Rotersand’s new album “How Do You Feel Today?” has been released by Trisol and Metropolis Records. The new opus features all ingredients we’re used to hearing from the duo Rascal Hüppe – Krischan Wesenberg; strong melody lines, solid bass lines, impressive sound treatments and great vocals. After having heard their new work I asked myself which Rotersand album is my favorite one? I’m not sure to have a favorite one, but this new work is for sure one of the most accomplished and best produced albums in their discography. You can call it Future-Pop or EBM or Industrial-Pop; the songs however reflect the great chemistry between both members. Rasc kindly answered a few questions about this brilliant work.

(Courtesy by Inferno Sound Diaries)

Q: My first question deals with the title of your album “How Do You Feel Today?”. Living in Corona-times this title has something cynical or we can also understand it as a rhetorical question! So what is it all about?

Rasc: It may not sound like that at first glance, and yet “How Do You Feel Today?” is so much more than a question asked in polite small-talk. It’s pure social dynamite in a world where emotions become moods and moods suddenly turn into opinions, uncorrectable creeds and breath taking brutalization. Truth is not holding on to facts anymore. Truth is truly becoming fanatic.

We feel our civilisatory crust breaking and we hear a grinding sound of violence. This record is the soundtrack of both: the grinding sound of brutalization and the strong feelings of love, respect and humanity as a strong answer.

Q: I personally experienced this new album as your most accomplished work to date! It feels like inspired by mathematics; everything sounds right, every single note put at the right place and a perfect harmony between sound and vocals! Where does it come from? Is it just maturity or are you guys perfectionists or wizards?

Rasc: Thank you! I also have the feeling it is well balanced. In my view it is about the time spent on song writing before production. Production and song writing went most of the times hand in hand. This time –just my feeling, songs were much clearer and much longer written before production. That could be true for all the ways, ROTERSAND songs come to life: the songs we wrote together in a real band feeling, the songs I wrote and pre-produced in Hamburg, the music Krischan wrote more on his own.

Q: When did you start the composing of this new work? Was there a kind of click to start writing new songs? Did you need some preparation, eventually research etc? How did it happen?

Rasc: The process of composing does never stop. I am writing a song almost every day. In most of the times it starts with a melody in my head, a synth line, a vocal line and then I look for chords or basslines, search for a harmonic atmosphere to carry the melody, to set the ´tone´. That doesn´t necessarily mean that this atmosphere remains. Krischan sometimes likes to take things apart that I come with. A ballad can turn into an Industrial track that way. Krischan often describes himself as an alchemist, putting things together that are already there, changing some ingredients or contexts. He describes me as a magician who usually creates something out of nothing as for me everything starts with melodies, new atmospheres, chord progressions, words.

In fact, it is a kind of magic to write songs. I do not know how it happens, it just happens, often enough in moments you do not expect it or moments that should not be interrupted. My wife is very much used to it that we can´t watch movies without me interrupting and grabbing my guitar to try out something and record it on my phone to remember it. I think these two approaches of us coming to new songs are the two main engines that drive the creative power of ROTERSAND and help to explain the uniqueness and surprises in our universe.

Q: I’m also wondered about the ultimate point of a song (and an album),  the point where you decide to say it’s finished! Can you tell us a bit more about this ‘ultimate point’ and do you handle some criteria to say the song/album is finished?

Rasc. Just deadlines & pragmatism. Songs are never finished. That´s why we like reworks as “Reloaded” now. And live shows have an impact. Songs change over their life time of course.

Q: Back to the Covid-19 pandemic, which for artists is a real tragedy; no Summer festivals, no tour, nothing… expect live streams. But you guys seem to have found an opportunity to play together with Noyce™. Tell us a bit more about this concept? Don’t you think this terrible pandemic is also inciting artists –and the entire scene, to become more creative and develop new ideas?

