there are some really inflammatory feelings and late night discussions, and we spit our rage out, and that's really what inspired that song. The religious climate here is really different from the States, but it's very varied depending on where you go. If you drive a couple hours south, it's very Catholic, and there are religious artifacts everywhere. Every countryside road has these little huts with Jesus on the cross, and every street name is Holy Mother or whatever. And then there are the more northern folks here like the Norwegians and northern Germans that come from a Protestant and Catholic background, and their beliefs clash and split Germany into two camps that fought like a 30-year war with each other with the participation of the Turks, the Swedes, the French, the Croats, and for 30 years, it was like, 'Is it okay to renounce the Catholic church and still call yourself a Christian?' The 30-year war is a good topic, actually, and if you're looking for some crazy shit, that's a good war to go for.

In the last year, KMFDM have also released the three Extras volumes collecting all of the singles from the WaxTrax! period. What was it like to go through all of the old recordings and material, and did listening to and remastering it all help with any of the new ideas?

Konietzko: It didn't really play a big part in the new material at all. It was something I had put together in mid-to-late 2007. I just went through all of the masters, captured the best versions of whatever was there, and sent them all off to be remastered by Ben 'Big Bass' Gardner in Hollywood, and they just came out on a schedule. That was something that didn't really affect the writing of the new album at all. It was basically put into this production chain. I'm sounding like an American, but with the economy being what it is, who has the money and time to put out singles now?

Metropolis has recently started instituting digital promos, and with CD sales going down significantly, how do you feel that KMFDM has been adapting to this change in the format for music to be released?

Konietzko: It's definitely the case that we're over 60 percent on digital sales now, but overall, the sales have undeniably gone down. Basically, when you put a physical product out there, you're going to get swamped about four to six months after the release with return, and returns are really expensive, because it totally sucks. You don't have that problem with digital releases, but the thing is I still suspect that the vast majority of people who listen to KMFDM do not bother to pay for it. It's a sad fact.

Having been in the business for as long as you have, what are your thoughts on what could be done about it?

Konietzko: Well, Metropolis basically said that they want remixes so that the digital sales can get boosted. I said sure, and I asked what remixers he had in mind, and Dave Heckmann – the head of Metropolis – said Assemblage 23 and Combichrist. Andy LaPlegua and I are good friends, and he's good for a laugh, and we toured with him, so we know he's good for a remix, and as far as Assemblage 23, Dave said that that's what gets played in the clubs, and that's what we need. I figure that there is going to be a remix by Das Ich and some other stuff that I can't quite talk about, because I'm not sure if it's going to happen. There are going to be a number of remixes, and they will be available in various capacities, and it's going to make up for the fact that there is no single and that Dave needs additional material to keep people constantly interested, because it stands to reason that if someone buys the album and the remixes online, then they're going to be online again. That's my problem with it all, though because I'm in the business of making music, not selling it. The business aspect of what I'm doing I could cry over, so I look at the creative aspect and I'm a happy man.

One of the earliest MP3 downloads KMFDM provided through the KMFDM Store was the remixes of various tracks, mostly from the Attak record. Since a lot of artists are now utilizing remix contests and allowing their fans to do remixes, what is the potential that you guys might go down that route?

Konietzko: There are no real plans for a remix contest. That's the kind of thing that is so commonplace nowadays, and I think it's more interesting to do the unusual stuff.

Since KMFDM didn't tour in 2008 due to the move, are there any plans to tour in 2009 for the new releases?

Konietzko: We're looking at two months in the summer doing some festivals in Europe, and then we're looking to return to the States beginning around September 25 and ending around Halloween, and we will begin in the DC area and end in the Atlanta area.

Let's talk about the recently released Skold vs. KMFDM record. How did you and Skold get back in touch and come to start working on this record?

