Sounds Like ... Elektro Guzzi - Episode 4

I'm fascinated with techno's repetitive aspect. What can you do with that? How can you translate its precision into a band format? That was the main challenge: Could we, as a band, adapt this kind of minimalism? Could we create the ritual dynamic of a DJ set? With a lot of new material, we experiment live and then go back to the studio to rehearse, record, and listen to it again. I'd say it's a kind of interaction. Each of us has put a lot of thought and time into playing or instruments. We have tried to explore and transcend each instrument's limits and to find new sounds along the way. One thing we've had to learn to handle is that there's only three of us. Techno works with a superposition of several layers and most of the time there's more than three. We've spent a lot of time rehearsing and conducting sound experiments with effects units to be able to pay more than three layers at once. It all has to come from the moment, there can't be any external influence. There's no pre-fabricated material, no loops on playback or live sequencers. That would completely turn the energy of playing on its head and that's why we're trying to avoid it. Yeah, that works. - Cool - Let's just listen to it. - Yeah let's give it a go. It's kind of cool too, when it changes like that. The transitions from track to track are pretty much always improvised. When we try a new track there's no definite form where we know: 64 bars this and 64 bars that. There's more like a general idea and the exact arrangement is mostly improvised. It's cool. - Mhm. - Yup. - It works. - Let's go have a hot chocolate. I hope that what we have accomplished by working towards this electronic sound with our instruments never sounds like just a drum machine and a bass sequencer but more like something in-between, that it has a quality of its own. Gurtelbogen number 30 please. There's kind of a dirty element to it, something raw. And I think that makes a difference, especially when playing live. Because a DJ is always limited to his mixing console, whereas we have drums and guitar amps on stage and that can open up new sound variations because it just sounds different to a DJ. To us, in our band, playing live is the most important thing. When we play live we try to do it as a DJ set because it creates a totally different vibe. It's not like a rock concert where there's track after track. We're interested in this ritual element and the beat that never stops, the continuous, uninterrupted energy. In the best case we're all going down one tunnel together, in the worst case each one is in his own tunnel. That's often beyond our control. It's difficult to transport this live energy that we talked about earlier into a studio setting. In the studio you just work a lot more accurately and some of that raw live energy is lost in the process. That's something that would be interesting to try and conserve more in the future. Thank you very much. We're Elektro Guzzi. Have fun tonight, thank you.