Rasc: Obviously yes. We wouldn´t play in a circus arena on October 2^nd with no Covid-19 in the world. I wouldn´t say ‘tragedy’. I prefer being alive and nobody is starving in our country due to Covid-19. In my case it has an impact on song writing. It´s a bit more ´blue´ what comes out in the moment. I miss meeting and hugging certain people, I miss gym halls, I miss  touring, shows on several nights in a row. I know what was at stake so I am really happy to live in Germany in the moment, but please Covid-19, please leave us soon.

Q: Rotersand is now busy for nearly twenty years. How did you see this band evolving all over the time and do you still have some new challenges, dreams?  

Rasc: We grew an incredible ROTERSAND family all over the world. Nobody can take this ever away until the end of our lives. We are rich men, we are really rich men. I know from all these occasions, meetings, talks and hugs that we reach people. That some of our songs gain an incredible power in some people. That they are able to stand up in the morning, drive to work, can fall asleep in tough times of their lives with the help and some say with only the help of our music. In dark times of life. Knowing about these moments, having looked in pairs of eyes telling you incredible stories related to your songs give me the feeling my life is not wasted. I can use my pain, I can use my joy to reach people. In some of the lyrics and atmosphere I lay my heart in the hands of our listeners. And they give it back to me in a kind of tenderness you can´t imagine if you are nota songwriter.  God gave us talent for a reason.

Inferno Sound Diaries

I have been working for over 30 years with Side-line as the main reviewer. My taste is eclectic, uncoventional and I prefer to look for the pearls, even if the bands are completely unknown, thus staying loyal to the Side-Line philosophy of nurturing new talents.

www.side-line.com

Set up and driven by the creative spirit of Florian Schäfer and Oliver Goetz, German formation Noyce™ is already active for more than 20 years now. They released their fourth full length album “Love Ends” at the end of 2017, which also was their first new opus in eight years. The album released on Focile Art Tribe belongs to one of the best productions from 2017. It’s an opus filled with delicacy and passion resulting in a truly artistic piece, which you can’t really compare to any other band. I got in touch with Florian Schäfer who perfectly transposed this ‘passion’ in his answers. A fascinating read…

(Courtesy by Inferno Sound Diaries)

Q: The least I can say is that Noyce™ is not releasing new albums on regular basis. So how does it feel to have achieved this fourth full length in history and what explains the gap of time between the albums?

Florian: I know… 4 albums in a period of 21 years is at the first view not a massive output and I understand that you and others ask why there is always that big gap between the releases. Well… we are 100% independent and so we’ve to pay everything ourselves. Instruments, studio costs and mixing, CD-artwork and CD-printing, DJ- and print promotion, advertising… everything. On the other side we try to hold up the high level we build in the past with good songs and meaningful lyrics, a brilliant sound and a special artwork. So it costs a lot of money and our songs always need a lot of time to get accomplished.

Our songs are ready when we feel the goose bumps on our skin… when we think the sound pictures are now nearly perfectly painted. But nothing matters more than the fact that we do music because we love it and because it is our passion. So the best and logic answer to your question will be ‘we do music because we love music and not longing for being commercial, successful or to get 45min of fame on a festival stage’!

Q: “Love Ends” is a somewhat pessimistic and melancholic title while lyrical wise we all can feel it’s a very intimate piece of work. What did you try to express and maybe exorcize on “Love Ends”?

Florian: Even if “Love Ends” is a pessimistic- and yes… a melancholic title, the album should express love. Love is always a better answer than hate. A ‘hello’ is better than a ‘go away’. We have songs about the new nationalism all over the world, refugees, hates peech, populism… the world change because some people fear that this have an impact of their lives. but is that fear that big? I mean in “Die Ungeliebten” we count dates of terrorism attacks from the last back to the first which is 9/11. But it needs that date to understand what the song is about? Strange, isn’t it? I mean you normally should remember the closer dates. Maybe this is a kind of human protective mechanism or simply ignorance. Is it indifference or missing empathy? At the end we tried all songs should spread love and hope so that we all start questioning about our lives and that humanity and empathy both play again a bigger role in the future.

