Interview: Stephan Groth
Review: Apoptygma Berzerk
By Laura DeFelice :: Tech by Samuel Gibson
Listen! Well, it would be hard to not hear this music. Apoptygma Berzerk is making a scene and it is an incredible one of real emotion, loud magnetic sounds and quite intelligent ideas. So hold on, they’ll take you for a ride! Absolutely pure energy from the very first moment of the flashing pulses of dim light to the last drenched clap and cry for more. The idea, the drive, the focus and action behind it all are designed by the overly gifted Stephan Groth. Stephan’s dream of actually making a living from a hobby has come true and has hit the American underground of random music with a powerful launch. Wanting to be able to express his thoughts and feelings of life, Groth turned to an electronic medium of expression bridging rebellion and innovative discipline. Without the appetite to explore his own perception we may not have been able to experience the wonderful acts of Stephan Groth and Apoptygma Berzerk. Of course leading us to conclude the dynamic performance of APB. It is highly suggested to attend wide eyed as APB extends their hyper active sense of talent into the audience’s consciousness. Searching daily for something exciting and interesting to listen to can be a task sometimes feared. APB fills the void of that crave for volumes of inspiration through music. Each song is tight and complete with diverse sounds and emotional lyrics reaching different levels of personal sensibility. It grabs you and shakes your body with smooth transitions from deep bass and quick pulses to frigid trance-like vocals. And to even things out a bit, Apoptygma Berzerk is diverse and lures the audience by inviting each person to share a positive, energetic and an experience of not having to know what is coming next.
Laura – What we’ve noticed is that your ideas of your songs are related to industrial / techno. Is that the idea that you wanted to come across? Is that the type of music that you have in mind?
Stephan – Yes, kind of. That’s the sound that I grew up with and the scene that I started up with in a way. What seems to be the problem in America is that people need to put a tag on everything. In order to sell records, you have to make the band known as an industrial act or an R&B act or Techno or whatever. I’m not that fond of that to be honest, because as an artist I want to do whatever I want to do and without the limitations and being in sort of a scene. What I do is basically Pop, but it’s also industrial and it’s also synth-pop and it’s a lot of things to mix together.
Laura – That’s actually what happens, is your music is so diverse that there are so many different sounds. I think what happens is when somebody says, “Well, what do they sound like?” You try to say, “Okay, industrial / techno, or pop-rock.” So that’s when I think people are almost forced to classify your type of music rather than just, “here, listen to it and see what you think.”
Stephan – Yeah, but if it was up to me, it would be just electronic pop music. It’s kind of hard to take a band like Depeche Mode. Are they synth-pop, or are they rock? What is it? It’s just Depeche Mode. That’s kind of were I’m wanting to go with this project. To be not really in one particular scene, but a little bit of everything.
Laura – I was actually going to say, if you were classified as industrial, because your label, Metropolis, does come across as if you are industrial and techno. If so, do you feel like you are pushing the envelope, that you’re a lot different?
Stephan – I think the whole electronica label is so much more. I’m not even sure about the definition of electronica, because it’s so much. In Europe, electronica is almost everything that is electronic. From drum and bass to The Chemical Brothers’ stuff. The whole specter of electronic music. I guess a pop singer would fit into the electronica scene in a way, because there are so many elements of House, Techno, Trance and stuff like that.
Laura – I think they are saying that Madonna is electronica, so…
Stephan – I guess everything is electronica.
Laura – We have read and noticed that you have been in demand to remix other artists’ music. How do you feel about doing other peoples’ music?
Stephan – I love that. It’s one of the benefits of being into electronic music, because you can actually do the whole remixing thing. It’s kind of a new thing. It’s something that you can do when you have different bands working on the same kind of equipment with the same sound. You can take one song that you like and you can try to… it’s almost like making a cover version of a song, because you make it sound like one of your songs, but it’s not, because someone else wrote it and I think it’s a very nice way to put your own sound and touch to a good song. Me as a musician, every time I listen to the radio or whatever, I hear a track and say, “Wow! This is so good, but if they just had done this and this and this, it would be so much better.” That’s what I can do when I do a remix. Tweek and turn it a bit so it fits my ears.
Laura – So, you generally will have to actually like the song first or have a feeling for it as if it came from your own soul.
