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1) Are these your first performances in the US?

KH: We actually performed last November in LA, presenting ‘The Passion of Joan of Arc’ at The Silent Movie Theatre.
That show gave us the impetus to arrange some more. So this time we are playing at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco on 11th May and then ‘A Page of Madness’ at The Silent Movie Theatre in LA [on May 17th].  We are also quite keen to find the right venue in New York to take our Optical Music scores to – a show in NY is long overdue!

2) Can you describe the process of the “Optical Music Series” a bit?

KH: As with all OMS scores we view the film and log cue points for sections of music. Then we start putting together a collection or palette of sounds with which to write the music. It’s often useful to limit ourselves to a specific sound spectrum but the types of sounds, samples and timbres are usually dicatated by the film and what needs to be expressed. For instance, with ‘A Page of Madness’ we used samples of traditional Japanese instruments like the plucked Koto and expressive Shakuhachi flute. We edited and layered these sounds to give them their own identity within the compositions and combined them with other electronic and percussive elements.

Certain sounds obviously didn’t fit with the atmosphere that we were trying to create for film – for example symphonic strings. Instead we used a very thin sounding solo string harmonic.

3) Are these soundtracks generally comprised of completely new compositions, or do you perhaps look to previously unused/unfinished music/musical ideas that you think will fit on?

KH: Most of the latest scores are completely original compositions. I think the only exception was with the first soundtrack we did, ‘The Cabinet of Dr Caligari’ back in 1995. At the time we adapted a couple of tracks from our Les Jumeaux side-project. The score was originally intended as a one-off performance and never intended to be released on CD, or performed again. We have learnt a lot since then – The optical music scores are created and composed to exist on their own.

4) Have the film projects become the focus of In The Nursery? (as opposed to traditional albums)

NH: The film soundtracks add a variety to our work, but not a main focus – we generally alternate between studio album and soundtrack.

5) What else is in the immediate future for you?

KH: During the summer, we are putting aside some ‘quality’ time to record new material.
In August we head over to Hong Kong for a series of Optical Music score events and an ITN masterclass session

For more info on In The Nursery, check out this Chaos Control interview from 1993, as well as their official site.

One such band would be The The – searching for “The The” tends to bring up many more non-relevant listings than a query for a lesser-known band who has more unique words in their name. Curious as to what The The’s principle member Matt Johnson thinks about that, I contacted him through his management. Here’s what he had to say:

“Yes, this is certainly an interesting question you raise. It has been raised before and of course I have thought about it and received numerous complaints about it too. Obviously, I cannot change the name of my band at this late stage but what we have tried to do is to get Sony (who own the bulk of the back catalogue) to contact the various online retailers to tweak their search engines to accommodate the name. Some have responded to this, iTunes, Amazon for instance. Some have yet to do this. It also depends on how you type the name – The The, “The The”, TheThe.

Looking at the brighter side, it does make it harder to find unauthorized recordings, bootlegs, free downloads of The The, which I’m quite happy about. Also, in the Internet Age when people are becoming increasingly spoilt and expect to find anything/everything they want instantly maybe it’s a good thing that TheThe has gone back to being the underground, word of mouth band it always was? Maybe it’s good for people to have to dig around a little to find the things they want rather than having everything served up to their ears instantaneously and with barely a finger lifted?”

• Visit the official The The website

(Originally published in October, 2006. Photograph by Johanna Saint Michaels)

Having done music for so long, do you ever listen to and perhaps get inspired by your older work?

I don’t really. For me, honestly, when I’ve made a record I’m usually so done with it that I don’t want anything to do with it for a long time! [laughs] Then it happens, after a couple of years–I’ll hear something and think ‘what is that?’ Then ‘oh, shit, it’s a KMFDM song!’ It’s interesting, but I don’t really look back at what I’ve done before in order to get new ideas. It’s exciting enough to really come up with new stuff.

Are there any older albums that new fans catching up on KMFDM seem to particularly get into?

Well the one thing that really comes to mind is something I hear a lot. ‘I got turned on to you guys by so and so, that was 2 months ago, and by now I own 5 of your albums. There doesn’t seem to be much of a middle ground. I don’t think a lot of people think of KMFDM as mediocre. You can only really hate it or love it. There is no middle ground – if you don’t like it then you absolutely dislike it.

Looking back, is there anything that you think KMDFM tried musically that didn’t quite work?

Well, I would say this. When I spend a couple of hours on something and I don’t think it’s going in the right direction, it usually means for me to abort it. Just like anyone else, I want to see results and I want to be rewarded. If I fiddle around with some idea and it doesn’t work to get, say, this triplet to work with a 4 on the floor kind of thing no matter how I try, it just doesn’t work, then usually it’s the trash bin. On the other hand there are sometimes tricky things that take some time, but I have a feeling they will work. I’m not sure how, but it’s not a dead end. Often times it happens in such a away that an ingredient gets made or found or whatever for one specific track or an idea, and it becomes the new focus of it. So I’m willing to throw the rest of the stuff overboard to accommodate the new idea. That happens actually quite a bit.
You’re calling from Germany – are you based there now?

Yeah, I left Seattle about a year and a half ago. I just wanted to have European soil under my feet.

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Found on YouTube, here is a video of “Bohemian Rhapsody” being played on various pieces of old electronic equipment. While some of the items could be considered at least semi-musical (Atari 800XL and Texas Instruments TI-99/4 computers), it’s crazy to see/hear floppy drives used as ‘bass’ and HP Scanjets as ‘vocals’!

