KitschKrieg
KitschKrieg is the production trio of Fizzle, Fiji Kris and awhodat. Known for their work with popular German rap artists Trettmann, Megaloh, Joey Bargeld and Haiyti, KitschKrieg bring a focused, monochromatic aesthetic to every element of their creative output. Their distinct, sparse style draws as much from dancehall and dub as it does from modern hip-hop and defines their work as very much their own. Their KitschKrieg trilogy of EPs with Trettmann marked a new chapter for the artist and helped put the team on the map, while subsequent work on Haityi’s Montenegro Zero album and Trettmann’s #DIY would solidify their status as one of Germany‘s most prolific production outfits in the late 2010s.
In this public lecture as part of Red Bull Music Academy Berlin 2018, the group discussed their early beginnings, leaving their egos behind and how black and white defines both their look and their sound. They also deconstruct “Grauer Beton,” going deep on the intricacies of the Roland TR-808 cowbell in the process.
Hosted by Torsten Schmidt Today’s guests are a lady and two gentlemen who, for the past 3-4 years, have done nothing other than making sure that there’s no reason to be ashamed of our country’s pop music. And therefore it is a special honor for me to give a warm welcome to these guys. KitschKrieg. [applause] Fiji Kris Hi Fizzle Hi Torsten Schmidt It’s also a special premiere, because for the first time ever, we have all members of KitschKrieg sitting on one couch. Fiji Kris Applause for awhodat. Fizzle Chingching Torsten Schmidt And you are… Fizzle Fizzle Fiji Kris Fiji Torsten Schmidt Those are hopefully not the names your mothers gave you? Fizzle Hmm… Not really, but they just stuck. You don’t choose your own nickname, and you never get rid of it either. Torsten Schmidt Tell me about it. Anyway, you were all born in very different parts of this country, but around the same time? Fizzle Yes, I’m all the way from the west, originally from Krefeld by the Dutch border, and I was born in ’79. Fiji Kris We should be sitting in a different order. I’m from the zonal border, from Braunschweig, and she was born all the way out east. [awhodat nods] Torsten Schmidt I’ll take that as a yes. Braunschweig... I hope you’re not into soccer. So we can skip that whole topic, and finish half an hour early. It’s only going so-so at the moment, eh? Fiji Kris I barely remember anything about Braunschweig. awhodat I found my microphone. Torsten Schmidt Oh, nice! So “all the way out east,” where would that be? awhodat Really far out, by the Czech border. Torsten Schmidt So you’re probably one of the very few people in this building who listened to things that were recorded in this exact location. awhodat Yeah, probably. Born 1981. Torsten Schmidt Did the Funkhaus have any special meaning to you? Is it like ZDF Lerchenberg, or something that you knew as a child? awhodat No, not for me. Torsten Schmidt I am asking because when I first heard the record that we just partially listened to from Trettmann’s #DIY album, which I believe you produced entirely... Fizzle Yes, the whole thing. Torsten Schmidt ... That, in a weird way, it reminded me of what Günther Fischer and Manfred Krug used to do in the Amiga studios, and then recorded it live in locations like this one right here. Fizzle In what sense? I can’t really make anything of it, but I’ve been told that a few times. I don’t know the recordings, I’ve never listened to them, so I don’t know the meaning of that. Maybe you can explain what about our music reminds you of that. Torsten Schmidt Well, people from our generation, as so often with music that is older than we are, we got to know it through hip-hop. In this case it was Eins Zwo, who sampled “Baden Gehn,” which was on one of Manfred Krug’s records. And for many of us, Manfred Krug was this strange TV lawyer, or the grumpy trucker, and then we were like, “What do you mean he also sang?” And of course these records were not available at an affordable price anywhere, but then, oddly enough, two, three would become available in record stores not far away from here. And there, in the late ’60s/early ’70s, they would record jazz with huge big-band orchestras, and this dude from the Telekom commercial would sing just like he was from the Mississippi Delta. He really had the blues in him, and he expressed it in words that were not at all embarrassing, but he still spoke about very emotional things. Fizzle Got it. His own lyrics or did he translate English things? Torsten Schmidt No, he wrote in German. And similar to Brazil at the time, he would wrap criticism about the regime in metaphors, just like on “Baden Gehn,” or like “Billie Holiday.” Fizzle Makes sense. Tretti definitely has blues in him, and he’s very gifted when it comes to writing in German, making things sound non-cheesy, and creating images and triggering emotions. He has massive talent, he can achieve all that with a great flow and without making it sound corny, and his voice is just full of blues. There’s no better way to describe it. Torsten Schmidt The first time you were confronted with his work, that was probably not clear from the start? Fizzle Quite the opposite really. He used to be Ronny Trettmann, the funny reggae Saxon that would joyfully make fun of German reggae, and things like, “Der Sommer, Sommer ist für alle da,” that’s the kinda stuff he did. So the complete opposite of that. But already then, in his previous discography, there would be single songs on his albums between 14 slapstick tracks that had you going, “OK, wow. There’s more to discover here.” For example, on his album Tanz auf dem Vulkan there’s a track called “Schwarzer Sonntag,” and on it you can hear his blues and how he tells this story. So it was always there, but he didn’t pursue it then, or the producers led him in a different direction, but we chose that particular side of him as an artist and decided that’s the one we want to work with. Torsten Schmidt You used to also play dancehall when you DJed, and he was the guy who, amongst all these summer hits, had some legit dancehall tracks. Fizzle Definitely. Within his genre, he was the boss. If you’re talking about German dancehall and looking at this particular scene only, he was by far the best and the only one, and he won all the prizes he could possibly win. But eventually he reached the limit, because reggae and dancehall are a part of a pretty small scene in Germany. Torsten Schmidt Small in a way that you guys also got to know each other through this scene? Fizzle Exactly. Torsten Schmidt So, Braunschweig… Fiji Kris Formed from the sediments of the German dancehall scene, that’s basically how KitschKrieg came to be. Torsten Schmidt But just like coffee grounds, it can be a great fertilizer. Fizzle Yeah. Torsten Schmidt Do you remember the first time you saw each other face to face? Fizzle I remember exactly the first time I met Fiji. It was at Brain Club in Braunschweig, pretty legendary place. If you DJ in Germany you’re going to end up in this