2008 Nov 12 Genetic Musical Mutations: Interview with Gebruder Teichmann
As punk rock child prodigies and teenage electro-rockstars, it’s not so far out there to say that DJ brothers, Andi and Hannes, better known today as Gebruder Teichmann, have music running through their veins. The energy and finesse generated at their live shows no doubt come as a result of their life-long experience as musicians and performers. As Gebr. Teichmann prepare for their debut show in Beijing on Nov 15, I had a chance to ask the composer-musician-artist-visionary-siblings more about what-why-and-how it is exactly that they’ve come to make such innovative music, beyond just being born with a gift for it naturally.
Carissa Welton: Coming from a musical family, how were your artistic talents nurtured from a young age?
Gebruder Teichmann: Our father is a jazz saxophone player, with a huge collection of instruments. Whatever he´s interested in, he tries to understand. He´s played everything from Asian instruments to piano or now even computer based sounds. We think that´s why we face music without fear, but with great interest.
CW: What were your first musical instruments? How many instruments do you play now?
(Andi): We started with a punk band called "totalschaden" (write-off), when Hannes was 9 years and I was 13 years old. Hannes was the singer and I played guitar. Later on I started to play drums. Hannes came up with hip hop and techno, started to DJ and bought his first synthezisers.
CW: That’s pretty impressive you started your first band so young. How mature was Totalschaden as an actual group? Did you have performances?
Totalschaden was a young and wild punkband, with German lyrics. Most of the tracks we wrote ourselves.
(Hannes): We were two pairs of brothers: Andi and me and the Kellner brothers, Corni, who played bass and Tobi, who played drums. We performed around Southern Germany and were promoted as the youngest punkband in the country.
CW: How did your next group, Beige GT, develop? What prompted the transition to DJ’ing?
From the middle of the nineties electronic music became more and more important for us. So we decided to create our own label "Festplatten". We started Beige GT around 1996. We still wanted to play in a rock band, but we also wanted to put in our influences of different styles of music that we liked at the time. Our singer, Martin, for example played with a dub band at the same time. In 2001 our first album "Jukebox Heroes" was released by the German label "L´age d´or". Our guitar based cover of Underground Resistance’s "Knight of the Jaguar" shows a lot about our idea to connect guitar and techno, which was completely new at the time.
CW: What do you prefer about synthesized instruments? Non-synthesized instruments?
We mainly use analog instruments at the moment. A TR808 or a moog synthesizer for example has its own soul and character. Somehow it feels like they are not only machines but band members. Non-synthesized: Andi still prefers the guitar, used in different ways; Hannes likes using his voice again.
CW: As both brothers and bandmates, how do you influence and complement each other?
We have very different characters. We have different priorities, not only for music, also in the way we work and live. It's always a long way (or fight) till we finish a song, but in the end we are able to connect the very different visions of a song to something new. And in the end we are both happy!
CW: What does your father think of your music?
When we started with punk, we didn't like jazz and we think our dad didn't understand the punk thing either. It took a while, but now we have become very close in certain musical ideas. We even plan to work together on some tracks for our next album. Also, our dad started to work with loops and computers. He even released the track "Pianotek" on Kompakt Pop Ambient 2006
CW: It'd be great to hear a bit more about your influences, feelings on classification (or de- classification, rather), and the creative process. To start, who's the MC on "Transfer and Thoughts"? Where does this track come from? Obviously it's rooted in hip-hop. How was it developed?
The MC's name is Caliph8. We recorded that track with the Philipinine duo "Rubber Inc." as part of the Soundscapes project, an electronic exchange project between Southeast Asian and German electronic artists. We already finished the instrumental version of the track and we didn’t think about hip-hop. But when we saw Caliph8 MC-ing in Manila with his band "Drip", we were very impressed, and we asked him if he want to sing on this track. It took only 30minutes to record his vocals and our first hip-hop track was born!
As "Gebrüder Teichmann" we are known for our own style of techno-, house- or electro-music and with "BeigeGT" we are known for rock-music. But at home we listening to all kinds of music. We love hip-hop, classic music, dub, soul and a lot more... We think the important thing is not the style of the music, it´s the substance or the content.
In 2001 we met Leopold Hurt and started to work with him as Teichmann Hurt. He´s a classical musican and composer. He used to be a musical wunderkind, same age then as Hannes. At the moment he´s finishing his first opera. He showed us the great field of different classical music and new music, like Steve Reich, Stockhausen or John Cage. That was really a big bang for us. We understood it´s not about techno or rock, it´s about new ideas, about energy, sounds and also about getting off the beaten track. To us John Cage, Sonic Youth or Green Velvet have a lot in common. Since working with Leopold Hurt we worked on several new music projects with classical people. And also on our personal way of techno or rock or whatever…
CW: How do you feel about coming to Beijing? What are you looking forward to?
We are very excited to go to Bejing. Last year we visited China, but we only saw Nanjing. Our friend "Raumagent Alpha" was touring through China this year as a technician for the German band "Mediengruppe Telekommander". He was completely crazy about Beijing... It seems to be the "Chinese Berlin", concerning subculture, creativity and arts.
Berlin’s been our home now for 10 years now ...
Teichmann will play their first gig in Beijing at White Rabbit Club on Nov 15. Doors open 11 pm, starting with DJ S.M.A.L.L. at the helm of his 12” record release ( CATWASH RECORDS, BRIQUE ROUGE). RMB 70.
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