By Another Dimension PR Agentur * Wendl- Dietrich Translation by Ava Murray another-dimension.net/alexfilez/emigrate/EMIGRATE%20ALBUMINFO_AD.pdf Album release: “Silent So Long“ on CD and vinyl on Vertigo/Capitol/Universal This man doesn’t really need an introduction. With Rammstein, Richard Kruspe has achieved what’s denied most musicians: platinum albums, international tours to close to every country on earth, critical acclaim as well as that from tens of thousands of fans. But there’s also another Richard Kruspe than the one who stands in the spotlight with Rammstein. With the debut of his solo project, Emigrate, released in 2007, it was the first time the guitarist revealed himself to also be a nuanced singer of melancholic Industrial- and Metal songs. Kruspe broadened his musical spectrum – and immediately went into the German Top Ten charts with Emigrate. It was already clear for Kruspe that Emigrate wouldn’t remain a one-hit-wonder. He had way too much fun with the relaxed work with the guitarist and producer, Olson Involtini, as well as with Arnaud Giroux (bass) for that. “I can’t really put my finger on why, but I wanted to do at least two Emigrate albums,” says Kruspe. And now it’s time – the 7th of November, 2014, sees the release of the long awaited, second Emigrate album, “Silent So Long”. Besides his trusty comrades, Involtini and Giroux, and the drummer Mikko Sirén, Kruspe picked from an impressive pool of international top acts for the production of the album, who, with their collaboration, made the album into a previously unseen hard rock jam extraordinaire. So, Lemmy Kilmister of Motörhead, Marilyn Manson, Jonathan Davis from Korn and Peaches take the mike on “Silent So Long”. “The basic idea of Emigrate is to work with new people, tread unchartered terrain and discover different worlds,” says Kruspe. Even if the team-notion is paramount, it is, in the end, Richard Kruspe’s voice that keeps the versatile project together – the guitarist has matured as a singer over the past, few years, and gained structure, character and accuracy. It wasn’t planned from the beginning that Richard himself would be singing with Emigrate. “The origin of Emigrate goes back to an idea Till Lindemann and I had for a couple of years, for a joined project outside of Rammstein,” Kruspe explains. It was about breaking out of the familiar structures, to work on a simpler level. Somewhere down the line, the two realized that the end result would most likely be too reminiscent of Rammstein – so Richard Kruspe went on to play himself. “I had only ever been singing backing vocals with Rammstein,” he remembers. “So I had to break myself in first.” An experience that, if nothing else, lead to an obviously increased respect for the effort a singer in a rock band has to make. “Evidently, I have possibly been a bit too hard on singers I have worked with over the years. The human voice is the most delicate instrument of all, it’s not like pressing a button.” Though a certain residual uncertainty remains to this day, but, as he says, Richard Kruspe has pulled through. It is experiences like these that have continued to inspire him throughout the production of the album. Not least of which is that the work with “Silent So Long” kept reminding Kruspe of his roots in the East Berlin punk scene. “There was a time back in the East, when everyone made music with everyone else and new bands popped up on a weekly basis,” he says. “My wish to feature guest musicians in Emigrate stems from this period. Because after the Turning, it all completely died down and that hasn’t really changed to this day – people have extreme inhibitions for working together with any kind of spontaneity, especially in Berlin. It’s a little different in the US and I would really like to bring back a little of the original spirit of punk in regards to collaborations. In this respect, I was very happy that I could realize a few splendid cooperations on this album.” Whoever now thinks that Lemmy and the others casually hung out with Kruspe in a basement and cut a few songs in between a couple of bottles of booze, underestimates the enormous problems that come with synchronizing the schedules of people of this magnitude. In any case, it was a huge exercise in patience for Kruspe to bring together the recordings of such prominent guest stars. A time that, at least, provided him with some really good anecdotes and memories. But not all of the guest stars had the best memories of Kruspe. “Last time I met Lemmy, I slammed him over the head with a guitar and he took a pretty bad tumble of the stage,” Kruspe remembers with a laugh. However, there weren’t any evil intentions behind the guitar assault, the frontman of Motörhead was just at the wrong place at the wrong time. It was during a Rammstein show when Kruspe was handed three mistuned guitars after another and finally became so annoyed that he threw the last one into a corner – where it landed right on the head of Lemmy Kilmister, who was standing at the edge of the stage. Lemmy soon put this behind him and quickly accepted Kruspe’s invitation to a collaboration. “Lemmy was, out of all the guest stars, almost the most uncomplicated,” the boss recalls. Since he had had to cancel a whole string of shows due to health problems, the Motörhead man made the effort to come into the studio and refine the tight, up-tempo hit, “Rock City” with a special, flea-ridden, skid row hound variety of his unique, trademark vocals. “When you have grown up