club sooner or later, and he was there and was playing his own productions using self-constructed controllers, with his project at the time, Symbiz. I thought that was really insane, because normally people will DJ on turntables or CD players, but he stood there with this handcrafted box, pushing buttons and playing his own songs on it. To this day, I’ve never seen anything like it. Torsten Schmidt So Krefeld didn’t have that kind of stuff? Fizzle No. Fiji Kris Then he booked us a gig in Krefeld, one of our first trans-regional bookings. Fizzle And how did it go? [laughs] There wasn’t much going on there. Fiji Kris It was just on the rise. Fizzle I remember standing backstage and saying “OK, nobody really showed up, so I’m going to go to the ATM to withdraw your fee, because I don’t see this happening today anymore.” So that’s how we met. And awhodat, we spent a lot of time hanging out at dancehall parties in Cologne, and checked out all the German soundsystems like Pow Pow Movement, the Berliners Supersonic [Sound] and that whole era. Concrete Jungle, Barney Miller, all these people. It was the golden age of dancehall, when it was new in Germany, people were really excited about it and the parties were full, it was a good time. Torsten Schmidt Did Gerd Gummersbach still have his location then? Fizzle Yes, he did. And if you didn’t use the stand on the turntables you would die. He would literally throw things at you and go, “Use the stand!” “OK, sorry.” awhodat We bought all our mixtapes from Gerd Gummersbach. I’ve known Kris since June 3rd, 2014. Fizzle It’s always like this. Fiji Kris She’s our annalist. How long since KitschKrieg was founded? We’ll be like, “Something between 2 and 4 years,” but she’ll be able to tell you exactly how many days. Torsten Schmidt So when was KitschKrieg founded? awhodat 4th anniversary coming up soon. Torsten Schmidt Better circle the date in your calendars, or you’ll be in trouble. Fizzle Which exact day do you even go by? What’s our founding date? awhodat There are several dates. But really it’s November 1st, 2014. Fiji Kris And there you have it. OK. Torsten Schmidt And what happened on that day? awhodat I came to Berlin from Cologne with just a shoebox and a suitcase. And then the three of us lived together in a flat share. Fiji Kris Until recently. We always said, “When things start going well, we will all get our own place.” And we just did, so things are going great! Fizzle Yeah! [applause] Torsten Schmidt But aren’t you afraid that you’ll be missing something now? Fiji Kris That was everyone’s reaction! When Fizzle posted to Facebook that he was looking for a place, my brother called to ask if everything’s okay with us. But we all still live really close to each other. Fizzle We hang out every day. Our studio is there, and we have this small space that we’re fixing up at the moment, but it’s nice to go home in the eve and not to have to see them anymore. Torsten Schmidt You probably had enough time in your joint flat to figure out who does dishes, who takes out the trash, etc. How do you divide it up with whatever it is that you are? A production team, a label, or multimedia entity? Fizzle I don’t even know what an entity is. Torsten Schmidt It definitely sounds very official. Fizzle I don’t know. We stopped trying to define it. We make music, we do photography, create videos and clothes and everything else we are interested in. So in the end it’s probably just a brand that delivers content of any sort. Fiji Kris We decided we’re not going to try to be a band. You have to ask yourself how you want to take it to the stage, how much is it going to be about us as individuals. We try to emphasize our work, our brand name and our logo, and the people we work with, rather than forming a band and trying to become the center of attention. Torsten Schmidt About the logo. Are you, as a Krefeld native, responsible for the LA Kings reference? Fizzle No, that was him. [points to Fiji Kris] Against resistance from Nicole. I mean awhodat, sorry. Torsten Schmidt I was wondering since when everybody’s into the NHL? Fiji Kris It’s more of a cultural reference dedicated to gangster rap from LA, like N.W.A. and the Raiders and Kings and that kind of stuff. Torsten Schmidt OK. We just listened to Tretti, and I assume we’re all fans here, but maybe we can give a short insight into what you’ve been doing since November 1st, 2014. Fizzle Our first KitschKrieg release was an EP with Noah Slee from New Zealand. Torsten Schmidt How do you find these people? Fiji Kris Soundcloud. Fizzle Classic Soundcloud scenario. You upload your music and then you find a message in your inbox from somebody saying, “Hey, I’m coming to Berlin and I think your music is super interesting, so let’s get together.” So we met him and got to know him, and then we created the first KitschKrieg release. That was a rather slow beginning, it took a full year to finish the EP, but afterwards we moved on into the phase where we did the EPs with Tretti, which were called KitschKrieg EPs. We made three of those, KitschKrieg 1, 2, and 3. And that was Trettmann’s new beginning. Together, Trettmann and KitschKrieg then made an EP with Megaloh, the Herb & Mango EP. Then we did an EP for RAF [Camora] and Bonez [MC] as part of their Palmen aus Plastik box, a dancehall EP with RAF, Bonez and Tretti. Then we worked with Haiyti for her Toxic EP, and through working with her we got to know Joey Bargeld and released another 3 EPs with him. So we really like EPs in case you haven’t noticed. It’s a nice short format. And then we sat down and did the Trettmann #DIY album, and that’s basically it to this day. Fiji Kris You forgot the Haiyti album. Fizzle True, we also did the Haiyti album Montenegro Zero. That’s the music we’ve created in the past 4 years. We did a few singles for friends too, but we try to do entire projects, and not send out beats, trying to get them integrated into other projects. Torsten Schmidt Can we begin with “Raver,” to give people a better impression? Fizzle Yes. “Raver” is off of KitschKrieg 2 from 2016. (music: Trettmann – “Raver”) Torsten Schmidt How did Tretti’s old dancehall friends react to this? Fizzle Pretty good. No complaints, they were excited for him. To be honest, I was worried too. Often when an artist changes so significantly it ends up being embarrassing and discredits everything they’ve done up until then. Luckily that didn’t happen here. People acknowledged that it was real, and that there was nothing really to hate about it. Fiji We also really focused on what we think about it. The whole EP phase was also our time of self-discovery. We didn’t call ourselves KitschKrieg before that. That was when we said, “We’re all in this together,” and we decided to name our EPs and ourselves KitschKrieg for the sake of the team spirit. We didn’t really have anything but team spirit. We didn’t know that we could be making money with this. [laughs] Torsten Schmidt Which one of you contributed the rave competence? Fiji Tretti himself. Fizzle