Mother (band)

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mother
Mother in ZAKK in Düsseldorf, 2010
Mother in ZAKK in Düsseldorf, 2010
General information
origin Berlin , Germany
Genre (s) skirt
founding 1986
Website www.muttermusik.de
Founding members
Max Muller
Frank Behnke (until 2002)
Florian Koerner von Gustorf
Current occupation
singing
 Max Muller
bass
 Michael Fröhlich (since 2007)
guitar
 Olaf Boqwist (since 2013)
Drums
 Florian Koerner von Gustorf
Juliane Miess (since 2014)
former members
bass
 Guy Fieser (1986-2006)
guitar
 Achim Treu (2002-2005)
guitar
 Martin Höfermann (2005-2006)
guitar
 Heri F. Coltello (2007–2012)
Keyboard
 Tom Scheutzlich (1997-2013)

Mutter is a Berlin rock band that has existed since 1986, the original line-up consisting of Max Müller (vocals), Kerl Fieser (bass), Florian Koerner von Gustorf (drums) and Frank Behnke (guitar). Their music is characterized by a slow, heavy style, the lyrics are in German.

Mutter emerged from the Berlin underground in the early 1980s and in the 1990s were at times in loose contact with bands from the Hamburg School . The band has released eleven albums since its inception. In 2005 the band was the subject of a documentary film presented in the framework program of the Berlinale .

history

Foundation and early days

Mother emerged in 1986 from the band "Campingsex", founded in 1982, which released the then little-noticed album 1914! published, which was named by Thurston Moore as "a major influence on Sonic Youth ". After the guitarist Leslie Campbell left the band, the three remaining members founded Mutter, and shortly after the founding, Kerl Fieser from the audience at a concert joined them.

The band first appeared at a Super 8 film evening in Kassel on June 16, 1987. As a mother, they made their debut in 1989 with the album I am ashamed of having thoughts that hurt other people's dignity on the label of Tödliche Doris , on which Max Müller's brother Wolfgang Müller was the singer. The album, financed by Mark Ernestus , recorded within two days in an 8-track studio and mixed at home, received little attention at first. Only after a label change to What's So Funny About and with the rise of German-speaking independent bands in the early 1990s (see Hamburger Schule ) did that change and Mutter was noticed by the criticism.

Discourse pop?

What's So Funny About released their second album Komm! However, only one side of the record contained (this time recorded on 16 tracks) pieces by the band, on the back instead of music there were anecdotes and stories from friends and acquaintances of the band, the most prominent narrator was David Lynch , whose assistant director Behnke had worked .

In 1993, the band's next album was released with the 24-track production You are not my brother . However, mother left What's So Funny About, her upcoming releases appeared on her own label Die Eigen Gesellschaft, directed by Max Müller and the band's manager at the time, Gundula Schmitz . In 1994 the band's already out of print debut was re-released on CD with additional tracks.

With the album Hauptsache Musik , released in the same year, the “most unpredictable of all German discourse pop bands” surprised all those who saw them as a kind of “left Rammstein”. The album consisted almost entirely of folky ballads, semi-acoustic and technically adept. The album sold around 2000 units, making it the band's most successful album.

Overall, however, integrating the band into the context of discourse pop or the so-called Hamburg School is rather problematic. Although there were always cross connections (for example, Jochen Distelmeyer played the trumpet as a guest or sampled Cpt. Kirk &. The mother song "You"), the brutality of her sound and her social background was more related to the Berlin underground of the mother 1980s. The band also lacked the typical theoretical connection of discourse pop, so there are neither references to postmodern theorists nor explicit political statements or even a corresponding commitment.

1995 took place in the Berlin Kinski Club (under the direction of Gundula Schmitz, Claudia Basrawi and Mario Mentrup ), a "mother boxes!" Baptized boxing match between guy Fieser and Florian Koerner von Gustorf with Frank Behnke and Max Müller as coaches, acted as referee the director Jörg Buttgereit ( Florian Koerner von Gustorf played the leading role in his film Schramm ; Max Müller and Gundula Schmitz composed the film music ).

The album Nazionali was released in 1996 , the title caused irritation because some critics politically (mis) understand the title and its spelling, it is just an Italian cigarette brand, a reference to the location of the album, a converted pigsty in Monterotondo Marittimo in Tuscany . In 1997, Mutter broke with the management and the record company and for a long time nothing was heard from them, the last one to be released was a CD Concerts I (1986–1991) , a documentary collage of live pieces, interview scraps, concert announcements, cryptic answering machine messages and the like.

Only on September 10, 2001 did the first new mother album appear in four years, again on What's So Funny About. Its title: Europe against America , in the booklet a drawing that showed a Mickey Mouse-eared George W. Bush eating the globe, next to his face it says "This is the mortal enemy". Skyscrapers burn in the background, on the album a piece with the refrain "War is over - a new one begins". Shortly after the album was presented, the attack on the World Trade Center in New York made this scene a reality.