with these people, it’s a really cool feeling to suddenly be able to work with someone like Lemmy. These are memories that I will bring with me to the grave.” The recording with Marilyn Manson, who Kruspe knew since a joined performance at the Echo Awards, was already cut at this time. After months of back and forth, and one failed attempt, Manson finally recorded his contribution, “Hypothetical” in a studio in Los Angeles. It wasn’t just because of this that Kruspe developed a creative use of distances – while some guest stars, such as Peaches and Frank Dellé from Seeed, quite simply came by Kruspe’s studio in Berlin, the contribution from Jonathan Davis (Korn) was developed together with Kruspe through an escalating email conversation. The title song was born out of this, concluding the album with its gloomy, Industrial thrumming and an anthemic, Faith No More-inspired chorus, which was ideal for Davis. Generally, the main work on “Silent So Long“ was more or less finished when the guests came in. In the spirit of a musical director, Kruspe let himself get inspired from his own songs and only when they were finished, considered which guest would be a fit for which song. The laborious task had already begun in 2012, when Kruspe, during the course of a long and work-intense summer, started to sort out his archive and investigate whether old ideas had withstood the test of time. Additionally, the guitarist was composing practically incessantly, on tour as well as in every free moment in his Berliner studio. He’d collected tons of material over the years in this way, which the guitarist, together with Involtini and Giroux, then refined and made into the first demos for the planned album. In due course, “Silent So Long” was completed during different sessions in Kruspe’s studio, and the old broadcasting building on the Berliner Nalepastraße, before Richard Kruspe, together with Ben Grosse (Filter, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Depeche Mode, among others), mixed it in Los Angeles. Up to this point, the whole of the production process was, for a pro with Kruspe’s background, already more or less clearly mapped out. For years, Kruspe had used recording technology which allowed him to stay in control of all the matters of such a mammoth project. But he was treading fairly unchartered territory, as indicated, with the writing of lyrics and melodies. Of course, you can’t really imagine someone like Richard Kruspe as a classical singer-songwriter. But there were a few important subjects that he wanted to explore on this album. “You have a certain, innate, basic framework,” he says. “There are subjects that quite simply resonate with me. I’m surely not a Tom Petty, who can tell stories, but I like to play with symbols and ambiguities and lyrically, I feel a lot more at home with someone like Trent Reznor.” Kruspe works associatively, he first comes up with a riff, then develops a melody, and finally, puts in the first words. So, he had the ideas and the concrete visions, which a lyricist friend helped him flesh out. “It has a lot to do with intuition,” he says. “I have tried it myself a couple of times, to sit down and write a text from A to Z. But, for me, they are rather the result of a feeling.” This collaboration also mirrors the essential core element of Emigrate. “The band really came to be out of fatigue with band work,” Kruspe laughs. “But during the work on this album, it has become clear to me, once again, that a band, and more generally, the team work, are immensely important. You simply need the reflection, the interaction.” There is one difference between working with Rammstein and working with Emigrate, however – in the end, Richard Kruspe calls the shots. So emerged a classically timeless Hard Rock- and Metal album with a gloomy, apocalyptic basis and a massive spectrum. It ranges from the Metal-thundering, “Eat You Alive” to the experimental, Nine Inch Nails-inspired, “Get Down”, which Kruspe presents alongside the Canadian queen of avant-garde, Peaches. The main band, whose sound Kruspe has clearly influenced through his unrivalled playing, shines through naturally, like in, “My Pleasure”. But the comparison to Rammstein is missing, and not only because of the English lyrics and Kruspe’s vocals. “There really weren’t any songs that were excluded,“ says Kruspe about the vastly productive recordings. “I found them all strong and I didn’t want to waste any of them on B-sides. From there came the idea to possibly make yet another album. And who knows? Maybe this will open doors, since this album is virtually a pioneering example of more openness and willingness for cooperation in rock music.” And there it is again, the old East Berlin dream. Kruspe can think of tons of potential guest stars, but first, the Emigrate dream is about to be launched. Another positive side effect has to be the positive feedback of Kruspe’s work with Rammstein: “Dave Grohl is one of the best examples,” says Kruspe. “He acts, in this respect, like a role model for me, as he periodically makes loads of great things with so many different people and keeps himself inspired and fresh.” Richard Kruspe’s self-chosen emigration from Rammstein, is only something transitory, that keeps him alert and fresh, just like an extended vacation would from everyday life. There is no dogma, everything is possible! #Emigrate #RichardZvenKruspe #Rammstein #RZK #AnotherDimension #Translation #SilentSoLong #SSL
Posted on: Sat, 04 Oct 2014 18:34:56 +0000