He’s a proper raver. Fiji He’s really the only one of us. Fizzle None of us rave on the same level as Tretti. [laughter] Torsten Schmidt Sounds like there are secret agents amongst us. Fizzle Should we listen to another rave song? I have a nice rave track. Fiji You wanna listen to another rave song? (music: Haiyti and Joey Bargeld – unknown) Nice memories. Now that we’re listening to... Good thing you’re asking. This was a really interesting phase during which we learned a lot about ourselves. For example, we’re shamelessly quoting The Streets’ “Blinded By The Lights” on this track. It’s kind of a fuzzy line between stealing and quoting, but we decided to worry less about what’s allowed, and to just do what feels right for the song. And also, as part of KitschKrieg’s identification phase, it was a time when, just like with Tretti, we had discovered a new artist and noticed a facet. There was something sad about her, which had sporadically shimmered through before, but we wanted to emphasize it in full EP lengths. We began implementing our own ideas into the work we did with these artists. This song, for example, they hadn’t slept in ages and were totally out of it. Fizzle had recorded them and sent me this a capella over some beat. It was way too loud, with the hi-hats blasting through my headphones. We remixed it, and it turned out to be the beautiful song that it is today. Torsten Schmidt It’s definitely got a Lila Wolken, commercial TV flair to it. Fiji You think? I think it’s got a pretty commercial noughties feel to it. The steps and the shameless quote are like, “Attention! Afterhour.” Fiji The rave synths and so on are pretty borderline. You think, do I really want to go there, but you also just really like it, and that was when we said it doesn’t matter, if we like it, we’re doing it. Torsten Schmidt That takes courage. Fiji It helps when Haiyti and Joey Bargeld come stumbling into the studio still completely tripping. Torsten Schmidt If you don’t know the backstory and you listen to it, you wonder how old are these people? All the Genglish [a mix of German and English] sounds a bit like some business dude is trying to talk 1994 teenie slang. Fiji May we quote that? Fizzle I liked that one too. It’s just real. That’s the state they were in. I don’t think any of us asked ourselves how it will come across in the end. It just needed to come out at that very moment and I held a microphone up while it happened. I was also surprised by how pop-like the results were, because the moment itself wasn’t pop at all. Fiji It was funny, because you did the session with them, and you were super annoyed. Bargeld is a sketchy dude, on a first impression, so you catch yourself thinking, “I hope he doesn’t steal anything.” So yeah you were pretty annoyed by it all. But I remember, there was a second song that was created during this session, and you sent it along just like, “Oh, and we have this too.” Fizzle I don’t even remember that. Fiji Do you remember? awhodat No, I don’t. But I know I was not in Berlin, and Fizzle sent it to me and I... No wait, that was a different song, it was “Hero für Fuffi,” and I realized right away we have to work with this guy. Fiji It wasn’t that obvious to us. [all laugh] But that’s how we started working in a ping-pong style. Because I wasn’t part of the session I wasn’t annoyed and I could judge it differently, from another perspective. And we do that quite a lot actually, where we don’t all work together at the same time, but rather take turns. Torsten Schmidt That’s quite an interesting approach for anyone working with beats. Fiji Yeah, the interesting thing is, beats are beats, songs are songs. Torsten Schmidt And how does A, or B, turn into S? Fiji Via A-B-C. Wow. Torsten Schmidt Algebra One? Fiji Just teamwork. Eisfeld once said, “It’s a nice beat, but good beats are just good beats. We need great songs,” and that really stuck with me. Torsten Schmidt That’s a good example, because even he and his crew had different phases, and you could always tell that they were better when they had somebody else to give another opinion. Somebody that would say, “Cool idea, but let’s try this differently.” It’s not the most comfortable position to be in, when you’re working with these frail, beaming, lighthouse-like artist personalities, and you think, “OK, you’re shining, but you could shine so much more if you did things like this.” Fizzle But that’s the exact moment when you have to be honest, and usually the artist is very thankful for that because if you don’t say it, the song will only turn out to be mediocre. And then one day, he’ll step onto the stage and he will only find out then that it’s not that great, and that’s so much more brutal than finding out in the studio already. Just say, “I think you can do better.” Honesty in the studio, while recording and during songwriting, is extremely important. I never once experienced an artist getting upset about it, no matter which artist it was. Fiji We’ve even completely blown off songs, or entire verses. Fizzle Yeah, the worst scenarios, but never once did anyone get mad, on the contrary. Fiji Because with growing success, you are surrounded by a crew that might be living off of and with you. You don’t need yes-sayers. That leads to nothing. It goes back to what you said earlier, we’re really trying to cultivate that kind of honesty and friction. It’s normal to not always agree, and that’s an advantage. Fizzle For example, two days ago we played new things to Eisfeld and he listened to it, and said “Amazing! The whole setup and how it builds up into the hook line, and then, nothing. Disappointing hook line it’s total BS. No, it’s not even crap. It’s just absolutely nothing. That’s how bad it is.” And we thought, “OK, thanks.” But there are no hurt feelings. It’s helpful. You listen to the song again and try to understand why he said that. We spent a lot of time working on that hook line and everything else, and then you get that kind of feedback. But it helped me be able to listen to the song again differently, and I understood what he meant. Torsten Schmidt How long did it take you to recover from the first punch to the stomach? Fiji It’s about the right attitude for that kind of conversation. It’s not really a punch to the stomach. Fizzle We just don’t have any ego issues anymore. That’s completely over and done with. You have to be able to tell each other when something sucks. “Hey, that’s a bad hook or a shitty photo.” We’ve done that so many times now, it didn’t feel like a punch, to answer your question. It was really just like, “OK, thanks.” Fiji I think we talked about artists’ egos in our last lecture, and I realized as we were speaking that we often focus on the bigger goals, like where we see this going in the long run, what the next small goal is, and so on. So the small disagreements lose their importance in the perspective of those bigger goals. Little things like one hook being shitty or Fizzle being right about something or not don’t matter. It’s