A manifesto

Ja, Panik is acclaimed as one of the most engaging musical exports to come out of Austria in recent years. Some observers put the band in the "indie" pigeonhole. Others feel that fails to do justice to the German-English poetry of lead singer Andreas Spechtl, by turns heartbreaking and savage.

Spechtl is backed up by drummer Sebastian Jenata, bassist Stefan Pabst, guitarist Thomas Schleicher and pianist Christian Treppo, who complement the lyrics with music veering from raucous to sadly melodic.

While Ja, Panik tended to test the musical waters in its first three LPs, the fourth represents the peak of their talents so far. It brings together a variety of shades and styles with a solid vein of political aggression running through. The album title DMD KIU LIDT is nicknamed "DMD Cue Lit" by the band members themselves. The initials stand for "Die Manifestation des Kapitalismus in unserem Leben ist die Traurigkeit" or, translated: "The Manifestation of Capitalism in our Life is Sadness."

Ahead of leaving on an eight-date tour of Germany, Austria and Switzerland, Ja, Panik's lead singer conversed with DW about singing in English, music workshops in Cairo and just who the mysterious Mr. Jones is.

Deutsche Welle: Andreas, DMD KIU LIDT is your fourth album and the second you've recorded since you moved to Berlin. Who did you work with on the record?

Andreas Spechtl: We worked with Moses Schneider, best known for his work with Tocotronic and Beatsteaks. We recorded it in Neukoelln in a studio called Chez Cherie. It's actually more of a big flat than a studio. There's a very nice atmosphere there. It's difficult to say how long we worked on the record really. I think we worked about a year on the tracks before we went into the studio, but then we actually recorded everything in just ten days.

Once you figure out what the title of the album is, it sounds rather heavy. What is the record all about?

If you know Ja, Panik a little bit you'll know it's all about manifestos and very much about politics. So this album was more or less meant to be a musical manifesto. It's also about drama, depression, anti-love songs, sadness and questions like "Where does this all come from? Is it all based in myself or perhaps is it the system that makes me feel like that?" So the album is more about questions than about answers.

You mix English and German on this album much more than you ever did on the previous three. Why?

In our early years we always wrote English songs because the language of pop is English. I think it's interesting because it's kind of a new language. It's not about trying to sound like a band from New York or from London, because I really hate that. I like things like Nico or Phoenix. They sing in a strange French-English and Nico with this really hard accent. English has come to be the language Esperanto always wanted to be.

But at what point as an artist do you choose to express yourself in a language that isn't your mother tongue? Is it easier to sing about certain things in English?

I don't think it's easier. I think it's sort of a style. Many bands think that when they sing in English they can make it everywhere. That's not true. I think it's a question of aesthetics. I would say the songs that are really hard to write and songs that are really about things that are hard to explain, I've got to write them in German. The English parts are aesthetical. When I sing in English, it's like painting a picture, but when I sing in German it's about singing about the subject.

You have a track on the album called "Mr. Jones and Norma Desmond." Norma Desmond is obviously the faded Hollywood star from Billy Wilder's movie "Sunset Boulevard," but who is Mr. Jones?

Mr. Jones is the protagonist of a Bob Dylan song. Bob Dylan gave music critics a name. He called them Mr. Jones, and the song is about Mr. Jones today. I ask him if he has heard about Norma Desmond, because Norma Desmond for me is a figure fallen out of time but doesn't want to accept it. Norma Desmond can't accept that the movies have changed, and Mr. Jones can't accept that print media is nearly dead nowadays. It's about this inner fight.

A lot of European bands at some time or another head to Berlin. Why did you guys do it? And given that there are five of you in the band, was it difficult to make the decision to all come here together?

It would've been more difficult to keep the band alive in Austria. You can make it in Austria, but you've got to do classical music or chart music. Or folk music, like Schlager. But it's just not possible to exist as an indie band there, and because we sing more or less in German, there weren't really any other possibilities. We could go to Munich, but nobody wants to go to Munich because it's too posh. We could've moved to Switzerland, but I don't think that they would've taken us, so we're stranded here in Berlin. It wasn't easy, but I think it was the right time to do that because nobody had any ties to Vienna.

Last fall you were all in Cairo, Sudan and Alexandria. What were you guys doing there?

Playing concerts, just like here in Europe.

It's not the obvious destination to go just to play concerts though!

No, well, the Goethe Institute invited us to Egypt and to Sudan, and that was really interesting. Just playing concerts there, singing German, nobody understood us and just speaking with these people. They didn't know anything about indie music or punk. The concerts were strange too, because you could see during the first three songs they were looking and thinking, "Who are these strange white guys on the stage?"

But even I think that at a Ja, Panik concert!

(Laughs) Yes, but that's normal for you. Europe is conquered by white thin guys looking unhealthy.

The Goethe Institute is a cultural organization, so were you just playing gigs over there or were you involved with workshops?

We did workshops in schools. That was one of the funniest experiences: being in a school with twelve-year-old children and trying to explain to them how to write a Ja, Panik song. We recorded a demo tape. That was really funny.

Your tour starts just this week. Where are you going to be playing?

Vienna, Berlin, Munich, Cologne, Hamburg, St. Gallen in Switzerland and Linz. We’re only touring for about eight or nine days. A longer tour will follow next autumn.

Text: Gavin Blackburn
Editor: Rick Fulker

To download a free mp3 of the latest Ja, Panik single, "Trouble", check out the band's homepage on the link below.

And to hear more from Andreas Spechtl plus an exclusive, live acoustic version of "Trouble", tune in to this week's edition of DW's Soundscape 100. Link below!