Q: Sound wise Noyce™ remain a mystery to me. Your music is not exactly belonging to an established music genre rather than bringing multiple influences together. It might also explain a part of your success, but what’s your own perception of this success story?

Florian : Oliver and me grew up with bands like Yello, Ultravox or Depeche Mode, but we also liked Nine Inch Nails, And Also The Trees, The Young Gods or Clan Of Xymox. I guess if you mix all these bands together you will get something what sounds like NOYCE™. It has always been our claim not to copy ourselves. I mean it would be easy to do an album full of “Fall[out]”-songs, but where is the creativity then? I guess most of the people buying our CDs expect something special… simply the unexpected. In my point of view nothing is more boring in music than when every song sounds the same; if just the lyrics, the bpm’s or the sounds change a little bit… but more or less every song is equal. If a band cover their own songs in the eternal loop!

Of course, it always depends on what and how you want to reach your goal with your music. If I want to earn money then it is like a job. You need to be commercial. But this is not our motivation because we love what we do. We want to make music with an artistic aspect; music with a repertoire and value in a fast-moving and instant fame-oriented world. So simply… music we love! And if you understand music as art like we do then it doesn‘t need a genre, but it simply needs the listeners and their opinion… they’ll like it or not.

Q: You didn’t spare any effort to get the album the best as possible asking famous producers like John Fryer and Krischan Wesenberg to contribute to the album. How was it working with those renowned artists and what has been their impact at the final result?

Florian: We asked John Fryer because Oliver an me love some albums he mixed and produced in the past. “Pretty Hate Machine“ from NIN, “Medusa“ from Clan Of Xymox, “Head/Down” from Moev to give you a few examples. So we contact and simply ask him if he would mix 3 songs. We’d fun working together, but he doesn‘t produced the songs, so there were no ideas or sounds from his side. It was simply not possible because when he starts with “The World Is Quiet“ he lived in Norway and when he worked on the mixes of “Brave New World“ and “Propaganda“ he lived in Los Angeles.

About Krischan, we know each other for a couple of years now and he mixed “Heimat“ and in 2012 he helped us to give “Fall[out]“ the right sound and a great mix. He would say his impact was not that big, but all the sessions in his studio plus the coffee breaks where we discussed about the music scene gave us the right motivation to start working again with him. Sadly it was not possible to do more songs because he is very busy and we… well… are very slow in producing songs.

The main part of the album was mixed by sound fetishist Adrian Le Monde. He gave “Love Ends“ that brilliant homogenous sound for that we are longing for and he did some awesome mixes as well. To make it short, it was a real pleasure working with those great people.

Q: What’s the link between the title “Brave New World” and the famous novel of Aldous Huxley? Do you feel close with the so-called ‘dystopian writers’ such as Huxley, Orwell, Burgess and co?

Florian: There is no direct link but if then our “Brave New World” describes the revolution against Huxley’s world. It is the last wake up-call for a revolution to wake up and don‘t let it happens. But if you open your eyes you can see some parts from Huxley’s world are becoming real in some countries. Turkey, United States, Russia, Syria, North-Korea have all leaders who don’t serve the people. The rebirth of nationalism in Europe, Populism where lies are sold as truth, hate speeches on internet or the end of laws and jurisdiction. We don’t need science fiction books…  we sadly write new ones.

Q: I remember your previous band Silence Gift, so are there some elements and influences you still recognize from this band in Noyce™? I’m also wondered what you think about the evolution in the music writing, production techniques, social media ao between the 90s and today?

Florian: Silence Gift was exactly what we wanted to do in the beginning of the 90s, but it sounded very pop/wave and cut our musically freedom. This is why we found NOYCE™ to do whatever we want to do.

I think most of the NOYCE™ songs sound just like Silence Gift would have sound today. I’m sure that in the future we will continue to dress Silence Gift songs in a NOYCE™ robe as we have already done with some songs.