more important to keep up the good flow. Torsten Schmidt Do you know roughly when you guys left your egos behind? Maybe the annalist? Fizzle I think after the first EP, which took a year. Because all the EPs that followed happened a lot quicker and easier, so it must have been sometime around then. If you take one year for four songs, you have to ask yourself what’s going wrong. Torsten Schmidt That doesn’t really help pay the bills. Fizzle Right. It didn’t make much sense. That’s when we realized that it’s a problem. The ego goes hand in hand with personal taste, and you can’t really fight about that. Fiji So we became pragmatic about it and divided up our responsibilities, so different people had the authority over different decisions. Whether I look my best in a specific photo is not really the issue, and it’s not my decision either. If we start fighting about that, we’re just wasting our time. Fizzle Which is what happens usually. The photo discussion is a typical issue. Try and get 3-4 people to agree on the best shot. Everybody looks at themselves, so it’s much more efficient leaving it up to somebody who knows a thing or two about photography. Fiji It’s an interesting example, because awhodat is often not in our photos, because she’s usually the one taking them. So she’s the best person to judge them, because all I look at is my own crooked nose. awhodat What we really learned is that there’s no point in getting caught up in discussions. That way, things never get done. You have to be able to look at the last 20% of it from a distance. Use an objective perspective, because these two often lose themselves in the details. They get all nerdy. But you need someone to step in and say, “It’s done. It’s nice, it touches me.” And then it’s really done. A common mistake is to add another layer, and another one, and another one without actually noticing that’s it’s actually already complete. Send it off, next. Fiji What Nicole said is a great example for the benefits of judging from an outside perspective, when you’re not yet blinded by the routine and unbiased. We are different people and have different talents. Women feel better. They are often more in tune with their emotions. awhodat What he’s trying to say is women cry a lot. Torsten Schmidt I thought he was trying to make me cry with his accusations. Fiji It wasn’t meant like that. What matters is, is it a good song? Does it deliver emotion? Or is it just a great snare and otherwise crafted to death? Torsten Schmidt Maybe this is a good moment to show what you contribute to KitschKrieg. Let’s watch the Jamaica video. (video: Trettmann and KitschKrieg – #DIY auf Jamaika) It’s always pretty brutal having to watch your own work along with other people. Fizzle Yes, but also nice. I haven’t seen it in a while, and it was nice to watch. How long has it been? awhodat February 2018. Fiji I miss the fruit lady. Fizzle It’s nice to be able to travel around the world and do our thing and then it gets captured so beautifully. Torsten Schmidt Why work in black and white? awhodat There’s a running gag that I’m color blind. Fizzle It remains unclear to this day. Torsten Schmidt So you haven’t gotten a boating license yet. awhodat I have a drivers license, so I don’t think I am color blind. I don’t know. It was just a natural development. I always had a thing for black and white, and I bought this camera... [to Fiji] No you bought it! On credit. It took us five years to pay off. Torsten Schmidt So we’re talking something like a Leica camera. No? Because it took five years to pay off. Fiji We were just that broke. awhodat Really broke. It just happened naturally. I always liked it that way. Fiji We also thought that visually it fit in with what we do audibly. A lot of reduction, a lot of black space, a lot of pauses. Less is more. awhodat Yeah. The look and feel is very similar to our music. Especially when you look at Tretti, Haiyti, Joey Bargeld. They’re not going to say something they can’t back up. It’s all real. And it’s the same with the photos. It’s not about turning someone into something they’re not. The photo can have perfect lighting and detail, but if you feel nothing, then it’s not going to work. At least not for me. And what’s also similar with our photos and our music is the pauses, the reduction. You have a photo with lots of black, smoke, and then you see Tretti, only this small, but it still gets to you emotionally. Or repetitions in the music, stylistic tools, they become reflections in the photos. A raspy voice is represented by a crack in the floor, with nice lighting. Torsten Schmidt But you don’t only use it online, but also for your live shows. It’s a pretty big part of your live shows actually. awhodat Yeah, as of recently. Fizzle Like awhodat said, it really carries a certain feel. When you look at Trettmann’s Splash! show, we had a really nice scenery, everything was dark and in the background you had these nice black and white images and moving images. That, carefully adjusted to a live setting with the appropriate lighting, which for one short moment turned colorful, but otherwise remained white the entire time, really playing with the black and white concept of the show. It all connects and it emphasizes the mood of it all. It feels like it’s always belonged together, and it kind of has, so it makes perfect sense for us. Torsten Schmidt Tretti himself also performs more monochromatically than he did in the past. Fizzle Yeah. Exactly. That was a joint decision. We’re doing all of it together. Trettmann is really more like a band, and we decided to implement that concept together, and add our own style to it. And Tretti likes it. He promoted it from the start and was happy to do something else for a change, and he was also the one who suggested calling the EPs KitschKrieg. So it all came together very naturally, and now it just belongs that way. There are also moments in which we further develop that imagery. I remember being on Böhmermann, he had invited Tretti, and they performed “Grauer Beton” with an orchestra, and they turned it into a TV thing. They took awhodat’s video for “Grauer Beton” and adopted the black and white theme. It was amazing. Beautiful. Torsten Schmidt I think we’re going to get to that in a second. Like in any great cooking show, we’ve prepared something. But I find this very interesting. Were you already on board for “Großvater?” Fizzle No, not in this constellation. We were there in a way that we would occasionally produce something for him with our previous projects or made a remix. Since the first Trettmann songs, there’s always been a remix by us for every song. Torsten Schmidt Looking back on it, it was a moment where people realized, “Hang on, there’s more to this guy, and he wants to talk about other things too. Do more than songs like ‘Applaus.’” Although that was a very entertaining metaphor. Fizzle Totally. Torsten Schmidt But that video was also black and white. Fizzle It was, but that was more of a coincidence. That was his second or