New beginning

In 2002 mother got into personal turmoil. The band, which had operated with the same line-up for 16 years, had to accept the departure of Frank Behnke in 2002, who wanted to devote himself more intensively to his film projects. The band replaced him with Achim Treu and additionally strengthened themselves with Tom Scheutzlich (keyboard). Treu left the band in early 2005 (he went to Der Plan ) and was replaced by Martin Höfermann . In 2006 he and the founding member Kerl Fieser also left the band. Mother added Michael Fröhlich on bass and Heri F. Coltello on guitar.

In mid-May 2004 the vinyl album CD of the month was released as a limited edition of 500 copies, with a special edition featuring Max Müller's film music.

In "Panorama" of the Berlinale 2005, the film we were never here from whole Antonia shown that accompanied the band during live performances in Germany and Switzerland and by the integration of old material at the same time the story of the mother and her environment illuminated. The film received critical acclaim and opened in cinemas on October 19, 2005, and was released on DVD in late May 2007. Shortly afterwards, the retrospective The whole spectrum of nothing appeared and the album Hauptsache Musik was re-released, as was the album by the previous band Campingsex, which had been out of print for many years.

present

Mother in the Berlin club "Monarch", March 2010

To finance a new album - again on their own - was the band in November 2009 99 elaborately by Max Müller designed etchings as bonds from. The sheets, which are sold out within a week, are used to enable the new CD to be mastered and pressed.

The recordings were originally made in Tobias Levin's Electric Avenue Studio in Hamburg, but were canceled in April 2010 for “personal reasons”. Müller explained: “Levin's production method just didn't match ours. I had the feeling we weren't making any headway, and if I don't take it into my own hands now, all the energy will fizzle out ”. Except for the drums, all tracks were then re-recorded and then mastered in Amsterdam. The album Drink Singen Shooting was released on August 6, 2010 as CD and album again under the company's own label Die Own Gesellschaft and received good to excellent reviews from Spiegel Online , Welt , Spex, “Soundcheck” at RBB -radio eins, in Berlin, among others Newspaper , daily mirror and tip .

In October 2011 the band's next album, My Little War , was also released again on their own label. Here, too, the criticism was extremely benevolent, Friday simply attested the band to be “a classic”, and the album was the most important CD of the week on SPIEGEL Online.

In 2012 the guitarist Heri Coltello left the band again, in July 2013 Mutter presented himself for the first time live with the new guitarist Olaf Boqwist, shortly afterwards keyboardist Tom Scheutzlich left the band.

style

music

The band itself describes itself simply as a "rock band", "straightforward in the lyrics and the music [...], making music on two chords, that's one of us." The slow, brutal and heavy style of the band is partly in the Tradition of American noise rock or punk bands like the Swans , the Melvins or Flipper , but also The Fall or Velvet Underground and shares some style elements with doom metal bands, Mutter herself give Flipper, Korpus Kristi and Throbbing Gristle as Influences on, or referred to an alleged resemblance to Head Of David . At first sight there are sonic similarities with bands like Rammstein or Oomph! However, Martin Büsser was able to state in an article in the Cologne city revue : "Mother work like the counterpart to Rammstein: Wherever they generate triumph with very similar means, mother sound like piercing doubt.", because the powerful sound was always self-deprecating and comical Broken elements.

Texts

Müller's texts are primarily straightforward, “The strategy is clear. With us there is no such thing as »we didn't mean it that way« ". They are simple, reduced and direct, without sarcasm or irony and largely dispense with metaphors. This level of linguistic honesty appears almost documentary, but at the same time has an ambiguous effect due to the addition of a "level of abstraction": "As if people simply don't want to be true that someone means what they say."

Christoph Gurk attested the texts a "language that gives back a human face to the inhabitants of the ghetto world", in line with the song title "An open secret no one is ashamed of". To do this, Müller often seeks out “remote” egos, whether pathogens (“I'm so small”), homosexual neo-Nazis (“Michael”) or mentally ill assassins (“I am he”).

Nevertheless, Müller does not take any judgmental positions, because “as long as there are people and as long as they have to think, there will be bad, sick thoughts. Rape, torture and murder. And that's good. And that's good. Because I don't want to live in any world without these things and nobody should forbid what they might feel themselves and nobody should determine what one can see and what not. And I don't want to live in any world without these things. I don't want in a better world, I don't want in a more perfect world, I don't want to live in a more beautiful world. "(" Without these things ")

Marc Degens discovers in Max Müller the most important German-speaking »you singer« of serious popular music: "Irony and sensitivity are alien to him, Müller's verses are offensive and sinister and final."

live

Mother are not a classic touring band, concerts are mostly single events. At live concerts, singer and lyricist Max Müller always exposes traits that seem contrary to the sound, such as weakness and vulnerability, alongside aggression and anger, and by no means poses clearly martial or demonic. Nevertheless, or maybe because of it, the band has a reputation for aiming at the empty playing of the hall. The band's play is loud, raw, distorted and noisy, "live I always want to throw everything away and hit it."