Stephan – It’s usually when I say yes to a remix, it’s because that particular song, I can relate to in some way. It could be one line in the chorus or it can be the sound of the drums, whatever. Something that I like. “Wow, this is really cool. I can do something with it.” I’ve said no to remixes when I got offered, because I can’t do anything to this track, because I can’t relate to it. So I can’t do it. I even had an instance where I had a song that was so good, so I said no, I can’t do it better.
Laura – Well, that’s really cool. You seem to be very well known underground in the United States. What we’ve noticed in discussion over looking at your audiences, is that they dress more on the Gothic side and on the all-Black side and so that right there puts a label on you no matter what. Are you determined to become more mainstream in America hoping that you’ll get a culture of all different types of people, because that’s what your music is, to allow all people to relate?
Stephan – That’s how it is in Europe now. We are signed to Warner Bros. and we are in the commercial charts. A lot of different people from different scenes can relate to something in it. So when we play in Europe, the crowd will be so mixed. You’ll have techno kids with their glow sticks and you’ll have people from the goth scene, from the electronic scene, from the industrial scene, even metal. A lot of mix of everything and that’s kind of what I like because the reason why my music sounds the way it does is because I’ve been there. I’ve gone through so many phases in my life. I used to be into heavy metal, techno, house, hip hop. All these different things and that’s what I make. I’m just a product of all the stuff that I’ve been through. I hope what is going on in Europe will happen here too.
Laura – Maybe the more you play…
Stephan – Yeah, but it’s all about promotion, because you have the world’s best band ever to play or to release a CD. If nobody knows about it, then you won’t make any change. I hope we’ve done the proper promotion and just get people exposed to it, then maybe we’d get a lot bigger crowd, also outside of this.
Laura – We have a website called Plug-Media and we like to promote. We write for Live Magazine, but we like to promote lots of different types of music and we do not label it, so when people are on there to check out Weezer, then they’ll check out you too, because you’re all on the same page. That’s a really good way to promote. There’s no label, so you’re on there.
Stephan – That is what music is about. Either it’s good or it’s not.
Laura – In your bio, it mentions that your father was a very successful Blues musician and your mother was a DJ. Having that in the family, what influenced you to go in a different direction?
Stephan – I guess, I don’t know. Maybe I was a teenage Rebel. I grew up with the sixties music. It kind of shaped me in a way. What I’m most inspired of is the middle of the sixties to the eighties. It was when I was in my teen years. Then again, back to all the different stages I’ve been through and the older I get, the more I realize how important my parents were. I was never into that whole Blues thing that my Dad was doing, still is doing, but then again I have music all around me and at home and it made me realize that it is possible to live from your hobby that I’m doing and I guess what made me do electronic music was the eighties and also a bit of rebellion, I guess, to do something totally the opposite of what your parents like. My parents hated the two first albums I put out, but now they’re getting more into it.
Laura – So, your Mom is not your biggest fan?
Stephan – Oh no, she likes some of it as long there’s a good melody, she’ll like it because that’s what she’s into. She likes that stuff and my Dad too, but he won’t admit it.
Laura – Your songs may be up beat, but your lyrics seem to be a little melancholy, maybe about loss or feelings that are kind of sad. Are these personal experiences?
Stephan – Most of them on the Harmonizer album are extremely personal. Usually when I do… I make music for both myself and for other people, but the lyrics are mostly for myself, because it’s kind of like therapy. Sometimes I’m not even sure what the song is about. Or what the lyrics are about. It’s kind of like abstract sometimes. A few years down the road, I’ll find out what it was about, so it’s therapy to me, but then again it’s all about the whole vibe. I’ll receive e-mails every day from people across the world asking, “Is this song about this?” Half of them… usually mail will pop in with a total description and I would just sit there and be like, “Wow! That’s what it’s about.” I didn’t even realize. Even if people translate or interpret the lyrics wrong, it’s not necessarily wrong. If it makes somebody feel good, or something, ten it’s worth it. It’s like watching a painting and ten people watching the same thing having ten different interpretations of it. It’s not really right or wrong, if it gives you something, then it’s worth it.
Laura – It’s almost like that’s what we give back to you. Then you can sit back and think, “Wow! Is that what they got from that?”
Stephan – It’s so important, that’s one of the things that keeps me going, but that’s what art is about. You are releasing something, but then you get the feedback. It’s kind of a two-way communication. To be on the same vibe with people from places that I’ve never been to… we go through the same stuff.
Conducted by Laura DeFelice & Samuel Gibson. Photos by Brent Peters copyright 2002, plug-media.net