Date: 20.10.2007
Text: Roberdo


Nowadays it happens pretty often that you listen to 10 brand new releases and get the impression that everything sounds same, its just like the artists copied each other. And in fact many do so… Gero Bode, the founder of Klangstrahler Projekt, consequently developed his own individual style which is unique on the one hand and hard to copy on the other. Sam met this very innovative guy for an interview.

Sam: Hi Gero! Klangstrahler Projekt has released very successful albums in 1999 and 2000 and now you are releasing your new album so I am wondering: What did you do in the past 7 years?

Gero: I was deejaying around for a long time and I didn’t learn to organize my time so I’ve lost a lot of time in producing music by doing my DJ thing. I started with producing in 2001 but it took a very long time to finish this production.

Sam: You are different from most of the other progressive trance productions and being different seems to be quite important these days, right?

Gero: I hope so. That was one of the points I was trying to reach in my complete music career: To be original and have original sound that is not so easy to copy for others. So when I look around I can hear that someone has a new idea and 20 others are starting to copy this idea and I had a very good teacher called Klaus Schulze and he said to me: If you don’t want to be copied make it like George Gershwin- Its not possible to copy this guy. It was also my first Cubase -you know it was called Notator in the beginning- he gave it to me three months before it was released and I was buying this Atari ST computer specially to use this program. Very nice story but very long…

Sam: Ok. How do you try to be different? How do you achieve that?

Gero: Yeah. This is the part of the story. Klaus Schulze said to me: Ok, go home find your own style and then you can come back. I did not know what this guy meant. My own style… what is it? I had no. And its not so easy to find the result of this lesson, I don’t know. I was first thinking to stop making music because I had no idea to make this but then I decided that it’s a lot of fun and joy to make music. Not to sell it or however not to be famous. It’s a lot of fun and joy to make it simply. And a few years later the first people said to me: \"Oh, when I listen to one of your tracks I realize that it’s from you! I hear it from the first tones”. And then I had the idea: Maybe this is my own style...

Sam: Ok, cool. On your album you cooperated with many other artists. Maybe some words about this?

Gero: Yeah, for me the most joyful moment in making music is to make music with other people. Together! And so sometimes tears are running down my face when I hear what these people are playing and in most of the cases I have an idea, I make a backing with music and this guys are jamming to my backing. And in this moment it’s the only time when I can listen to my own music without knowing what happens next. And this is a very joyful moment, I can tell you! And the most precious moment is not to release an album or to sell it or to be famous or something else - the most precious moment is to make the music.

Sam: There’s a lot of musical genres on your album, unusual for progressive trance productions. So obviously you are trying to reach other musical scenes with your album?

Gero: Yes, I’m trying because I told you I want to reach everyone, I’d like to reach everyone. So maybe there has to be something inside for everyone. What I don’t like is to set borders and to say: “This may not be in this kind of music”. I don’t like these things and for me it’s like a challenge to have things which may not be in this music and for me it’s a challenge to make it possible to bring these things together with this music. This challenge also exists for Theodora, this mezzo soprano singer. For her it was also a challenge to make something like I do and she did it for the first time in her life and for her it was a very exciting experience like for me.

Sam: This time you founded you own label, Klangstrahler Records. Why did you make your own label?

Gero: Yeah, a lot of reasons. I saw a lot of labels went down, a lot of distributions went down and they took the artists with them. And so I have to protect myself if I want to go on with making music, I have to make sure that when I sell this music that I get the money for it and not other people sell the music, take the money and I get nothing.

Sam: Yeah, right. The last releases they were quite successful, you sold… how many pieces did you sell?

Gero: From the last two albums? Much more then 5000 I can say. From each album.

Sam: And how much do you want to sell this time?

Gero: As much as possible, I guess! No, it’s kind of difficult so we have some distributors around and they are close to a monopolistic situation. And they sell records very cheap but my record is not such a cheap production. And so it’s not possible for me to sell it very cheap. We first started our website where you can buy this album online. So this is a try. I think this is a very interesting idea so I can sell it a little cheaper to the people directly, they get the music cheaper and I make more money and this is good for both sides.

Sam: Yeah, direct from the artist to the listener.

Gero: The problem is to tell the listener that the album is there. And so from the whole production I can say that 70% of the whole costs is only in promotion and making an Internet site. And this is a little bit… a high risk, I can tell you. Maybe its interesting for the people: We had to pay only for the internet sites and the promotion and to press the CDs and so on, we had to pay 20.000 Euros for that stuff. I hope that we will get the money back!

Links:
www.klangstrahler-records.com