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I just want to be a sound postulates the new album of the Berlin guitar institution. In the interview, Kadavar singer and guitarist Christoph “Lupus” Lindemann talks about sound and changes.
Do you go to a new record with a concept, or is there music in the rehearsal room?
Christoph “Lupus” Lindemann: There are concrete song ideas that we bring with us, there are riffs and processes that are already there. So the songs are largely finished. The album that we made together with Elder in 2021 is the exception. We wanted to pass the time together in the studio and only then decided to make a record. But this rehearsal room jam, nobody else wants that in the band. We can’t really do that either. Go deep and look after every blow and detail – that’s more our thing. Get into the matter and finish.
The Stoner rock cliché wants people to meet, smoke smoke, drink, and then the music comes organically, as if by itself.
I never wanted to be thrown into this pot. For me, our debut is a counter -design to Stoner Rock, also musical. Repeat the same for minutes, that’s boring. After four times, a cut must be made so that people don’t even get lazy. I don’t want you to just be stump for my music, drink your beer and rock with your head. It has to be work.
Your sound is considered very retro. What can an old amplifier from the seventies do, what new equipment cannot?
I don’t even know if new equipment can’t. We started collecting equipment at a time when online platforms such as reverb did not yet exist. Back then, the broadcasters and TV channels kicked out a lot of all the stuff. People didn’t yet know what things were worth and you could shop relatively cheaply in Berlin.
But your sound sounds very specific – old and new at the same time.
You hunt the things over the band machine or through the preamplifiers, and suddenly it sounds good, somehow creamier. But it was never about being as original as something from before.
A word like authenticity is not important to you?
At least not as important as this is often shown. It is important for us that the song sounds good. And that we know how we get there. Whether on a digital or analog way, never played a role. It’s too boring for me to just repeat the old one. But I have no problem just taking something from anywhere when I find it cool – and then build something of my own. I don’t want to limit myself either. To be honest, I don’t care whether that sounds old or new. But of course, we took this retro story to the extreme with our first record, and it was difficult to get out of it.
With the pandemic there was a break in your music, which can be heard very nicely on The Isolation Tapes.
I think that is the first album on which sound tones appear. Until then, it always had to sound big and powerful. When we got out of the studio with the isolation, there were almost no guitars left, only synthesizers and organs and something like that. I liked that because suddenly there was a dynamic in our songs that we didn’t have before. If you have hard riffs, you have to play a calm. Otherwise the riffs will not stay hard. If you only play hard songs, it is just a noise at some point.
The new album i just want to be a sound no longer sounds like differentiation, but very different. My first association was MGMT, and there are also Eighties synth pop parts. This is an antithesis of what you have done so far. Nevertheless, it sounds like Kadavar. How could that happen?
We wanted to try the album, also with our new guitarist and keyboardist. And we knew that we would go to limits and maybe be out. But these are still Kadavar songs, only now in a different way and arranged. With Max Rieger we got someone who is not a metal producer, but comes from the indie corner. Inspiration was, for example, a band like Idles who redefined their sound for themselves and mixed a punk like a hip-hop album.
Max Rieger has a recognizable way of laying the different traces. Was the influence of the producer greater than usual for you?
Well, we always recorded everything ourselves. So yes. Nobody heard our records before they came out, except for our friends and families. This time we integrated someone early and also listened to him a bit in songwriting. It was important for us that with Jascha and Max two people brought fresh wind in. It is good to have a person who says: “Ey, try that, it could be very cool.”
The title piece “I Just Want To Be a Sound” sounds a little like a promise or a utopia – you become a sound yourself and dissolve in music: “I come in as wave and i leave a lot of noise Behind”. What do you connect with it?
The sentence actually comes from bassist Simon, who is not on social media. It is extremely important to him to live in the here and now: he is there, and when he is gone, the room is empty again and it has disappeared. This spontaneous, lively in many places has been lost since the pandemic, and I have already mourn it. All of this can be found in the song. And I think that’s a good opener, an offer for fans who say: “Oh, that doesn’t sound like Kadavar now.” They should just listen, and maybe they will find our new songs quite well in the end.
Interview by: Benjamin Moldenhauer