German industrial / no wave / nut wave / post-punk outfit Gewalt has released their second album Doppeldenk a while back. We talked about the hectic story behind it all with Patrick Wagner, Helen Henfling, and Sol Astolfi before their concert at Berlin Neue Zukunft.
Patrick Wagner: This is our first interview for a Turkish magazine. We would love to play in Istanbul. We’ve just performed in the USA and most of Europe: no UK, Turkey, Spain, Italy, or Portugal.
I’ll try to be a messenger to get you to perform in Turkey, at least.
PW: Good. I mean, you don’t have to, but if you want to, that’s great.
Obviously, this year has been very for you with a new album, Doppeldenk, and a tour. Out of 10, what score would you give to this year?
Helen Henfling: Oh God. A nightmare. (all laugh) I just can’t say it was not a nightmare because recording songs was very tough. I don’t know, the whole process was very hard. (laughs) I can’t be more direct.
PW: Maybe that’s because on the last record, Paradies, we had played 120 shows in one and a half year, and we hadn’t practiced in the studio at all. We finally booked a studio thinking, “Oh, we’re in real good shape now. We are the hottest band around!” That was the feeling we had about ourselves, and then we started writing new stuff. When we went to the practice room after not practicing for two years, we thought, “What the f.ck? We are the sh.ttiest band of earth!”
HH: We were super empty.
For a second I thought you were going to say, “What the f.ck? We rock so hard!”
PW: Not at all.
HH: Suddenly, no rock at all. (laughs)
PW: Helen was like, “I hate the guitar, I don’t want to play guitar!” Gradually, we found our thing and added more synths. It changed the whole process, and all of a sudden, it went well. We love the record that came out. We’re now at the end of the first tour, and it was the best tour we ever had, but the whole year was sh.tty. We all lost our day jobs because we were on tour all the time. We were like, “Oh f.ck!” We had no income because all the fundings were dropped and we were like “OK, how can we do this?” Then our former bass player left two weeks before the record came out. Thanks a lot! (all laugh) It was really bad. Our booking agency was like, “We booked this tour, but we’re going to leave now. I’m going to a big metal company. I can’t take you with us.” And we were like, “Oh f.ck!” But now, Sol changes everything. She’s new in the band and she’s really great to play with.
Sol, how has your experience been with the band so far?
Sol Astolfi: At first, it was a challenge for me, because they had all these songs and they wanted to go on tour together, and I’d never been on tour before. It was a lot of work. Then I got energized and they were like, “We need a better sound!” So I changed the bass parts. It was like a mission and I’m happy we did it, because once you overcome those obstacles, you feel you really pulled on through. So now, I’m very excited.
Speaking of income, funding in the Berlin art scene in general is becoming more and more of an issue, doesn’t it?
HH: I will say that it doesn’t look so good.
PW: We have forty shows coming up. (all laugh)
HH: So yeah, it’s not so easy to figure out how we should do that, but we will do it.
You’ll manage.
PW: Because it’s great to be on the road like this. These two weeks were filled with people, and with so much love and passion concerning the audience and the promoters. Everyone was really into the band. This is kind of new. Everyone used to just think we were crazy. It was just like, “Oh, they’re freaks!” All of a sudden, it opened up in the best way. Don’t know, why but it did.
HH: We had lots of concerts in Germany and Austria, which is very interesting. Just the German language countries.
PW: Yeah. In the last tour, we toured Europe a lot more than here in Germany.
HH: Especially France.
PW: Yeah. France, Belgium, Netherlands, and the US had a totally different reaction to Gewalt. They were like, “I like your energy! This is blowing me away.” But here it was like, “What is he saying? Is this OK? I don’t know. It’s a bit weird. He’s saying the truth. I cannot stand it though.” People always love these artificial figures. But the lyrics in Gewalt are hyper reality, it’s like-
The real deal.
PW: The real deal, without any cream on it. It’s poetic, but it’s very tight to reality. To my reality, at least. I don’t know if there’s reality. (laughs)
Do you have a specific favorite concert memory from this year’s tour?
PW: Vienna.
HH: Hamburg.
SA: Yeah.
PW: Both were great. In Hamburg we played on a ship. A huge ship, a big old fishing boat. It had different levels. It was like a 90’s MTV video where from all sides were dancing and shouting. It was like a f.cking AC/DC video. It was so weird. (laughs)
When you look back on the recording process of Doppeldenk, what were the two easiest and hardest songs to make from that collection?
PW: Oh, that’s easy. The easiest was “Schwartz Schwartz.” It was there right from the start.
HH: And the hardest one was…
PW: “Ein Sonnensturm tobt über uns.”