Skinny Puppy have always been known for their theatrical stage shows, so the casting of frontman Nivek Ogre in the new sci-fi/horror movie musical “REPO! The Genetic Opera” makes perfect sense. In the film, Ogre portrays Pavi Largo, a character who gruesomely wears women’s faces.  The following is the first part of an interview with Ogre, focusing on “REPO!”. Check back soon for part 2, where he discusses “Devils in my Details,” his new cd with Mark Walk as ohGr.

How did you get involved with “REPO! The Genetic Opera?”

Ogre: I came back from the last Skinny Puppy tour and met my friend Joe Bishara, who was working as one of the producers on the project. He’d asked me what I wanted to do. One of my childhood fantasies was to be like Lon Chaney Sr., wear a lot of makeup, and be that kind of character actor. So it’s a first step to something like that. When I told Joe that, he said ‘Oh, we’re working on this film right now and there’s this one character that hasn’t been cast.’ It was Pavi, the face stealing serial killer rapist. And I said ‘Awesome. And it’s a musical? Even better!” It was a bit of a boot camp for me, in the sense of being on set and learning the etiquette and that whole realm of working, and the terminology. It was a great experience for that, because I didn’t have to worry about actually delivering lines per se within the context of blocking shots, because we’d recorded all the music a month beforehand. So it was a great experience, I had a gas. I was like a kid in a candy store.

Were you aware of who else would be in the film?

Ogre: I didn’t. In my audition, I had to do a monologue, and I came up with a character analysis. I had heard that Paris Hilton was doing an audition, but I wasn’t sure when or if she even was. It was just a rumor. So I was called in late one night. I think I was the last of two or three people to come in. I was sitting there, and I’d worked out this bit where I’d say to the director ‘Eh, do you want to see who fucking Pavi is? I’ll show you fucking Pavi.’ I had this mirror, since Pavi has a mirror. He’s very vain and narcissistic. I cut out a picture of Paris’ face and I put it in the mirror. That was my schtick. I was going to turn the mirror around to everyone and show them who Pavi was and who he wanted to be. So I was sitting outside practicing my lines and nervously waiting. I heard all this commotion. There were two sets of doors before it went outside, and I was in a hallway between these two sets of doors. One set opened and out comes this person, and I had the mirror next to me, and it was Paris. She went out the main door and there were all these camera flashes going off. I was just like, this is so fucking surreal. So I was like, do I do this thing or not? Do I do this bit? And I ended up doing it, and I think it’s what got me the part. I got to meet Bill Moseley, who actually did a bit on this record. He did a lot of the spoken word dialog and did this amazing one pass thing that we cut up into short segments. He did three or four poems in one pass, there were no additional takes. It was amazing. And then course Paul Sorvino, and Alexa Vega. Anthony Head from Buffy… it was a really cool cast. And the coolest part about the movie, bad or good … I’ve seen a cut and I like it, but I could be biased …  but I think the coolest part of it is that it wasn’t really co-opted by a big movie company. It’s being done by the people who were actually involved with the street version of it, when they were doing 10 minutes shows in clubs and stuff like that. So it was kind of a cool family.

Would you like to do more work like this in the future?

Yeah, for me what is really fun is going under intense prosthetics. Skinny Puppy has always been about mask work. It just opens me up in so many ways. I’m kind of an extroverted introvert, and that is the trigger that opens the door. If I could do more stuff like that … I can’t tell you how much fun it is. It’s a bit tough in the sense that your hours are longer, but I love to do stuff under make-up.

Have you ever considered doing a Skinny Puppy musical?

There have been ideas. cEvin has had dreams, he’s told me, when he was younger, of some show on stage where there is this three-dimensional floating dragon. He’s had that kind of surround sound outlook of the future. And I’ve had ideas of taking something and doing more of a show. I was a magician when I was a kid, and I like the idea of the Chaos Magicians. Something in that realm might be interesting with scripted dialog. We’ll see. We have to start thinking about things like that now.

Nov. 19 Highline Ballroom (w/ Excepter) New York City
Nov. 21 Brainwaves Festival Boston, MA
Dec. 4 Knitting Factory (w/ Dub Gabriel) Los Angeles, CA
Dec. 5 Independent (w/ Dub Gabriel) San Francisco, CA

The Boston performance is part of the Brainwaves festival, where they will share the bill with such acts as Silver Apples, Matmos, Stars of the Lid, Lichens, and Threshold House Boys Choir (Peter Christopherson of Throbbing Gristle’s new band.) For more information on the festival, check out their site at brainwavesfest.org.

For more info on Meat Beat Manifesto, check out the interview we did with Jack Dangers earlier this year, as well as their official site.

After being pushed back from an April release, the highly anticipated movie musical “Repo! The Genetic Opera” will finally be unleashed on November 7, 2008. Based on a stage musical, the sci-fi/horror tale of a future where organs are harvested for profit has one of the most eclectic casts ever assembled. Who would ever have thought that Nivek Ogre (Skinny Puppy) would appear in a musical with Sarah Brightman (star of several Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals) AND Paris Hilton? In an email interview, co-creator/ co-writer / cast member Terrance Zdunich tolds us a bit about “Repo! The Genetic Opera” and its transition from stage to screen. Read it here!