Convulsion Interview / May 1992 / Issue 2

Nitzer Ebb

[ photo ]

by Jon Bains

Nitzer Ebb began way back in early eighties and were one of the second wave of Industrial bands, producing their own particular variety of minimalist, rhythm oriented, chant music. In the nine or so years that they have been about the bands musical style has changed considerably moving more into the melodic side of things. Last years excellent Ebbhead album was hailed as a considerable move on from their previous albums. I met up with Dougie, half of Nitzer Ebb at their show at Calton studios in November, the first time they had played in Scotland for two years (due to problems with their promotor in the Midlands). With this tour, are you trying to build your presence up in the UK? We might as well give it another go, also it is embarrassingly lagging behind other countries, we've got to make amends, for instance, these shows apart from London aren't going to have any production. Whereas in Europe we are going to have a full whack, light show etc

Do you think that the climate is right for you to break through in the UK with the likes of NIN and Ministry doing well in both sales and press?

I am not sure, because I think the way that we have moved the sound of the band on is a step away from those other bands, it is quite gratifying bands like NIN, Cocks have taken a lot of influence from us, but it doesn't particularly interest us to sort of follow in any concepts, being in that mould. If bands like that come and pass that's fine by us, we'll just carry on in our own sweet way. I think that there is no really pressure on us to do that so were are quite fortunate.

As for your own aural evolution...

We were pretty bored shitless of that minimalist crap, it really is a concept that we knew we were going to run into, we didn't want to repeat our previous stuff, which we try not to do anyway, the next step was we touched on some ideas for songs, actual song structures, it seemed like the logical thing to do to write real songs, we sat down and wrote melodies and chord structures and that sort of thing, it was quite exciting for us since we hadn't done that sort of thing before, for us it was a learning process, quite a pleasing thing to do just as exciting as when we started the band and refused to have any of that. To build up songs through rhythm and the tension was mounting through that rather than any chord changes, it was exciting to to do that with chords and melodies.

Why have Wilder produce the album?

We thought about this quite heavily before we did the album. I approached Alan in a drunken stupor during the Mode tour last year in the states and it was taken as something I said in a drunken stupor as most people say when they are in a drunken stupor. But it started to dawn on us that it was a pretty good idea. Because Flood is an excellent engineer technically superb with the kind of technology that we are using, but can't fucking hold a note to save his life and can't dance so we thought we would at least get somebody who could at least hold a note. It seemed we could get the best of both worlds, we knew that we were moving into more melodic and more structured songs so we might as well get someone in to help out. We wrote all the songs within the first three months of last year and then we got Al and Flood to come in and listen and build the tracks up from there, where Bonn and I would be sitting there listening to a track and thinking ` Sounds a bit odd doesn't it?' Al would say, well it sounds shit. And then would tell us which way to put into the songs in tune so it was a time saving process having him around.

What about Jaz Colman on ASIS?

With the E.P. that was us trying out writing songs, so we thought, we took advantage of the situation we had which was we had some ideas when we came back from tour and we were in a strange studio doing it all ourselves and the songs were coming out so different at such a tangent which is what we wanted because we wanted to give the fans a bit more broader base to step into Ebbhead because we knew that we were going to widen the spectrum of things quite drastically. It seemed quite a good idea to get people to mix the tracks to take those tangents further the idea of how different ?? Jaz was a second choice, we wanted George Clinton to do it again, but he wanted fifteen grand and then Dan Mercer suggested Jaz and that's how it came about. He's a very sweet man, but he knows he's off his trolley, but he was quite nice about it, he said some bizarre things to us. He had to take us and teach us song structures.

And what about your activities in the last eighteen months ?

Well . . . we literally went into the studio straight after the DM tour and did AsIs, we finished it after Christmas, but Mute y'knoww, in their wisdom sat on it for basically years. It was meant to be a kind of flow thing where people could pick up on where we were going, get used to it, have time to expect something different, but it ended up a precursor to the album which was a bit unfortunate. January we started doing the Ebbhead album finished that in August, well Al finished it, we got a bit fucked off with it. I went home because my wife was having a baby. So we went off and Al mixed the album, we weren't really bothered by that stage. And since then we've been preparing for the tour, we did a show in London warming up for that which was a fucking disaster all round.

We changed round our system for playing live, because we were using more and more samples for each of the songs, and we needed to expand. We were flip flopping between 2 S-1000s and they were just product.

We found out recently what the problem was, it's been months searching every fucking program trying to find out what was going on, and it was naturally something to do with the Cuebase that we wrote everything on, that was sending out stupid information. . . .

Any thoughts about your coverage in, and the music press, in general?

Basically they are a bunch of twats, uninformed and unintelligable but I get the feeling that the journalists on the ground are pretty up for the band, the unfortunate thing is that the journalists that were on the ground when we started hated us, and now they have become editors, and they still hate us. But I think that it's because of that that's good enough to try and exclude us. But because we haven't bothered playing the UK and we're out having fun elsewhere they have the added excuse that they're not around so it doesn't matter what they're releasing or when they're touring. This tour is basically to give the UK one last chance, not for the punters but giving the press one last chance.