I‘m not quite sure if there still is an evolution in the music scene. Sure it is not easy to do something completely new, but most of the newer bands just try to sound like VNV Nation, Suicide Commando or Rammstein. As I explained before, it is the best way to get your 5 minutes of fame, but musically it is boring. Production-wise it is sad that a lot of these newer bands are not able, even with today’s possibilities, to reach the production level of… for example Skinny Puppy‘s “Worlock“. I mean the song is nearly 30 years old! So some of them produce their stuff at home using some apps for free, load up at Facebook and think, after receiving 13 likes, ‘we are the ones everybody is waiting for even no producer or mixer involved’! So the quality is poor. The next step is that they pay to play at festivals. They don’t see that this is ridiculous.

The last newer band who are really brilliant and unique in my eyes is Empathy Test. It’s very well produced and mixed featuring great lyrics and well-done artwork. Sure not every new band is crap and not everything from the past is brilliant, but in my point of view there was simply a lot more variety. One thing is for sure, music has lost its value through Spotify and others. Even if people still listen to music, the result will be that in some years only equal commercial music will survive.

Inferno Sound Diaries

I have been working for over 30 years with Side-line as the main reviewer. My taste is eclectic, uncoventional and I prefer to look for the pearls, even if the bands are completely unknown, thus staying loyal to the Side-Line philosophy of nurturing new talents.

www.side-line.com

Genre/Influences: Electro-pop, wave-pop, goth-pop.

Background/Info: Düsseldorfer (Germany) formation Noyce™ is not releasing new albums on regular basis although the band driven by Florian Schäfer remains pretty ‘hot’ especially in their homeland. They now finally strike back with “Love Ends” revealing twelve songs. Among the tracklist you’ll recognize previous EP-title songs “Fall[Out] and “Sense Of Despair”. Notice by the way John Fryer and Krischan Wesenberg (Rotersand) mixed several tracks from this opus.

Content: Noyce™ took their time to accomplish this album, which is a great and mature composition. It’s not that easy to define the sound of the band, but they clearly mix different elements together, which in the end are always polished with a ‘pop’ touch. Guitar and electronics are in perfect balance, but you also will notice violin playing injecting a more sensitive and melancholic flavor.

+ + + : The songs have been masterly accomplished and I think we here can speak about the ‘opus magnum’ of the band. The work is blending delicious melancholic atmospheres with elevating choruses. The tracks have been meticulously and progressively built up, which often resulted in a truly climax. “The World Is Quiet” and “Love Ends” are the perfect apotheosis for this album. Somewhere in between beautiful melancholia and harder, pumping passages (cf. “Fall[Out]”) the work also reveals symphonic arrangements and even a cool experimental cut (cf. “Die Ungeliebten”). The songs are diversified and that’s an essential element you also will notice in the vocals’ production. Florian Schäfer sings in German and English language accentuating this diversity. Last, but not least I also have to mention the great artwork of the digipak format.

– – – : “Love Ends” definitely is one of 2017 major albums so I don’t really see minus points.

Conclusion: Noyce™ has released the ‘perfect’ album, which can’t be compared to any other formation, but strives for an original sound with strong lyrical themes.

Best songs: “Love Ends”, “Fall[Out], “The World Is Quiet”, “Brave New World”, “Propaganda”.

Rate: (8½).

Band & Label: www.noycetm.de / www.facebook.com/pg/noycetm

About Noyce™

Noyce™ was founded in 1997 by former members of Silence Gift and is built around Oliver Fritz Goetz and Florian Schäfer. “Love Ends” revisits two earlier EP title tracks, “Fall[Out]” and “Sense Of Despair”, and was mixed in part by John Fryer and Krischan Wesenberg of Rotersand.

Inferno Sound Diaries

I have been working for over 30 years with Side-line as the main reviewer. My taste is eclectic, uncoventional and I prefer to look for the pearls, even if the bands are completely unknown, thus staying loyal to the Side-Line philosophy of nurturing new talents.

www.side-line.com