Star: But when you did your DJ tour, with all these mixtures and music, did you find it difficult to really kind of please the crowd, because everybody kind of wants something different?
VNV Nation: Yes, some people wanted us to be, you know, play music like Honor all night, but we were going to play only…
Star: All your own music.
VNV Nation: And then like, and then some people thought we were going to play like chick music all night. And I hate that word ‘chick’ music, it’s like this word that guys only listen to Leather Strip, they don’t want to hear songs like Bullet, why do you make songs like that? Because we can, and they're vastly popular, so I’m sorry sir, you’ve been outvoted…
So, yay! go democracy. The thing about our sets over the years, we played quite a bit of trace in the set and quite a bit of underground grey area techno, which was somewhere between EBM and this. It’s a burgeoning music scene that's going on in Europe at the moment where a lot of people who’ve been listening to industrial are now making this very cool underground electronic stuff that's kind of almost cool enough for the club scene but not cool enough for the commercial club scene. And you've got bands like Metalic or Fixmer, Terrance Fixmer did this album with Doug McCarthy from Nitzer Ebb which was a huge album, one of their… I have to say, my gig of the decade. The last ten years, Fixmer/McCarthy had the (______) and the clinic reunion that night were the two gigs of the last decade, and everybody I was with said the same thing. They were, girls were coming, girls were being left at the side of the hall as guys said I’m sorry, I’ve got to leave you. And we were watching it, they were like I’ll be back in, I’ll be back after the show. Guys were running in, girls were running into the crowd, and everybody was pounding around and sweating and having the most awesome time. And it was just about dancing, having fun and like hearing the perfect union of kind of the techno structure with the break and everything, but with pounding EBM. It wasn’t about screaming through a distortion pedal, not about singing about how or using samples from horror movies or death and destruction, this, that and the other, it was actually pure energy. To me it showed this scene, anyone who says the scene is dead is an idiot, anyone who ways the scene is dieing is a… can go staple the back of their hands to their forehead, go stand in the corner and…
Star: Where do you see it going?
VNV Nation: Actually I see it evolving vastly in Germany, but it’s evolving massively that so many splinter styles of music are being brought into the clubs that are coming from outside genres.
Star: Do you see it more electronic or going… like, because that's what it sounds like.
VNV Nation: Definitely more electronic. It’s been, in Germany it’s been vastly electronic for the last, oh god, I’d say it’s been five, seven to ten years. There are Goth clubs and there are electro clubs, the majority, what is considered the main industrial thing are the clubs where you’ll hear the Hocico, Grendel, Dulce Liquido, Retrosic tracks being played alongside… I’m trying to think… the softer stuff like the NamNambulus, The Mesh, you know, things like that. Everybody gets what they want, but it’s all part of one thing. But then people are bringing in, playing Underworld, you know, they're playing hard trance, they're playing everything and they're mixing it together and the crowd is not walking off the dance floor.
Star: It’s about dancing, it’s about feeling it.
VNV Nation: It’s a club.
Star: Yes.
VNV Nation: You know, it’s not about going there and standing there going oh that bitch, why is she wearing that corset, I should be wearing that, or like oh man, that dude’s with that girl, you know. I’ve heard this all the time I stand there and listen to these people, and I think Jesus, how depressing your lives must be, how can you live in such a microcosm. It is about, nobody is about you're wearing better clothes than me, no one is about oh god, that guy’s wearing trainers, no one gives a shit. Anyone in the club is wearing, most people are wearing black clothes or dark clothes or whatever, and then people come in from other scenes and nobody fucking cares, and I love that. As long as you're having a good time and you're partying, let people stand back with a look of, you know, bewilderment, you know, like why are you here, why are you listening to our music, are you here just because you're drunk and you're with your friends, walking by and you thought hey, hot Goth chicks. It ain’t like that, it really isn’t like that. I love that. Play a gothic track and it’s a really good example, because people are expected it to be a total Goth fest. The main hall is and has been for the last fourteen years, electro solid.