third song, and he would go back and forth between different styles. So that was just a coincedence, not our influence. Torsten Schmidt You we’re just talking about Böhmermann and “Grauer Beton.” Four weeks ago the topic came full circle when Tretti, who is from Karl-Marx-Stadt, performed at the concert. You were so kind to prepare some pieces from that. Let’s watch half of that video, just to get back in. (video: Trettmann feat. RTO Ehrenfeld – “Grauer Beton (live)”) I call this an all-round success. Since Spliff’s “Glaspalast,” which was something like 35 years ago, I don’t think we’ve had something so contemporary that really gets to people, is personal and still done in a way that even a 13 year old can relate. Fizzle Thanks. Fiji We also had the feeling it was something special, because it’s a part of German history that doesn’t really get talked about much in pop music in such a straightforward way. Torsten Schmidt There was this Paul van Dyk piece that left you feeling weird, but this track is, as he says himself, just to let people know where he’s from. And the chorus, how many months before the parliamentary elections was this track released? Three or four months or so? awhodat It was released on August 22nd. [applause] Yeah I know that, because we finished it up the night before, on August 21st at 10 PM, and the night before that, a hotel room window fell onto my leg in Hamburg. True story. But I called them in Berlin and said, “Don’t worry, I’ll still have the video ready in time. We can upload it at midnight.” [laughs] Torsten Schmidt Another part of it are the figures of speech, but also repetitions like the ones young listeners are used to from artists like Yung Thug and other Atlanta rappers. But the lines about “Seelenfänger” [soul hunters] are no accusations. Fizzle Right, he’s just describing what he saw. He literally saw that, he lived there, and he’s just sharing images of what he saw, and we supported him and told him to go with it. I personally didn’t know the story, because I come from the west, and it was unfathomable for me, but with the way he described these images, it became possible for me to envision them too. And when we drove out there to shoot the video, it all came together nicely. We were able to understand what it was like back in the day, and also what the vibe is like nowadays. It all got captured very well. Fiji That song was also a special track on the album, it underlines our transition from doing EPs to doing albums, because we worked much more conceptually and we had these songs ready before we had the music. I remember you saying, “Hey, we have ‘Grauer Beton,’ it’s about this topic, and now we need music that can carry that message, and also fits to the rest of the album, but not anything turn-up style or too zeitgeisty.” And how does one do that? With a TR-808 cowbell. Do you know the TR-808? It’s a drum machine from the ’80s. I just secretly Wikipedia-ed it again. It’s a Japanese drum machine from 1980 from the brand Roland, and Tretti loved the cowbell sound. It was like an insider gag, and so it’s pretty funny that the cowbell ended up being such a substantial element to the song. The Zeit magazine falsely called it a Gameboy sound one time. I would like to set that record straight right now. Fizzle I want to add one thing. You said young people know this stuff from Yung Thug and so on, and that’s exactly what it is in its simplest form. Of course it went through several stages lyrically, but it was written to a Mike Will Made-It beat. So it’s definitely related. Torsten Schmidt Which one? Fizzle I don’t know. Some random Mike Will Made-It beat. And that’s another example of what writing can be like. Somebody’s digging a beat, and then you write a song to it, and then you have lyrics, and then you take another look at it without the beat, and then eventually the music just wraps itself around it, and that’s basically how “Grauer Beton” came to be. Torsten Schmidt Before we get into detail about the rug that was woven around these lyrics, when do you hold yourselves back? There are some very personal songs on this album, about breakups and one about suicide, and sometimes it seems that with the lyrics being so detailed, some parts are unusually sloppy for him. You get the feeling that it’s so close and personal already that you don’t want to push him over the edge by trying to dig even deeper, and working on it even longer, because everything could fall apart then. Fizzle That’s exactly it. The suicide scenario is also based on a true experience he made, and turning it into a song was already a tough decision to make. Working on the track was difficult, the days after were difficult. Everything about it felt as heavy as the song itself. And then it’s not about singing it again and trying to get it perfectly. It’s allowed to be a bit sloppy, as long as the emotions are real, and they are. So it’s about understanding that there are more important things than recording take after take. Fiji It was like fate, because it happened towards the end of the album’s production, and we didn’t make any more songs than the ones that ended up on the album, so we had nine songs and the tenth one was missing, and then that happened. Tretti was completely out of it, and we thought “Oh god, how are we going to finish up this album? And how is he going to deal with this?” Writing a song about it almost seemed like our only option. It was tough. We all sat in our kitchen with a lump in our throat. Torsten Schmidt The thing is, even when you play it to adults, like, “Here, this is what your kids listen to,” especially compared to RAF Camora, they notice – and you were just talking about the blues – that the really meaningful parts are not thoroughly designed and perfected, and that’s exactly what helps make it so authentic and honest. Fizzle That’s exactly the trick. You keep the mistakes and don’t try to make it Hollywood style, and record five voices and turn them into one, until it’s so smooth and perfect, that you can’t differentiate one voice from another anymore. We don’t have much doubling, barely any ad libs, one well-recorded track, conveying all the emotions, has to be enough. It was back in the day. When you listen to old records, that can be enough. When somebody has an important message, the song is simply good, and the feeling is real. Most of the time when you try to make more of it, it’s really you trying to hide the fact that it wasn’t enough to begin with. You have to be honest with yourself and understand that you can’t sugarcoat it, because that doesn’t make it any better. Torsten Schmidt Reverb is not the answer to all our questions. Fizzle No. Torsten Schmidt Something you probably learned from dub and dancehall is the courage to add pauses, in your videos often shown as black slides. You often include breaks in pace, and you allow echoes to unfold. Why don’t you show us the different components of the song? Fiji We’ll start with the cowbell. [plays cowbell on computer] This is the infamous 