The general feeling in the States is really different. Because the categorisation is so vague "alternative", Alternative is like "The Wonderstuff, Red Hot Chille Peppers, Nitzer Ebb, and Janes addiction and that is alternative music. People will go and see an alternative band and we are an alternative band, whereas over here it is so segregated which is pointless because there is good music happening outside your particular categorization and the press rely on that because it sells. They rely on perfecting that idea and really trying to sell that to people because they make up new categories and put the bands in categories and it's all just a big game to keep them happy. But I think the other thing about the press in the UK is that it is based in London although a high percentage of the journalists were never born in London and came from the outside around the UK, usually small towns, usually small villages very similar to a band like Nitzer Ebb's background and I think it scares them that we don't give a fuck about where we come from and their trying to say "oh go on, London", and we say "fuck that London scene". When we lived in Chelmsford we ate shit, when we lived in Chelmsford we went mad. I think that scared them a bit because we presented them with a little piece of their past that they were trying to run away from and maybe that's why they cling on to everything so tightly because they don't want to go back.

Did you pick up on any of the alledged fascism associated with `Industrial music' in the US?

I didn't really pick that up, we are lucky because we have such a wide base in America, the audience are mostly kids - teeny boppers and they go and buy the album and say "that's cool". It's a real boys thing, that's what really bores me, all these boys slamming etc. What was really gratifying for me was the last show in London there were lots of girls there, like 50% of the audience were girls, that's real life to me if you are able to fill up a hall with girls and boys then you are doing something right.

As for stuff like "Join in the Chant" ...

We were fifteen, spotty and pretty uptight. We used to just have a laugh and it seemed really funny to us. We did fucking invite trouble, we wore black jodpurs, black riding boots shaved our hair, black shirts and white ties. We tried to look like totalitarian Nazi's, Commies whatever. We just wanted to look really hard. It wasn't even shock tactics. We really found that we were pissing people off by things like clothes and we found it so amusing and it just so happened that a thousand and one kids picked up on that and then that was what the scene was. Nowadays I can't really see the connection even with the horrible type "Industrial" which is really widely used and a bit of a vague term but I can't really see it now.

What have you against DJ's in DJVD?

It's nothing really to do with actual DJ's, because it's DJ's that made Nitzer Ebb, that's how we got signed to Geffen in the US, because DJ's in NY and Chicago played us. And in the UK the current DJ's who are the current producers - Paul Oakenfold, all those people, they were the first people to play us in the UK back in 1984. So we have no real beef with DJ's parsay. What we hate is this industry standard that has become . . hip hop is as much an industry standard as heavy metal which is as much again as soul and now dance, or this type of dance music has become an industry standard. So if you want to get on Top of the Pops you make a record that sounds like that and y'know its literally a process now to make every record sound like one record. There's like one DJ or Producer who's got control trying to make everything sound the same so instead of listening to bands, you're listening to some old cunt whose got this stupid perception about what things should be. That is a big jump back from like the seventies, and even the way Acid thing was rising up that was brilliant it was like the old punk ethos but although it's underground it's turned more to drugs and that kind of thing. It's kind of lost it's edge, lost it's meaning. Thats the thing, certain record companies want you to get certain DJ's because they want to sell your records.

Are you Happy with Mute?

At the moment we are having a few problems with a general feeling from them of not really being that committed to the project. I am not sure that all the staff are committed, which is understandable in a way because we hardly ever tour here, we are by far more successful elsewhere and we have a hard time with press so it's not easy doing Nitzer Ebb in the UK and it is just really getting over the problems, not trying to pin any blame and just get down and try to sell some records.

Considering moving to a Major?

The only advantage (of Major Labels) is distribution, the fact that you can't go into any shop and get a Nitzer Ebb record is pitiful, especially in this day and age when record shops are pretty open to having anything, I know it's based around sending loads of free records to get it in the shop, but I would rather give a load of records away and then the shop owner take total profit and the kid goes in and gets it, I would rather have less money, as long as the records are out there, obviously once it gets beyond that stage and people start wanting your records you don't keep giving them away, that's where Mute fall down. This thing with Rough Trade really fucked them up. Mute are in the position, because they are the biggest of them all, that they had to prop them up for a pretty hefty sum.

The other concept we've got is to get through the contract, doing the albums, doing the tours, getting through all this shit as hard and fast as possible, get in such a strong position that we are the only band that they want and then turn around and say `Six mil and we'll come back'.

Now Geffen, we love Geffen which pisses me off even more, because they hate having to share us. Basically I think they have actually signed too many bands at the moment, but we're alright because we will recoup for Geffen so we're like the golden boys. I think they have signed loads of bands all at once, and they're going to go back and trim down, I think there are a couple of bands they're going to drop. Basically they are a very forward thinking company and there is a definate fever in the states at the moment to sign up as many British indie acts as possible, that whole Stone Roses thing wasn't about whether the Stone Roses were worth three million pounds, it's about winning, Geffen wanted to be THE American label with the Stone Roses.

You toured with Depeche Mode, were produced by one of their members, how do you feel about their treatment i.e. recent slaggings etc.?

Trent Reznor of NIN said that Depeche Mode were wimpy synth pop, but a year ago he was singing their praises and I think that is basically what people do with DM, they are above it, they may not be the best band that ever was, but no one is going to touch them, they have been going for ten years and they all millionaires. Why should they give a shit about any fucker, they are just making music that they want to make, making a lot of wedge out of it and pleasing people at the same time. I've got nothing but respect for them.

Any views about Scotland?

With out being completely crawly and bum licking, it's fucking brilliant up here I think the kids are really good with a much better attitude than most english people. I think the attitude towards the music scene and the attitude towards enjoying yourself is much better. That's my slurpy pro-scottish rant, of course I'll say the same in Newcastle. .

Plans for the future: We wanna be a pop band and make loads and loads of wedge.

And judging by the success of last tour in March, I wouldn't be at all surprised if they got their wish. Doug appears on the latest Recoil album doing a great cover of FaithHealer, check it out.