Project Description

Interview With

ARNO KAMMERMEIER

Of

BOOKA SHADE

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Interviewer: Brianna Dnmde

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Booka Shade are gearing up to release their 6th studio album ‘Cut The Strings’ featuring 11 brand new tracks. The German duo, are currently travelling Australia on tour. Arno Kammermeier took the time to have a chat with Amnplify writer Brianna to discuss the new album, tour, and a whole lot more. Check it out. 

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How are you today?

I’m very good. Here in my hotel room working on the set for tonight and because we always make changes and we try out new stuff so today is a show day but we still have plenty of time to get things done.

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That’s really nice, so where are you in the world right now?

We’re in Brisbane now, and we’ve had some really good shows already at the Pitch Festival, and in Sydney at Days Like This, and then we had a headline show in Melbourne it was a nice sold out show, great atmosphere, we always love it there. And now we’ve travelled to Brisbane, and then off to the Adelaide Fringe Festival

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Excellent. And how are you finding your reception in Australia this time around?

Its always a highlight of the year and actually the highlight starts very early because normally the way we schedule things in our year we usually present the new album through Europe first and then we travel Europe and do a few headline shows we normally go into the festivals over summer then America first and Australia last. But this time it just so happened that we started in Australia, and that’s a good thing of course. If these shows are an indication we have a crazy year ahead of us. The Australian shows are always great, we have a lot of fans here. We feel a lot of love.

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I’m really glad you feel love from Australia & I’m glad the tour is going well so far and its setting a good tone. You are releasing your new album ‘Cut The Strings’ in April. Will you still be in Australia on the release day?

No we’ll be gone by then actually. I think we may be back in Istanbul for the release day. We’re playing a festival over there. And then we have a show in Berlin the following day. But the week before we have a big show at Brixton Academy in London together with a band called Gorgon City. It’s going to be a good month. We have a few shows around that release date. It’s a nice way to say, “Hey, Hello, Here we are. Here’s our new music.”

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Its good that you get around and you’re sharing the love everywhere! Have you guys been playing much off  ‘Cut The Strings’ at your live shows so far? Or are you trying to keep it all under wraps?

Yes. A little tease. Many time when we start tour a single is already out, or people have already heard something. With most of the songs from the new album that we play people have never heard them so its good to see the reaction of the audience. Two of the songs off the album ‘Night Surfing’ and ‘Aftermath’ they are already out, and most of our songs are instrumental so when the song ‘Cut The Strings’ comes on it features a vocal and people really react to it.

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It’s an organic reaction when you hear a piece of live music for the first time. Its great that ‘Cut The Strings’ is getting great reception. I agree that it has a bit of a different sound that the other tracks.

Its bringing those vocals in and it has a lot of melody on top of the atmospheres that are quite typical of Booka Shade

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How would you describe the new singles ‘Aftermath’ and ‘Night Surfing’ in relation to how they fit in the new album?

The singles so far give an indication of where we are going with the album. I have to say most of the people that know Booka Shade know us as the instrumental club act with the songs that we have in out catalogue. Then we had an album in 2013 with a song called ‘Love Inc.’, and after this album we had that feeling where we had to try out something new and something outside of the club genre, and so we collaborated with a couple of singers. And we did an album with the singer and we toured it around Europe. This gave us a new energy and a new perspective on things. And this album now returns to the club roots. The song ‘Aftermath’ sets a darker relaxed tone. It doesn’t try to be something big. And ‘Night Surfing’ is so much more “clubby” with the synthesisers. Were back on that club track. We love what we’re doing.

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You have been releasing music since 2004 so nearly 15 years. You have obviously developed and changed over time. How have you kept together as a group and how have you kept the creativity flowing?

I think that’s the focus. To keep challenging yourself. We don’t like to repeat ourselves and we get easily bored. We always want to see what else is out there. There’s always a distinctive Booka Shade sound no matter what we do. If you listen to our albums its quite diverse! We don’t want to be one trick ponies so to speak. I’ve known Walter since school days it’s a long, long time. What keeps us together is first of all mutual respect. We compliment each other quite well. Of course its difficult like any relationship, and it does take a lot of work. We don’t take each other for granted. Ultimately we have the same vision. We want to create music that we enjoy and that we are proud of. And of course you share in all the feelings. The great feelings when you’re on stage and everybody loves it, and the terrible feelings when you’ve not slept in days because the travel was bad and the shows weren’t great for some reason and you just want to go home. You’re stuck together so it break you, but it can make you stronger.

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You guys are from Germany, and you grew up together like you said, I didn’t know you guys grew up together from such a young age. It’s another layer to why you create music with such great chemistry. What do you think the music scene in Germany is like? How has it impacted you?

We always say that the music from England especially in the early 80’s has had a lot of influence on us. Ya’ know the whole The Cure, Depeche Mode era. That was the first big influence on us. Then the other big influence was the early techno that we heard in the early 90’s. Especially in Frankfurt, especially in a club called ‘The Omen’, by a man named Sven Väth. Who is still around, we just met him at a festival in Sydney last weekend & this is somebody who influenced us in a great way. So German techno shaped us in so many ways. It’s a German influence. And also you can never take away an influence like Kraftwerk from Düsseldorf, Germany. They started an entire world on electronic music & it’s quite a privilege because we have to opportunity to play a support show for them in Stuttgart, Germany this summer. Which is in particular fantastic because they normally never have opening acts. English new wave & German electronic are our influences.

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I’m glad you’ve had some great experiences here in Australia, Thank you for chatting with me and being so open and honest about it all.

We have a lot to be thankful for. You are welcome. Thank you.

 

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