Sankt Otten - Kosmische music for the new millennium

Stephan Otten and Oliver Klemm are among the latest key figures in that revival of kraut-kosmische sounds that, since the mid-Nineties, has spread across synth-music on an international scale. After starting out as an art-rock-leaning act, Sankt Otten recently reclaimed the sounds of Radio Massacre International and its successors, bringing them back to their homeland, Germany, and reinvigorating their splendor through a modern, personal blend. Today they're among the leading names on the Denovali roster, fresh off the release of “Messias Maschine“, the concluding chapter of a trilogy that represents the peak of their creative arc.

Your latest work is perhaps the finest of your career, as well as the most “dynamic” in terms of sound. Would you agree?

Thank you so much! Yes, I think that's a good description. We upped the bpm on many tracks, but we also tried to keep a certain melancholy running through the whole album - that was particularly important to us.

What differences are there between how “Messias Maschine” came about compared to its two predecessors?

The main difference is that we invited a lot of guests to take part in the record. I'm a fan of Harald Groffkop's synthetic work from the Eighties. We met him at one of our shows and immediately thought about working on something together. Later on we got in touch with other musicians, and that's how this particular mix of historic krautrock names and great contemporary artists came together. These collaborations gave the record a big boost and shaped it a great deal.

And what does the title mean?

It's a machine that actually exists - a sort of perpetual motion device that generates energy through a water circuit. We're working on a slightly different model to churn out a few hits!

I noticed you experimented with some quite new rhythms, but also with more relaxed atmospheres...

Our goal was to find a good mix of both. When you're working on a sixty-six-minute record, you can't do the same thing on every track. Each song has to be different, but in the end they all have to follow a common thread, which isn't always the easiest thing to find.

The two previous albums already had in their titles the instruments they were mainly played with: the sequencer and the synthesizer. On this latest one, you took a more organic approach to the music. What instruments did you mainly use?We used the same synthesizers as on the other albums, but previously the rhythms were created only using drum machines from the Eighties, so the sound could come across as more synthetic. Here instead we invited three drummers (Jaki Liebezeit, Harald Grosskopf and A.E. Paterra) and so incorporated acoustic rhythms, which gave a more organic touch to the music, together with other instruments like saxophone and theremin.

You've also toned down the "dark" character of some of your previous releases, and that's reflected in the album cover too. Was there a particular reason behind that choice?

It wasn't our intention to make everything sound more "friendly", it's more likely that it happened mainly because of the influence of the guest musicians. If you listen to the title track, for instance, it's definitely much less melancholic than the rest of the album, but we liked it all the same. It's certainly the first potentially pop song we've ever written, but also the only one on the record.

More generally, can we see your last three albums as connected by a common thread? The covers seem to suggest that interpretation, as if it were a trilogy...

Yes, the beautiful artwork for the last three albums was made by a Spanish painter, Sallutsiano. We conceived them as a trilogy that's now complete. We started with a red cover, then a black one, and finally this latest white one. We'll look for a new concept for the next album with different artwork, and probably some differences in the sound too, but it's too early to say which direction we'll head in.

You're still working today with sounds that are closely tied to the history of electronic music, and that come precisely from Germany... Is the "historic" German scene a point of reference for you?

Forty years ago, German electronic pioneers like Kraftwerk, Klaus Schulze or Manuel Goettsching truly invented something, without limiting themselves to copying English bands like many did back then. I see a connection between us and them in that, because we too don't want to be a copy of anyone today, even though we recognize that doing something totally new nowadays is almost impossible. So we mix the best of the past with contemporary electronics.

And who are the musicians who inspired you the most?

If you want one name, I'll definitely say Robert Fripp. His very special way of playing guitar reminds me a lot of our own approach. To me he's one of the greatest guitarists of all time. But I could easily and proudly say that most of our inspirations are the people who worked on "Messias Maschine"!

Do you find it difficult to keep these sounds alive today?

Well, the krautrock scene isn't that big today. Even in Germany, when you go to those artists' concerts, you always find the same handful of people. But we're lucky enough to have fans coming from other worlds, like metal and ambient.

In that sense, was signing to Denovali important?

Recording for Denovali opened up a lot of new doors for us. They care a great deal about making sure the artwork of their releases is well done, and for the first time they gave us the chance to release our music in multiple formats and to work on the visuals for each one. Another great thing about them is that they only care about putting out good music, regardless of genre, and in their catalog you can find everything from metal to ambient, by way of electronic music or modern classical.

Why do you keep using German as the language for your titles?

When we started, in 1999, the early records also had vocal parts sung in German. So we kept the language for the titles even though for the past ten years we've focused only on instrumental music.

Do you have any concerts planned to promote “Messias Maschine”?

Yes, we're currently working on it. As you can imagine, we won't be able to bring all our collaborators on stage, so for instance I'll have to handle the drum parts myself, and it won't be easy to take the place of someone like Jaki Liebezeit. Working on it, I understood why he's regarded as one of the best drummers in the world. Anyway, we'll be touring with the excellent Greg Haines, who records for our same label, but unfortunately only in Germany and Belgium. I hope we'll also get the chance to come to Italy!

And will you keep up the tradition that's seen you release an album every year for the past four years?

I suppose we'll need a bit more time for the next record. Until the end of the year we'll focus on the tour, and at the start of next year we'll start working on something new. We'll see how creative we manage to be!

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