13 & God
Low Heaven - An Interview with Markus Acher by Chris Tipton
The details are still patchy, but somewhere outside of Toronto in early 2004, on a stretch of uninspired highway leading to the U.S./Canadian border, a computer onboard a large tour bus spontaneously combusted. Some point the finger at the driver (an aspiring reality show auteur), others blame a faulty battery, but most hold a small stuffed fox accountable. However it happened, themselves and the Notwist were stranded. Shows were cancelled. Meals were skipped. Shady motels were booked in below-freezing weather. The fox was dead. It was the fifth breakdown of their joint tour - the latest in a series of minor disasters - and somehow out of this two-day layover between distant somewheres, a kinship was born of nervous laughter, shared admiration, axle grease and roasting circuitry. A kinship that led to formation of 13 & God.
From the balloon-and-burst child psychology of Adam 'doseone' Drucker, Jeffery 'jel' Logan, and Dax Pierson (collectively themselves), and the pinhole-in-paper astronomy of the Acher twins Markus and Micha, and Martin 'Console' Gretschmann (the core of the Notwist), emerge 13 & God; six music-fed bodies coming together for a first crack at making something from nothing. All connections formal and former cast aside, this half-dozen form a transcontinental supergroup of very human proportions: American angst and honest ability, German composition and countryside chill, and the simple recurring universal urge to locate oneself within the folds of time and place.
Our players first met over blushing cheeks at a show in Munich. Themselves were traveling, spreading The No Music (their darkly smile-twisted second full-length of free-rap, chaotic atmosphere and electro-hop) from their Berkeley, California base to Europe and points beyond. Dax's copy of the 2002 Notwist masterpiece Neon Golden was the tour van favorite, instantly claiming Adam and Jeff as casualties of its gorgeous arrangement and dubby glitch-pop. The whispering began, and the whatifs followed, and when themselves reached their German destination, there was Markus - the Notwist's voice and principal writer - waiting in the audience. Talk of collaboration began by the end of the night.
- Word: What qualities first attracted you to themselves' music and when/how did you discover each other?
Markus Acher: I first heard of their music, when I bought the Clouddead 3LP-record at my local recordshop, where I pick and listen to every record, that has an interesting cover. I was (and still am) totally excited about their totally individual mixing of styles, very wild and raw at some points, very melancholic and touching at others. After this, I tried to get every anticon-release, and became more and more a huge fan. In the beginning, I actually didn't really recognize, it was hip-hop-related music, because there were so many other influences, too. It was just the greatest music I've heard for a very long time.
After a pleasantly doomed North American tour, an impressive bus fire, and the Notwist's sprawling take on themselves' 'Out in the Open' (for The No Music of Aiffs remix album), the two entities were fast becoming inextricably entangled. It only made sense that a onetime punk band turned experimental woodwinded electronic rock-pop group should fall for an ex-battle rapper with a penchant for layered poetry and otherworldly melody (Adam), an SP1200 beatsmith who's rewritten the rules of sample-based music (Jeff), and their newfound keyboard-playing friend (Dax). Both groups have a rich history of genre-bending collaboration (see Subtle and cLOUDDEAD for themselves, Lali Puna and Village of Savoonga for the Notwist); the fact that their music is so different only made everything more necessary.
- W: How did you work the collaboration, I heard you all got together last summer in Germany, how did that work?
MA: Dax, Jeff and Adam came to us last august, and we worked on the recordings, we all had started at home. It was easy, actually, everybody found his part and we could finish the whole record in two weeks, something we never thought would happen. After this we rehearsed for just one day, committed so much to memory, and then played a show in Munich.
During the collaboration, 13 & God were all crammed into cozy guest house converted from a late-19th Century wash shed, and for 17 days [for eight hours of each] they and their German counterparts banged out their newfound sound in Micha's newly acquired Alien Transistor studios in nearby Weilheim, on a lot shared by an industrial metal cutting factory. Each day 13 & God would record, friends would stop by and contribute (Notwist drummer Martin Messerschmid, Valerie Trebeljahr from Lali Puna, Steffi Bohm of Ms. John Soda), the sun would begin its set, and everyone would return to Munich for home-cooked feasts, the world's greatest beer, and whatever sleep they could scrape together before it was time to start again. It was a partnership steeped in work ethic and wide eyes, with no time for doubts and no need.