808 cowbell. Initially I listened to it and discovered that it’s really a dyad. I’m not super familiar with music theory, but it’s a quint, meaning there are 5 halftones between it. So I did this with it, to emphasize that. [plays section of the backing track] It’s a sound that consists of two notes. Then I added the sound to a sampler and pitched it down. [plays backing track] One octave lower, and another octave lower. And that’s what stayed until the end, because I love the transition between the original sound and how it then develops into the foundation of what becomes the beat. Torsten Schmidt The great thing about an 808 is that, for the past 37 years, it’s had a great meaning to basically every music genre, but it’s a super rare machine. People think everything’s been done with it already. Fiji The great thing is the sounds are so modifiable. You can do so much by changing pitch and duration, and therefore super versatile in their application, but they also remain recognizable throughout, just like the cowbell. They’re charged with associations, like the ’80s and Gameboy sounds, which gives modern beats a retro touch, because something is only retro if it reminds you of something. Torsten Schmidt When the machine first entered the market it was a total flop, and then it was rediscovered by some broke people, because they could buy it for a few bucks in second-hand shops. Fiji Exactly. And nowadays nobody has the machine, but everybody has the sample set. Torsten Schmidt Right. Back in the day if you wanted to tune this machine, you’d have to completely take it apart, solder the parts and build in a putty, remove cables. I’m going to assume that 90% of the people, not just the ones in Atlanta, that have worked with these sounds, have never actually seen one of these machines. Fiji I saw one once, but I never owned one. And then I... Torsten Schmidt Before we get there. You’re playing everything from your computer. It doesn’t look like you are a total tech equipment crack. Fiji This is the studio. [points to laptop] Fizzle And this is the second studio. [points to other laptop] And then we have one more for photos and videos, and that’s our setup. That’s really all you need nowadays. Torsten Schmidt Very duster friendly. Fizzle If you’re being honest with yourself, consider how much these machines can do. If you have ideas, this is all you need. Here for example, Logic is running, and here’s a a mini jack, and that’s how we produced the Tretti album, even without a sound card. Torsten Schmidt None of these 96kHz... Fizzle Vocals is a bit of a different story, but that’s really the only thing that requires proper equipment, like a good mic, a good compressor and good studio monitors for listening purposes, and that’s the entire setup. Our studio is very minimalistic, there’s not a lot of stuff standing around. Fiji And we did everything with this laptop, even the final mixing. And then I layered the cowbells with the keyboard [plays backing track]. And it becomes a melody, because there’s two notes coming together. You almost already have a chord sequence, so all you need to do is add a third note, and then you automatically have a minor chord [plays backing track]. I was really happy with how it turned out, because the cowbell chords basically ended up dictating the rest, and it kind of just unfolded on its own. Next we had to decide on a snare. We chose the same cowbell, adding reverb this time [plays backing track]. And then... [plays backing track] there’s basically just another bass layer, also done with the 808, and a piano on top of it, and that’s it. We decided not to add any hi-hats or a louder snare, because we wanted everything on the frequency of his voice to remain free, to achieve maximum emphasis on him. Torsten Schmidt You just said “charged.” How much, especially with a German topic like this, how much do you worry about slipping into a sentimentality, that makes it difficult? Or is that not an issue for you? Fizzle I think they were independent factors. He wanted the cowbells, because every beat involving cowbells is a good beat in Tretti’s opinion, so we took a closer look at that. I remember coming to the studio and he [points to Fiji] showed it to me in a similar way as just now, showing the individual steps and taking it apart again, and it wasn’t in connection to a specific topic or a song. The music was completely detached from what it turned into later. Torsten Schmidt Then how did the two parts come together and mold so perfectly? Fizzle That is the earlier described allocation of different responsibilities. This is how you can imagine it. We have this pool, which is our Dropbox, and it has a text document in it with the lyrics to “Grauer Beton,” so we all know there’s a song, there might even be a demo of it somewhere, or Tretti might have sung it to you on the phone before. And then it happens... Not always, but sometimes... That everything comes together neatly. That was the moment in the studio, when I was presented the beat and Tretti had just sung it to me two days earlier, and I thought, “OK, I think we have lyrics for that.” Fiji I also think that just the piano makes it a very cheesy ballad, very over the top, and producing is always about micro decisions, what do we need more of? What do we need less of? Finding that balance between 808, which is street and hip-hop, and putting it together with the piano in a way that you get away with it, that’s the trick. Torsten Schmidt Are you fighting a war against kitsch, or are you using kitsch as a tool to fight? Fizzle We’re against it. It’s our enemy. Torsten Schmidt There’s no clear line you can follow though. Fizzle Once you find your own style and learn to trust it, it becomes easy. You really only have to listen to your inner voice and base your decisions on that. It’s a very easy thing, you just have to have confidence and trust yourself. Torsten Schmidt Dancehall is also a good basis for that, because here you also have the great big feelings. Fizzle Sure, but I don’t know if that’s just the case with dancehall. If you listen to soul or any of the various sub-genres, there’s always going to be songs that are just too much and then one that strikes a chord with you. I think that applies to all genres, and everyone has to define those limits for themselves, because it’s different for everyone. Luckily we all have a similar threshold for when things become too embarrassing and that’s a major advantage for us. Fiji Remember when we recorded the vocals? That was also special, because his voice was so rugged, which contributed to the realness of it all and makes it so much less cheesy, but originally he was against us using that recording. awhodat I think “Grauer Beton” is a really great example for, I don’t want to say magic, but sometimes there are things in the process of a production that you can label, one guy is working the cowbells like a pro and everybody just plays their part. But if you pick it apart, you see there were the lyrics for