DIE NACHT IST LEBEN PART 3
One of my principles to lyric writing for Zero Times Everything is not to write lyrics but to either find them or have someone else write them. As I wrote in my first update, I wanted lyrics to be sung over the synth melody - but what? When I’m looking for inspiration I usually don’t like to look very far and there on my desk at that moment was Sven Marquardt’s “Die Nacht Ist Leben” in German.
For those of you who don’t know, Sven Marquardt was born in East Germany and lived in East Berlin as a Punk with a capital P. I was in East Berlin twice when the wall was up and can attest to the fact to live like he did at that time in that place took guts. He’s a great photographer that photographs the unnatural in natural light. He’s also the infamous bouncer at what is considered one of the greatest and most difficult clubs to get into in the world: Berghain. One night, in a distant April month, he let me in for one of the best nights of my life. Two nights, actually,
With the need for lyrics in mind, I picked up the book and read the flap. With my limited German I could make out essentially what he was saying and the words resonated as a manifesto. A manifesto for club culture in Berlin and around the world. I started singing the words to myself to the synth melody and it fit like a glove. What's that called - serendipity? After acquiring the rights, I needed to find a singer.
In my head I heard a female contralto voice. Someone like Cher or Marlene Dietrich. I asked a couple of NY avant artists but that didn’t work out. I even recorded an English friend who studied German but it still didn’t sound authentic enough although it was beautiful in its own right. Desperate, I reached out to my friend Klaus Killisch (who is an extraordinary Berlin artist that I am in a band with called KaiSaR along with EnkidU rankX) and he replied “I just heard the exact voice you’re looking for at a club the other night; a singer named Daria Neumann who sings with Uri.” I asked Uri - an artist who just released Welt Computer with the moniker RUI Beats; check it out on Bandcamp here: https://riubeats.bandcamp.com/album/welt-computer - if he could record her at his studio. When I first listened to the audio files Uri sent me, I collapsed in my chair. Sometimes you can search years for something and never find it but right here was lightning in a box. Pow! I was knocked flat. It was the voice I heard in my head. No. It was far better than that. Listen for yourself.
In my next blog I will explore machines that make music in our continuing anatomy of a song.
Best wishes,
Richard