Rockezine.com interview with The Ancient Gallery on Oct 23, 2002

with Robin W. & Andy Weinhold on Oct 23, 2002

Sometimes both parties profit when they leave a message behind on a guestbook. The members of The Ancient Gallery left us a message and when I visited their website at www.theancientgallery.com I got impressed by the music you could hear there. Thankfully enough the guys provided me with their latest CD “Kopfdelay” and when I got the opportunity to listen to the music thoroughly it even sounded better… (See our review). The bands profit? Well, they got a CD review and an interview. Just to let you know there’s some good music among us without being released on one of the – so-called – bigger labels…
		Can you tell us something more about your history? I noticed that “Kopfdelay” is your second album? It’s a long story, we started ten years ago in a small and sleepy village in the mountains. After a concert of a gospel-choir, a little highlight in our village, we said: “we can do better”. Though none of us could play any instrument, so we had to learn that. My brother Andy was the first of us who bought a guitar so he became the guitar player, although everybody wanted to be a guitar player. And then step by step we became a typical rock band with bass, synth´s, drums and vocals.
		In 1999 Stefan, our drummer, left the band for personal reasons (he lives in Rotterdam now), so there were only four of us. In the early beginnings we mostly played cover songs, but our dream was always to make our own songs. The first demo tapes in 1993 and 1995 are a good proof for that. The lyrics were mostly in English, but I discovered the German language, my mother tongue, step by step as being compatible for our music. Our first songs in German, adaptations of Novalis and Shakespeare, were very successful at our live shows, so I saw our way for the future. The EP “her sister” from 1997 already included three songs in German.
		Our debut “Deinstallation” (2001) contains only one song in English, an adaptation of Charles Bukowski. So you see, it was a long way, but a successful development. Always accompanied by inspirations from literature, but nevertheless my own lyrics. The music also changed. After Stephan left us we had to restructure all of our songs completely. That explains the title of our first album “deinstallation”. We had to de-install and then install all songs. Nowadays our music is more danceable, harmonic and contains much more samples then even before. Kopfdelay is without any discussion our most professional work.
		If I listen to “Kopfdelay” I hear a whole lot of different influences, like industrial, ambient, electro and so on. How does the writing process work for you and where did you get these influences? The main thing for us is to make danceable music. The other influences you heard are there, absolutely. But we are 4 persons with an extremely different style (taste of music, lifestyle, literature, films…) The Ancient Gallery and “Kopfdelay” is the result of 4 different people who come together and make music.
		How would you describe your music? It’s a hard question! What about “INDUSTRIALGOTHICROCKHOP” !!! Sorry, I can’t find a label for that music.
		What does “Kopfdelay” mean? Kopfdelay is German English, a construction of Kopf (Head) and Delay. But I am not giving any definitively answer to such questions, it is up to the listener to interpret our music and lyrics.
		Can you tell us something more about the lyrics you use on “Kopfdelay”? Normally I’ve got the lyrics in my mind for a long time. I sometimes write them down and then I start to reduce them in a way that I finally have created a minimalistic poem. And that’s what I want to give to the public, the listeners should have their own thoughts about it, find their own interpretation, their own pictures in mind. So it’s a total other approach to the lyrics, like many artists have. Its not: “The day is dark and you are sad…”, never. The listeners can find something for themselves in our music, if they want to. If they don’t want to look for something for themselves, they can listen to the music anyway and still find some interesting items.
		I noticed that you use different guests during your album. How did this happen and why? Yes, there are a lot of guests and each one has a special story. So let’s begin with the very chilly song “Jemand geht”, Barbara Koehler, who received some well-known German awards for literature, wrote the lyrics. I heard the poem on Deutschlandfunk [A radio station](it’s like Deutsche Welle but receivable only in Germany) and I was enthused. So our manager tried to contact her personally, which wasn’t very easy though finally successful.
		At last years Wave-Gotik-Treffen in Leipzig we put on a theatrical show to the poem (only with background music), where we didn’t play like normal musicians on stage but entered the stage dancing, running, crying, bending and so on, like a modern performance in a theatre but with a 3.000 people audience. A strange experience, but a good one. Later on we got the allowance of the authoress and the publisher to put it on our album. Miss Koehler was very friendly and open-minded, and hopefully happy, that such “greenhorns” like us (compared to her) work with her poem.
		The singer of The Inchtabokatables we know for a long time so we invited him to the studio in Berlin and finally he came. He took the words of “Va Banque” listened to the music and began to sing, we recorded the refrain and put it on the release. It was an old dream - especially of me - to hear him sing my lyrics with our music. In the early days of our band, we went to every concert they played in our region to see and hear them, and now he is on our CD. Going on with the Kopfdelay-guests, we have Rudie, the former guitar player of Blind Passengers and Skeptiker. He was asked directly, because Andy - my brother and our guitarist – loves his saw-guitar sound, because it’s similar to his sound. Rudie accompanied the complete mix down and played or improved our guitar sound.
		For the other sound Tec_DC was responsible, he produces bands like Tanzwut and Corvus Corax. Finally we invited Antje from Berlins Metal band “Mortalia” for Druck, a song that we developed together. I met her at the Gothik treffen in Leipzig we drank and danced together and finally we wrote a song together.
		You are signed to Noiseworks Records. Is this label an advantage or are you waiting for a bigger label to sign to? First of all: we are not signed to Noiseworks records. We offered “Kopfdelay” to some smaller and bigger labels, but they had problems to sign in new bands anyway (because of the recession in the musicbizz) or they offered contracts that didn’t fulfil our minimal expectations. We already paid it all, the production, graphics, we were able to pay for printing and pressing, so we expected a professional promotion.
		Unfortunately there was no label, which offered us a fair deal. So we decided better to have no deal then a bad deal. With Noiseworks we work together since we play music, the owner Karsten Zinsik is more like a friend then a businessman for us. He offered us to put his label on our CD, just to have a label on it, without any mad conditions. So Noiseworks is our label in the real sense of the word: something to stick to. That means that we are totally free in our work, perhaps sometime a bigger label will offer us a contract, we will see.
		Will THE ANCIENT GALLERY go on tour? And where will you play? What can we expect from a live show? Here I use the same words as I wrote for the last newsletter: A tour through Germany/Be-Ne-Lux/France was planned before the flood of the river Elbe forced us to give up all elaborated plans: no electricity no tour but waaaaaaaater as far as you can see. We were able to play a few gigs only. For the next time we plan to reduce our conflicts with Mother Earth, because the festival gig in the Czech Republic were we should play as headliners, was also cancelled after a heavy desert storm. We will play only a few concerts in the area of Dresden/Berlin... to reduce air-pollution anyway.
		Playing live is very important for us, so we give all the energy we have. You’ll find the hard and pressing sounds as well as an adequate show to it. With “Kopfdelay” we finally closed the difference between our powerful shows and the sound on our CD. We have a professional lightshow and sound mix in every situation, so you’ll find a harmonious mix between lights, sound and show. It is aggressive, loud and when you see it, it takes you away
		Where can people order your album? And why should people buy your album? Ordering our album is easy at our homepage www.theancientgallery.com, which will be available also in English soon. A distribution we have in Germany (SX Distr.) and in the USA (Metropolis Rec and soon also Cop Int´l).
		Why to buy our CD? We are young and we need the money! No, but I think its really a professional work and those, who are interested in having new experiences and those, who are looking for new pearls will find a CD in good quality and they are able to dive a little deeper into the music and they’ll find more and more pearls.
		Something you always wanted to say, but never was asked… Yes, we will release our first video clip in November. For more details, please visit our homepage.
(Beautevil )