one, Fizzle created some images that were fitting, Kris made the beat. I read the lyrics first, and only heard the beat when the first demo was ready. For me, because it’s also my story in a way, I kept asking myself, “How do we solve this? What kind of a beat is this? How does it all go together?” And it fits perfectly. It just became clear that we’re going to add his broken voice, even though it’s not perfect, and Tretti would have preferred recording new vocals. And then we were faced with the challenge of having to create a video for that, about a topic that’s... Ugh. But everything came together really perfectly in the end. Fiji The recording is also the first demo. He had just returned from his tour and was totally hoarse. I’ll play it for you quickly. (music: Trettmann – “Grauer Beton”) Fizzle This is a great example for vocals that aren’t perfect, but full of emotions. And it makes you realize how invaluable it is when an artist trusts you, because you can convince them that this is exactly how it needs to be for this track, and talk them out of trying to do it again properly after a good night’s rest, because I’m convinced that would have ruined it. Fiji That brings us back to the metaphor from earlier, where you may not like the way you look in a photograph, but we on the outside can see that it’s still the better shot from an unbiased point of view. awhodat And Tretti trusts us, and goes along with it all, just like it happened with the video. I had a vision of it. I planned it. And I tried to convey what we had planned for that day, and only once the video was done Fizzle said, “Ah, now I get it!” Both these guys and Tretti trusted me completely. They just told me to do my thing, and that was that. Fizzle It’s important for teams to let the other people do their own thing, because often you only understand their vision when it’s done. You have your own understanding of their idea, and what you imagine may be shit, but then it goes down a whole other alley and in the end you like it after all. That’s why you just gotta let people do their own thing sometimes. Fiji I think you just summed up KitschKrieg perfectly. Do your thing. Done. Torsten Schmidt Does that mean a decision like changing the lyrics, or switching octaves, was there all along? Fizzle That’s usually part of the recording process. We make those micro decisions while we record and say, “Go higher a bit, do less of that.” During the entire time we recorded this album, there isn’t one single recording that took several attempts to complete. We worked on one song at a time, made all the decisions right then and there, and then it would stay that way. Pretty intense. Fiji If anything, we brainstormed first what kind of songs might still be missing on the album, that’s what I meant earlier about transitioning from EPs, which were about the moment and our crew, to albums, saying “We want ten songs, what’s still missing on the spectrum in terms of music and also lyrics?” Torsten Schmidt When you use a take that’s not perfect, but perfectly captures a moment, and you want to work it into a live set, performing it 30 nights in a row, and audiences have high expectations, how do you go about that? What needs to be adapted or presented differently live? Fizzle The songs are quite simple and without any crazy stunts or vocals edits. We got one great standalone track, carrying all the emotions, therefore I think it’s quite easy for someone like Tretti to perform them live too, because there are no artificial heights. It’s all on his spectrum and our music leaves enough room for his voice to unfold, all of that makes it easy for him to sing to. Torsten Schmidt Were you also in Chemnitz the other week? Fizzle No, we were not in Germany. We kept track of the events on the internet and of course also had a personal exchange about him going there and what he’ll be doing there. It’s a very important issue for him, because this is his home town, and it’s a topic that’s accompanied him his whole life already. We weren’t there, but we watched it online. Torsten Schmidt Oddly enough, the online stream of his performance doesn’t show this one song, it begins right after his performance of “Grauer Beton.” Fizzle Oh, great. Torsten Schmidt Yeah, really well done. Before we get to questions from the audience, let’s talk about one, two other artists you’ve worked with. Mr. Bargeld, for example, would turn 16 bars from Tretti into an entire album as far as lyrics go, huh? Fizzle Totally. You could argue that’s complete bullshit, or you can accept the fact that it can deliver just as much emotion as someone rapping three times 16 bars plus a hook and a bridge. We believe Bargeld’s music is enough. I don’t feel like there’s anything missing in terms of lyrics or feeling. It’s all there. Should I show you a Bargeld track with lots of lyrics? Torsten Schmidt And a lot of feeling. Bargeld feeling. (music: Joey Bargeld – unknown) That’s more of a Kanye West approach. Fizzle Yeah, maybe. You have to be ballsy to do that, but once you get into it, you don’t feel like anything’s missing. I’m happy with the outcome. Fiji We definitely had this discussion internally. Fizzle Yeah, what the hell. One day at the studio and this is what you got? Fiji You get sent this vocal track... Although this is one of the more productive outpourings by Mr. Bargeld. Fizzle Yeah, we have a song “Party Leben.” “Party, Party, Party, Leben.” Two words. Fiji And I even had to loop those. [laughter] And then the reply to that is, “But listen to how intense this one word...” And in the end you ask yourself, is this art or can it be tossed? There is a level on which you can sit down with an artist for hours, just to maybe end up with three words or one sentence or one hook. You need a lot of patience for that, and I don’t have that. Fizzle A track like “Party Leben” stems from an eight/nine-hour recording day. We have tons of vocals, it’s not like that’s all we ended up with, but for some reason that ended up being the thing we thought we should work with. Fiji It’s about reduction. I always go on about how it’s the same for beats and photos, but it really is. Digitally, we have access to any sound in the world, we could add woodwinds or anything we want, but we’re limited by what KitschKrieg defines itself as. What is the band? What’s the orchestra? What vocabulary do we want to use? And then it always ends up being the same five sounds, or always the same 16:9 black and white look. Torsten Schmidt More cowbell. What do nine hours of working with Megaloh look like, versus nine hours with Mr. Bargeld? Fizzle That’s the complete opposite to Joey Bargeld. He has every syllable rhyming with the next one, so even we lose track of it, the raps and rhymes are fragmented into such tiny details that it becomes a whole other discipline and then the 16 bars need to be built around it accordingly. The funny thing is that Megaloh and Joey Bargeld get along really well, because they totally get that they are so far apart musically. And then