- W: Did you have any idea of how 13 & God would turn out before you started playing together? Was there something you were setting out to achieve with this record?
MA: No idea, honestly. We were just very happy to work with them, but we didn't have a plan. Could have been a 40 minutes freeform-noise-collage or a folk-record. We just collected ideas and sent them to each other. We had no idea, it would all fit together so well into our debut album, 13 & God.
From such indefinite beginnings 13 & God, the album, has become a truly group solution to settling the inner self and its oddly-cut angles, an exercise in human puzzle-piecing seen through the eyes of history's hindsight. Adam and Markus trade words that first evoke the blind earnestness of youth, then chronicle its gradual leaching out by the loss of the luck and the sink of realisation- all shooting stars, superman stride, climbing bills and death-by-routine. In the bittersweet opening song, 'Low Heaven', the two voices echo one another over a fading clarinet, a slow-skittering beat, and gritty distorted piano: "They're threatening their lucky stars to shoot." 'Ghostwork' sends shivers along shoulder blades even while tapping into near-danceable groove; 'Men of Station' bleeds warmth and love over riding melancholia. By 'Soft Atlas' - a track that pulses with punched-out drums only to be levelled by subtle guitar pluck and vocal harmony - Adam is questioning whether or not the earth has completely fallen free of its axis, left to roll unattended into some dark corner of nothing. And just before the record ends, on the icy, seven-minute, cello-driven masterwork 'Superman on Ice', we're given the most poignant image yet: "There are footprints embraced far out on the frozen lake face/Depressed and kept from quite some cold ago/And they look brave, dangerous, manmade/The sort of mark one can make on the world".
- W: For you Markus, what are the strongest themes running through the album? I certainly picked up on the theme of considering the fragility of life and death; the innate vulnerability that exists in all of us, this seems to recur throughout the record. Was there anything non-musical which inspired the project?
MA: Actually too many things to mention. For me personally music-making doesn't start or stop with the actual recordings, so that's why many experiences or ideas become part of certain songs. But running around in a very catholic, bavarian city with three guys from Oakland was a very special and great experience. Thematically we were all very concerned with voicing our alienation and passion in this blank world.
- W: Who was behind the artwork for the single and album, what does it signify to you? The cut and paste 3D paper skull of the forthcoming single 'Men of Station', seems to reference this theme of vulnerability and introspection again, and the album's theatrical red curtain certainly creates a mysterious otherworldly-ness.
MA: Adam did the artwork. He was taking a lot of photographs in Munich, especially on churches, I guess that inspired parts of the artwork. For me it signifies lots of different things, that I like very much. But for example in relation to the band name 13 & God: the red curtain can also be seen either totally over the top or just kind of abstract. But I especially like about the artwork, that it gives you no idea what the music could sound like. The kinda record you'd pick up in a store and would have to listen to.
And so we return full circle. '13 & God' is a monumental record - the next step in the evolution of something bigger than anything we're used to. The Notwist bring their ear for gorgeous rock-pop arrangement and taste for dubby glitch, while themselves grin toothy darkness and breathe electro-rap experimentalism. Their greatest strength is that in combining such seemingly disparate sounds, 13 & God create something truly cohesive, wholly unique, and deeply visceral. 13 & God is just what one would expect from two once-separate entities with such immensely progressive past and insatiable, competing hunger for collaboration. Which is to say, if you've come to expect the unexpected, then you won't be surprised.
*13 & God will be touring Europe this June in support of their 'Men of Station' single (released on March 21st) from their forthcoming full-length '13 & God' (released on April 18th). Both records are on Anticon in the USA and UK and Alien Transistor in Europe.