“The Perfectionist”

Interview with Stephan Koehr

By Sergio Vilar

Eskalation? Of where that name comes?
It simply started as a game with my initials "S" and "K". But as "S.K.lation" would make no sense in any other language but german, I soon changed it into "eskalation" ("escalation"). That was around 1990. During the work on the music, “Eskalation” became more and more a metaphor of a "general feeling of acceleration and increasing madness of everyday life". The baby-carriage on my CD's front cover symbolizes my "first-born musical child" (this CD) accelerating towards an unknown destiny ;-) -kind of "jump into the water if you want to learn to swim".

Like the idea arose of making “Diferent Music For Bassoon, Wind Synthesizer and Sampled Percussion”?
1985, when my last two live formations disbanded, I decided to concentrate on recording my compositions rather than to perform them on stage. I had become an orchestral musician then, playing live music all the time with a minimum of equipment, and I didn't want to go back, dragging along all those amplifiers, mixers and keyboards, drive around for hours and play gigs in little clubs for little or no payment. Playing in an orchestra gave me the opportunity to work on my music without the necessity of making a living out of it. In my bands I always had to compromise with the other guys, and now I felt I wanted my music to sound exactly as intended. When looking at CD covers, I found that the instrumental line-up gives away a bit of what the listener could expect to find on a given CD, so I thought, the subtitle "music for bassoon and wind synthesizer" would attract the "right audience", lovers of uncommon instrumental music.

The disk is brilliant and very well achieved. In general the contribution of all the instruments, is magnificent. Were you according with the final result?
Actually I'm really happy with it. Although the final CD master has too much audio compression on it compared to my original mixdown. (I couldn't do it by myself then for technical reasons, so I have to live with it.) “Eskalation” is the first album where I really had the entire artistical responsibility. I had to overcome a lot of technical issues, e.g. when combining tracks made on entirely different recording equipment during several years to create an overall homogenous sound design. Though I'm a perfectionist, I like to complete things at a certain point to be free again to begin something new and different.

Rock In Opposition, Zeuhl Music, Progressive Rock... in your music they converge a great quantity of shades that they characterize their personality. I would like to know how you define your proposal.
The 70's were a lucky time to grow up- an abundance of musical talent and extraordinary music. On the melodic side you have all those progressive rock heroes, Keith Emerson, Ian Anderson, the Shulman brothers, Peter Gabriel, etc. On the experimental side there were Canterbury's Soft Machine, Hatfield and The North, etc... and the beginning of RIO movement like Henry Cow or AREA. It's been the Golden Age of great melodic music, and I still feel myself committed to write melodic music, although with darker aspects like in the expressionist arts from nearly a century ago.

Which is the source of your creativity?
Difficult to say- from childhood on I wanted to be creative- write own novels (I wrote a lot of short stories up to age of twenty), be a movie director, actor, composer, rock star. One of the more consistent dreams have been to make a prog music CD with very long tunes (15 to 30 minutes each). Give me a quiet room and several hours at leisure, and something will happen- a new good-night story for my children, a review of an abstract board game or a complex rhythmical pattern with crazy chordal accompaniment, who knows!

The intention of your art, which is it?
I always wanted to make music that I would like to listen to myself. I try to revive unpredictable music.

What paper do you assign to the improvisation inside the compossitive work?
Improvisation is very important. Very often I record my improvisations on a sequencer and use the better parts to start telling a tale. Improvisation is a tool to develop musical material. Although there is no randomness in my music, some of the most complex pieces on “Eskalation” are based on improvisations.

Was it much material compound that has not entered in the disk?
A lot of my artistical work is based on intuition. I've got a considerable number of unfinished compositions, which do not "feel right" yet, and where the bigger part will probably never be finished. In my first CD I included the pieces which were connected thematically or from the same period of time. Or simply my favorite pieces. There are quite a number of songs I wrote for my live bands, a jazz fusion and an avantgarde rock band, with vocal parts. Sometimes I wonder how to pick the best of this stuff to record in a future offering, but mostly I'm more interested in the music to come, that I don't know myself yet.

What memories do you have of the recording stage?
It's terrible to be musician, recording engineer and producer in one person. Fortunately non-linear hard-disc recording techniques have made the work less schizophrenic but still very tedious. I try to avoid actual recording as long as I can, up to the moment when the inner voice says: stop fiddling Stephen, this piece is ready to go!

Didn't reason have continuity this project? Does the possibility exist of recreating Eskalation again?
I must say, “Eskalation” isn't dead at all! It's in a kind of cryonic sleep... I already have a design for the second CD, which will be a kind of concept album. I know which pieces to include, among other things a song without any rhythm instruments and second, a really long piece (12 - 15 minutes). The problem is, I can't tell when it's going to be finished. Another problem will be to find a distribution deal which will include more advertising and P.R. than for my first CD. I know, good advertising doesn't come cheap and it will cut down the already meager profits. But it's important that the right people will notice when there's something new and interesting for them waiting in this endless sea of unimportant and uninspired stuff. Lots of people are like me: they are not interested in downloading MP3s and in illegal copying, they really like to buy a CD if it's worth it. But we can't find any. We are truly ridiculed by today's popular music.

Changing topic, Stephan. What vision do you have on the music that is made at the moment in the France in the field of the Progressive Rock, of the Rock In Opposition and the Experimental Music?
Sorry, I can't help you there: as a musician who has to listen many hours each day to classical music for professional reasons, I try to avoid to listen to music at all when I'm at home! Its harder for me than ever to empty my head, which is the first and ultimate prerequisite for inventing music. When Bartok had to live in New York, he plugged his ears all the time and got nearly crazy because he couldn't lock out the noise from the street and his neighbors.

Do you believe that the objectives that gave origin to the Rock In Opposition continue even effective?
There's still a need big as ever for interesting, nonconformist music. But I don't know whether music should carry a political verdict. If you listen today to Henry Cow's vocal pieces, you can hardly bear their simplistic dogmatical lyrics anymore. The music's still ok, though.

Then, toward where do you believe that it heads the music?
I'm not the one who should make prophecies.  But I believe in the eternal recurrence of things. A renaissance for good ambitious prog music is what I would hope for the next decade. But I'm afraid most people are brain-washed and dedicated to fast food. It starts with the children. For myself, I don't believe in progress in arts. Gonzalo Rubalcaba, the great Cuban composer/pianist quotes William Ospina: "What makes any piece of art valuable is its timelessness and its ability of reaching many people of different cultures and eras." I will continue to do what I have always done, not caring much about trends.

Stephan, what are you making at the moment? Does some project exist in which you are working?
My second CD is still in the making and I hope to finish it in 2006.  Nevertheless most of my time is divided between my classical playing and my family. But you never know... Stay tuned!

Thank you for your time. Do you want to say goodbye to the readers?
All Nucleus readers are invited to visit my homepage www.eskalation-musik.de to listen to almost six minutes of music from my first CD.

    
               
Nucleus interview: 28/02/05