you have someone like Megaloh asking Bargeld how he writes his lyrics, it’s really very funny to watch him explain that. “Uh, dunno, I just have these 3 uh... And yeah, that’s it!” [laughter] “OK cool, thanks!” Torsten Schmidt Does that mean he just shuts down after half a beat or what? Fizzle Bargeld? No. He just has a talent to distill it so much, that whatever he ends up with is still enough to make it work. For example, when we go to the studio and turn on some music and tell him to sit down and write something to that, he actually does. And then when he’s done, he has to laugh about it himself. And then he presents us one single sentence. And like I said, I think that’s a crazy talent, to reduce it to such little material, and still get away with it. It might be the hardest thing to do really. Torsten Schmidt So he’s the Johnny Lydon of German rap. Fizzle Probably, yes. Torsten Schmidt OK, so you got punk. What’s Megaloh? A sprinter? A decathlete? Fizzle He’s just THE rapper. If you do rap in that genre, you have to do it like he does. He’s a true MC in a classical sense. You don’t have to compare it, those are just two different sports. And it can happen to be similar music, but they remain two different sports. Fiji For the project Herb & Mango with him and Trettmann, we had to find a musical platform that makes all that audible. We were able to level their two voices up against each other, and I remember cutting the verses from 16 bars to 12, so it became less about length and doing it just for the purpose of sporting, and more about the awesomeness of the song. Torsten Schmidt Hang on, you cut 1/4 of a writer’s content and took it away from them? Fizzle Sure, that’s exactly our job. It may sound funny, but that’s what it comes down to. You can’t just press record and take what you get. Your job is to cut things out, to tell them to do things differently, that’s what producing is all about. It’s our job. Torsten Schmidt That sounds like we should give this a quick listen. You guys can already think about your questions and we’ll send someone around with a mic. But first, we’re going to listen to? Fizzle “Anorak” by Megaloh, Trettmann and us. (music: Megaloh, Trettmann, KitschKrieg – “Anorak”) Torsten Schmidt Alright, let’s get down to business now. How important is it for an artist’s survival, also in times of Spotify and so on, that your pieces are also suitable for gym playlists? Fizzle [laughs] Gym playlists, OK. Sure, you could think it’s important, because we only earn money from streaming and things like that, at least in our case, because we don’t go on tour, we don’t perform live, so it’s about how much music we sell or stream. You could focus on being placed in these playlists, and in order to do that it’s probably easiest to just stick to the sound people are used to. All 20 of those songs pretty much sound the same. Same pattern, same construct. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing, but it’s all the same type of music. You can play along, or what worked in our case, was to produce the complete opposite of that and attract attention that way. That also gets you into playlists. And if you make music that reaches the people emotionally, they add it to their own playlists too. You don’t want to just get into the editorial playlists, if your listeners send it to all their friends and they add it to their playlists too, then that also gets you plays and the money you need to get by. Torsten Schmidt That sounded like you have a secret agenda. It’s been a while since we last heard something new from you guys. Fizzle Suspicious. Torsten Schmidt Suspicious indeed. Fiji Would you like to name a date? Torsten Schmidt Somebody else is responsible for dates. awhodat Yeah… Fizzle Silence. Torsten Schmidt So maybe there are secrets to be uncovered soon. Does somebody have the mic and a question? A hand signal. Great. Audience Member Hi. First of all I wanted to say, 808 ftw, keep it up. Then I wanted to ask all three of you, I don’t know how you see this, but we as people want to be liked and loved. There are two groups of people for whom that’s not very productive. The first one being villains in wrestling, and the second group being artists that play the role of outsiders. And now you guys are rightfully receiving lots of love for your art and from lots of people sitting here, myself included, how does becoming less of an outsider and gaining appreciation for what you do have an influence on you? Fizzle That’s a good point. There’s that phenomenon where you lose all drive as soon as your struggle ends, and things become boring, but I don’t think we’re very susceptible to that because this is what we’ve always done. There’s no other way. We did it for ten, 15 years without any success, struggling to be able to pay our rent, over such a long amount of time, and that shows that we were never able to do it any other way. And now we’re in a phase where everything becomes possible, and we can work with all our heroes, and we’re enjoying it, but also staying true to ourselves. Our taste hasn’t changed, and I think we’re pretty unsusceptible to that because we were already of a certain age when our success kicked in. Maybe had this happened at 20 or 25 it might have been different, but now we’re just thankful to be able to go into the studio and work with people that we’re fans of, and being able to make music with them, so I think we’re pretty safe. Fiji A symptom of that, and something that should calm you down, is that when we receive awards for what we do, we usually feel really awkward about it, we just want to get back to the studio and be amongst ourselves again. Fizzle We’re really doing it for the love of it all. It’s fun creating music, and photos and videos, that’s why we do it. Audience Member Are there any other artists you’d like to work with, be it a German rapper or international artists, and do you approach them, or do you wait to be approached by them? Fizzle We typically approach these people directly. Of course we also have people approaching us, and we check them out to see if we want to work with them or not, but we’re definitely working our way down our wishlist at the moment, every chance we get. Fiji That’s true. Here’s a secret. We were joking about how our to-do list is the same as our wishlist. Torsten Schmidt Any other questions? I saw something in the back... Audience Member Does everything have to involve all KitschKrieg members, or does she also go off and shoot videos for projects you guys are not interested in? Fizzle It has to be all of KitschKrieg all the time. We tried it differently once, and it didn’t make us happy. awhodat I can take your picture without their approval. [laughter] Torsten Schmidt I guess now the time has come for us to applaud and thank these people, and let them know that we’re excited for what is to come. We started off with “Billie Holiday,” so maybe we can end this session with that video. Thank you, KitschKrieg. [applause] (video: Trettmann – “Billie Holiday”)