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When the music is lame, do it yourself

A Berlin duo mixes humor with lo-fi technology to create a fresh, danceable sound

By Darrell Jonsson
For The Prague Post
May 2nd, 2007 issue

Photo by STEFANOS NOTOPOULOS
Who says nerds can't make cool music? Tired of mainstream pap, Göring and Cactus created their own sound.
Many music fans agree that the 1990s started out with a burst of rock ’n’ roll creativity in the United Kingdom and the United States. But, for many critics and fans, the blissful rock soon melted into Britpop syrup, while edgy experimental dance tracks sunk into a loud formulaic mash. According to Stereo Total’s Francoise Cactus, the party soon ended in Berlin as well.  “There was so much bad music — bad German techno, bad German grunge, bad German Britpop,” she says.
Finally, in 1993, Cactus and Stereo Total co-founder Brezel Göring had had about all the lame pop and dance music they could take. Pushed to the edge of unbearable audio, there was only one way to go, as Cactus says: “We had to start a band of our own!”
Stereo Total

When: Thursday, May 3 at 8
Where: Divadlo Archa
Tickets: 290 Kč through Ticketpro and at the venue

Stereo Total’s reaction to bad musical times has resulted in a brilliant 13-year career mixing European genres that include what Cactus describes as “noise and electronics, French chansons and disco.” It may at first sound like another easy recipe for ear candy. But what sets Stereo Total on fire is how they catalyze Continental style with wild borrowings of Chicago house, New York No Wave, Washington go-go, California punk rock and plenty of U.S. garage.
French-born Cactus’ exposure to these regional U.S. trends points directly to a legendary Paris-based record shop and recording label. From 1981 to 1992, New Rose’s distribution of legends such as Alex Chilton, Sky Saxon and Roky Erickson helped build a solid respect in France for the primitive spirit of the American garage sound. New Rose also promoted such ’80s punk upstarts as the Gun Club, True West and the Divine Horsemen. So it’s no surprise that, in 1989, Cactus began her own short three-CD stint on New Rose with the lively girl-punk group Les Lolitas.
Asked how the ongoing spunk of punk continues to influence Stereo Total’s sound, Cactus replies, “We can’t help it, we are funny people. We don’t like mainstream music — it’s too clean and pharmaceutical. Our music is exactly the music we want to listen to when we turn on the radio.”
Providing the other half of Stereo Total’s jukebox is a former member of Berlin’s notorious copyright-negligent crew known as the Sigmund Freud Experience. Sample-happy Göring brings with him a rampant sense of humor and a talent for an applied method he calls “subhygienic, messy children’s playroom.”
Unlike many of the slick music acts and styles of the ’90s that fizzled like a spent skyrocket, Stereo Total’s fuzzy flight continues to gain altitude. The duo’s sixth CD, 2005’s Do the Bambi (on the Kill Rock Stars label), shows the band continuing to champion musical kicks from its bag of electrobilly tricks. And, over the past seven years, the increasing demand for the group’s danceable sound has found it making stops in Mexico, Brazil and Japan.
This intensive workload, combined with a rumored tour of Greece, prompts a question about how Stereo Total can expect to arrive fresh in Prague for its upcoming Archa performance. “We are just having a holiday,” Cactus says via mobile phone while standing near an undisclosed beach location. “I brought my trumpet, and Brezel brought his synthesizer, and we are playing to the birds and cats of the island.”
When the fully rested Stereo Total arrives in Prague, its instrumentation will be a simple lo-fi affair. Cactus will be on drums, sharing vocals with Göring, who will also play guitar and otherwise be left to his own devices. These days, Göring also has Trautonium in tow, a rare historic analog synthesizer from the 1920s. It may sound like a small and weird package — but, when it comes to rocking the house, since 1993 Stereo Total has rarely failed. After all, that’s the magic of stereo: putting out a total much richer than the sum of its well-mixed parts.

Darrell Jonsson can be reached at features@praguepost.com


Other articles in Night & Day (2/05/2007):

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