System der Dinge interview

Interview with Oliver Jaggi of System der Dinge
Originally published by the now defunct newempire.com
1999
by Evan South


Q: Please give a little background of the band
and its members.


A: SdD was founded some 14 billion years ago by
someone called “god”. We started making sound at
the beginning of the 90's. At that time we were 4
people, heavily influenced by Depeche Mode,
Front 242, Nitzer Ebb. Leaether Strip, etc. Now we’re
just 2, Oliver, (29, working as a chemist) and
Ken (27, working as a programmer).


Q: Tell us about your new, and first, CD release
“Fear Forms Function”.

A: After the release of our second demo tape 5 years
 ago, we went through some troubled time, musically
speaking. Another member left the band which was
very stressful. We missed the chance to release our first
cd  when we were offered a deal.Then, when we
decided to release a cd, our label at that
time went bankrupt. Besides that, there was a growing
conflict between this dark aggressive stereotype like
EBM sound and our psychological development. We
couldn’t identify ourselves with that sound anymore and
lost quite a bit of our self-confidence. We didn’t know
anymore what our music should sound like. So “Fear
Forms Function” can be regarded as a recapitulation of
this difficult period. But now we are very satisfied with
the result.


Q: Any type of “scene” in Switzerland? Do you have
any connection with other Swiss bands such as ECM,
Skalpell, Sleepwalk, etc?

A: Yes, we have good connections to other swiss bands
because many of the people we know are doing music
themselves. Like Henry and Harry of the great ECM/
Skalpell. But there are other superb bands here like der
Eremit (www.dereremit.com) and SyntheticCyclone.
Der Eremit has already released some cd’s so please
have a listen to it if you like dark, intense, and
experimental music. We’re sure that Synthetic Cyclone
will release their debut cd in the near future and it will
be the bomb, that’s for sure. So watch for this
very talented band if you like a mixture of dark EBM
and goa. We also used to know Sleepwalk but we
haven’t seen them for some time, but we heard that
they have released their new cd recently.


Q: I know you have played live in the past. Any current
plans to do so, or future live plans?

A: Of course, we plan to do some live shows to
celebratethe release of our first cd. For the future we
would also like to play some completely different stuff.
We already have an idea how this will sound like. And
we’re doing it live in the sense that we don’t use some
kind of audio playback device but sequencers and synths.


Q: Most Euro bands are on Euro labels, and in fact many
North American bands also sign overseas, but you have
done the complete opposite by signing with the
American label DSBP. Tell us how this came about.

A: We had some contacts with European labels that
were interested in us, but none of them were really
excited about us. Than Oliver heard Tommy T on
Cyberage Radio and sent him a demo. He was so
enthusiastic about it we didn’t know if he was joking or
not. We had the feeling that they believed in our sound.


Q: Is SdD working on any new material, remixes, etc?
What can we expect in the future from SdD?

A: Right now we’re preparing the cd tracks for playing
live. For live shows we just use a part of our equipment,
a hardware sequencer, a few synths, a sampler, and
effects. That’s why we have to change quite a lot.
With “Fear Forms Function” we concluded a phase
of SdD, we would really like to do some new stuff now.


Q: What kind of music have you been listening to lately?

A: We listen to quite a broad range of musical styles.
Latest record was “Legend II” of Saviour Machine.
Very impressive. And of course the new Flatline sampler
on which there is a remix of one of our songs done by
Henry of ECM/Skalpell.


dsbp.cx