In addition to conventional concerts, Mutter have always staged unusual live events. Already the predecessor band Campingsex was a 48 hours long concert in the 1980s, mother played in 1995 as an accompaniment for silent films such as Fritz Lang's "The tired death" or Buster Keaton's "Go West", but also David Hamilton Bilitis and porn movies of 1940 years . On a playfully expressed idea by Diedrich Diederichsen , they played a two-hour version of the John Lennon song " Imagine " in a live performance in 2002 .

Discography

Camping sex

  • 1985: 1914! (LP)
  • 2006: 1914! (DLP, republication with additional bonus material)

mother

  • 1989: I am ashamed to have thoughts that hurt other people's dignity (re-release 1994)
  • 1991: Come
  • 1993: You are not my brother
  • 1994: Mainly Music (re-release 2005)
  • 1996: Nazionali
  • 1997: Concerts I (1986–1991)
  • 2001: Europe against America
  • 2004: CD of the month
  • 2005: The whole spectrum of nothing - your music from 1989 to 2005
  • 2010: Drinking Singing Shooting
  • 2011: My little war
  • 2014: text and music
  • 2017: The dream of being different

Filmography

  • 2005: We were never here (Director: Antonia Ganz, DVD 2007)

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Jörg Sundermeier: Loud, touching, uncomfortable . In: Jungle World , number 42, October 19, 2005
  2. ^ The Gap: German punk. An inventory . Retrieved February 13, 2014.
  3. ↑ Thurston Moore, Blind Date , quoted from a reproduction of the text on the inner cover of the re-publication of “1914!”, 2006
  4. ↑ a b c "We were never here", director: Antonia Ganz
  5. ↑ Wolfgang Müller: Subkultur Westberlin 1979-1989 , ISBN 978-3-86572-671-1 , p. 472
  6. ↑ Wolfgang Müller: Subkultur Westberlin 1979-1989 , ISBN 978-3-86572-671-1 , p. 37
  7. ↑ Olaf Karnik: Positions and Posen: The re-politicized German Pop - and its needs . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung , October 11, 2001
  8. ↑ a b c d Unadapted - A band called Mutter in the Kreuzberger Festsaal . In: Berliner Morgenpost , March 24, 2005
  9. ↑ a b The band Mutter finances their new album with 99 promissory notes of 100 € each . In: Corso , Deutschlandfunk, December 15, 2009, 3:09 p.m.
  10. ↑ a b c d Doris Akrap : “I don't” - “I do” . In: taz , August 13, 2010
  11. ↑ Ulrich Kriest: Everything just like that somehow? In: Intro , 10/2001, Online ( Memento of the original dated February 28, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.intro.de
  12. ↑ a b The band's user profile on MySpace , accessed January 11, 2007
  13. ↑ Sales announcement ( Memento of the original from September 29, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.absolutmedien.de
  14. ↑ Jan Wigger: Listened: The most important CDs of the week . In: Spiegel Online - Kultur , accessed on August 11, 2010
  15. ^ The band Mutter: Perhaps the most important German-language album . welt.de , accessed on October 8, 2011
  16. ↑ Spex , # 329, November / December 2010, there "record of the edition"
  17. ↑ Soundcheck  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. radio-eins.de, July 30, 2010, accessed August 11, 2010@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.radio-eins.de  
  18. ↑ Maurice Summen: Mother sells daughter . In: Berliner Zeitung , August 7, 2010
  19. ↑ Michael Schulz: Comeback: Mother presents a new album . In: Tagesspiegel , accessed on August 11, 2010
  20. ↑ Ulrike Rechel: "Erdmöbel", "Mutter" and Nils Kopckt save the German song . In: Tip Berlin , accessed on August 11, 2010
  21. ^ The Berlin band Mutter - Appointments muttermusik.de, accessed on August 7, 2010
  22. ↑ Having to do: leisure band workers . freitag.de, October 27, 2011
  23. ↑ Listened to: The most important CDs of the week . Spiegel Online , accessed October 27, 2011
  24. ↑ muttermusik.de: Here and Now | The Berlin band MUTTER  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Toter Link / muttermusik.de   , Accessed July 20, 2013
  25. ↑ muttermusik.de: The Berlin band MUTTER , accessed on October 18, 2013
  26. ↑ Andreas Becker: The most beautiful place in space . In: taz , March 31, 2005
  27. ^ The band Mutter and their concert on January 20th, 2005 in the Weltbühne in Hamburg .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: nillson , January 29, 2005@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.nillson.de  
  28. ↑ The band's user profile on YouTube, accessed January 11, 2007
  29. ↑ Martin Büsser: Never just one position - mother (extended version) . ( Memento of the original from October 30, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: Stadtrevue Cologne , 10/01 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.stadtrevue.de
  30. ↑ Verena Sarah Diehl: Mother - The strategy is clarity . In: Spex , No. 9, 2001
  31. ↑ Max Dax: In search of your own artificial language - Part 5: Max Müller . In: Spex , # 309, 4/07, 2007
  32. ↑ Christoph Gurk: I am him . In: Spex , No. 8, 1993, p. 16-19
  33. ↑ Marc Degens: CD of the month . In: satt.org, August 2004