Konietzko: I read about the fact that he had departed the Manson camp, and I sent him an e-mail to ironically congratulate him for getting away from it. I asked him what he was going to do, and I could sense that he was feeling a bit lost, so I said, 'Hey man, whenever you want, I'm open to do something. Not necessarily KMFDM, but definitely something. I'm in the middle of a pretty grueling project right now that I wouldn't mind taking my head off and get some different perspectives on.' So a day later he called me and said, 'Why don't we do a Skold vs. KMFDM record,' and I laughed, saying, 'Ha, Skold vs. KMFDM, Pig vs. KMFDM.' I asked how we were going to do it, and he said, 'I wrote three songs in the last two days, and that's a good start.' And I said, 'Yeah, I've got a bunch of songs here that I've been working on for the past few months that are not very KMFDM-sounding.' So we set up an FTP server and traded files and songs, working on each other's material, and basically three months later, it was done. We put ourselves to work and worked nonstop until it was all done. The record was made entirely from scratch and it's a really interesting project.

It sounds very spur of the moment.

Konietzko: Very much so. Him being nine hours away from me meant that obviously we worked with each other when we took naps. He'd work on stuff, and then he'd take a bit of a break, during which time I'd work on stuff, and we'd get basically two full shifts into a 24-hour day.

The last time people heard you work with Skold was the Attak record. How would you say that working with him this time around was different, apart from the dynamic of working on the Internet because of the distance?

Konietzko: We connected pretty seamlessly. The thing was when we worked on MDFMK, we lived a quarter mile apart, and we'd spent quite a bit of time together in one room and got really anal, just worked shit out, figuring certain things out. On this record, we laid down the ground rules that as long as everything is electronic and there won't be any performances along the lines of guitar riffs or any of that nonsense, and that there would be no second guessing so that whatever goes will go. If he puts something down, that's it. If I put something down, that's it. That's kind of how it worked, and sometimes you can still get stuck in the framework of what you think works, and so it was like, 'I've got a silly idea, I'm going to do it.' Anything that came to mind was basically utilized. If I felt like saying, 'Head stuck up your ass!' then I did it. And once that was done, I naturally began to turn back to my KMFDM project from three months ago, and it had totally given me a new perspective on it and made things really easy and fun at that point. I'll describe what happened with me during the initial phases of making the KMFDM album. I'd begun working on the tracks and compiled maybe 18 or 19 ideas and then I was like, 'Huh...now what?' And usually that would be the time when I'd take it to Jules: 'Take this and play guitar on it.' Jules wasn't available, and I kind of didn't see it that way anyway, so that's just how it worked out.

Are there any plans to include Skold in any of your tour plans?

Konietzko: No, there are no plans at this point. For now, it's been regarded as a purely one-off studio project. As of now, there are no plans.

And Lucia wasn't involved in the Skold vs. KMFDM record?

Konietzko: No. It would've had to be an MDFMK record at that point.

KMFDM has had a long association with Metropolis Records, almost as long as you've worked with WaxTrax! How do you feel that working with them has been of benefit to KMFDM, especially now with record label formats shifting and major labels losing their standing in the industry?

Konietzko: Metropolis is a strange beast. It kind of operates by the standards that WaxTrax! did in terms of being totally honest, totally open, and totally artist-friendly and completely artist-driven. On the other hand, we're not in a position to spend shit-loads of money for marketing and advertising and that kind of stuff. It's good to have a bank, and it's good to know that your bank is good and honest, and with it all being a co-release between Metropolis and KMFDM Records, they've taken over a lot of the work that in a traditional sense a label may have done. I can't say anything that is not absolutely great about Metropolis. I just call up and say, 'I need this and this and this done, and I need a record sent to him and him and her and her,' and it's going to get done today. That's basically like I would do it.

2009 marks the 25th Anniversary for KMFDM. Looking back on your history, what would you say have been the most significant events in terms of what you think is the most important thing you've learned?

Konietzko: Well, the most important moment was certainly when I got off my ass and went to a bank and said, 'I need a loan. I need 10,000 Deutsche Marks to buy some tickets to take my strange band to America,' and they looked at me and said, 'OK, how are you going to pay it back? You don't have a credit history with us, and how will you keep from overdrafting,' and all that kind of shit. 'Why would we give you this money?' I said, 'Look, this is a once in a lifetime chance for me. Give me the money and I'll make sure that I pay it back within two months.' They did, and I did, and that was it.

And that's how you brought KMFDM to America for the first time?

Konietzko: Yeah! And what I've learned maybe to do what I do and to still not take it too seriously.