HH: Oh yeah!
PW: It was a nightmare.
HH: Because it sounded a little bit like the Schlager genre, and in a very cheap way, at the beginning. That’s what I thought. Our producer as well, he was like, “Oh, we can’t put it on the album. We have to put it on the B-side of a single. And then the only idea was to make it as Schlager as possible. That’s why we put saxophone on there.
PW: It’s beautiful. We never did a pop pop song. When I came up with this guitar theme, and played it for the first time, the sun was setting and I started crying, and I thought it should be beautiful. I just wanted it to not be a ballad. It should have felt like a John Maus song. Really uplifting, and at the same time painful. I wrote that song, and the others were like, “What the f.ck is that? We cannot play this!” Sometimes weird ideas just come to your head, and I thought, “I should sing like that guy from Talk Talk, I must sing!” I practiced a lot everyday, five hours. I was super emotional, super blown away.
HH: And I was like, that’s not working. (all laugh)
PW: I just couldn’t do it.
HH: So I said, “Maybe you should sing like the singer of Kings of Lions in the song “Sex on Fire”, and that-
PW: Didn’t work either. (all laugh) So now I’m just talking, and it’s beautiful.
You tried it, and now you know what’s working and what’s not. You always have to kill your darlings to a degree.
PW: Yeah. That is how Gewalt works in general. We have certain ideas that we not awareof instantly, we just think we are bad. That then becomes Gewalt. It’s a very punkish idea of creating music. OK, you cannot do it, so do it with the biggest empathy and energy, and just say this is it. Then it becomes kebab. Like The Velvet Underground, we are the greatest pretenders. (all laugh)
What can you say about the Berlin underground in general? What acts can you recommend from the scene?
PW: Easy. You have to follow this girl. (points to Sol Astolfi) She plays with two cool bands. One is called Fatigue, and the other one is called BED. Then there’s Plattenbau. Amazing band. They are on the Dedstrange label. They’re friends of ours and and we always try to play together. And then there’s a very Portishead-like band. They were on tour with Depeche Mode, and they are called Hope. Amazing guys.
What do you recommend to people who are very new in the Berlin scene, both audience-wise and artist-wise?
PW: Audience-wise, go to the shows here. Go to all those weird places in Lichtenberg. Go to the shows at Hinterraum and 8MM. Same thing for artists.
Here is an important note: Most musicians make this terrible fault when they play together. They have this ambition that makes them think, “This artist has to be level X, because I’m a genius, so the others must be geniuses as well and must be good at their instrument.” I think it’s way more important to have the attitude, because you can easily learn instruments, but attitude is hard to learn. Sol, for instance, gradually matched up with our energy. She’s now a different person.
You’re together all the time, and you experience good and bad things, and you have to have someone you can trust on a personal level, otherwise they just fade away. They are like, “No, no, I cannot do this.” The people with that attitude never get their sh.t together, but others are cool and ambitious and open to listen, and we all try to listen. We learn a lot every time we meet other people.
SA: And be flexible. (laughs) Because it’s very hard. And also set goals.
Your official statement reads, “We come to make you dance & to blow your mind.” What do you listen to at home when you’re on your own to dance and vibe in general?
PW: “Schwarz Schwarz”, “Es funktioniert”, “Deutsch”, “Felicita”…
HH: Almost every song we have.
PW: Maybe every song we will play tonight. That was the idea of Doppeldenk.
HH: Our concert in Paris particularly made it clear that people want to dance to the beats, and that our beats are all danceable. People there were just jumping.
SA: They didn’t even get the lyrics. (all laugh)
We have certain ideas that we not awareof instantly, we just think we are bad. That then becomes Gewalt. It’s a very punkish idea of creating music. OK, you cannot do it, so do it with the biggest empathy and energy, and just say this is it. Then it becomes kebab. Like The Velvet Underground, we are the greatest pretenders.
Patrick Wagner
What are the most recent tracks you listened to on your streaming platform?
HH: I don’t have a streaming platform.
PW: For us, it’s always the same. We always listen to Kylie Minogue’s “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” before we go on stage.
HH: And lots of Bruce Springsteen.
What a coindicence, I was humming that song by Kylie to a friend of mine today! (all laugh)
PW: There you go!
Let’s imagine we’re at a Musicians Theme Park 100 years from now, where every artist or band featured has their own memorial stone with a certain lyric by them written on it. Which one of the lyrics would you like to see written on Gewalt’s stone?
PW: Maybe the chorus of “Es funktioniert”. Or just “Deutsch”. (all laugh)
You can check out Gewalt’s official site here and Bandcamp page here.
