Lotterboys
A conversation with Shapemod
(August 2006)
Interview by Adam McKibbin
Lucky souls have already been supplementing their summer parties with the debut from Lotterboys, Animalia, which combines the dance floor visions of Terranova's Shapemod and Fetisch with the peculiar and perverted vocal stylings of Paris the Black Fu (aka Mack Goudy Jr.) of the Detroit Grand Pubahs. Together, they bring some Prince and P-Funk to the halls of European electronica. Their trio of singles alone ("Star Whores," "Heroine" and "Blazer") make Animalia well worth seeking out. Princess Superstar drops in for a vocoderized spin through "Iron Man," which flips the Sabbath heaviness and turns it into Scissor Sistersish funk. What had the potential to be a quickie one-off will instead hopefully blossom into an ongoing collaboration; Lotterboys restore a sense of libidinous wackiness and genre-bending, rock-and-rolling irreverence to club nights.
Animalia is one of my favorite party-starting records of the year. You’re an experienced DJ, obviously, so what are your current recommendations—in addition to Lotterboys—for heating up a party?
There is a track on the new Rekorder 05 EP I like a lot, called “Rekorder 5.2.” Also very good: Gui Borato: Paralelo. I like the Hug releases on K2. Tres Demented Shez Satan EP is highly recommended, and you should definitely check out a band called Map of Africa—great stuff, but it can be hard to find.
A few weeks ago, I did an interview with your fellow Berliners Ellen Allien and Apparat, and they were saying that they’ve been really excited to take their new record on the road—that it’s a whole new energy because they’re singing, and the songs are more geared toward live performance. Do you feel that way with Lotterboys? Is it more fun to play in a band, or is it simply a nice change of pace?
Lotterboys was always a live band by concept. When we produced the tracks we had definitely in mind that we want to play them live, more simple instrumentation like drums, bass and guitar, but keeping the club vibe. The Lotterboys were playing live right from the beginning; our shows were pretty short cause we didn't had so many tracks. Now we have enough songs to do a proper set and we added a drummer and that's definitely lots of fun.
What do you think are the individual strengths of each member of Lotterboys?
Paris is a great singer, entertainer, and songwriter. It's a pleasure to work with him, he's very fast and effective. And, as a frontman, he is hard to beat. Fetisch is DJing and producing for quite a long time now. He has an amazing taste and feel for music. He always took care that our tracks kept the relation to the dancefloor and he is very good in arranging songs. I’m the guy who is the gearslut of the band. I played bass and guitar and most of the recordings took place in my studio. Before I started to produce electronic music in the beginning of the ‘90s, I was really serious about playing guitar—that came in handy doing the Lotterboys stuff.
Had you met Paris before you started collaborating? I know that Fetisch had been working with a sample of his music, but had you met Paris himself? What was the first impression?
No, I didn’t meet him before he came to Berlin to work with us. My first impression: this guy seems to be pretty sane! I was wrong. Just kidding.
One of my big complaints about living in Los Angeles is that the city closes so early. You don’t have that problem in Berlin. Is there any reason we should be scared of letting our clubs stay open till the sun comes up?
I lived in LA in 1994 and I remember that the early closing was a royal pain in the ass. The plus, naturally, is when a party is great it can go on and on. The minus is that sometimes the oh so cool Berliners won't show up before two o'clock in a club. I can’t see the advantage of that. It can be a strange feeling to go to bed and you don't have to switch off the lights, but that's maybe just me. We once played with Optimo in Edinburgh and I was really impressed by the party behavior of these folks. At around 10:30, the doors opened and the people started immediately to dance and party, hands in the air and everything. At around 1:00, I think, the light went on and everybody went home, that was a quite dense clubbing experience, especially for us Berliners. I kind of liked it, but maybe more as a holiday-experience. At the end of the day, it's just great to live in a city where you can party as long as you want.
Lotterboys has been a different sort of experiment for you sound-wise. Now that you’ve done this, are there other genres that you’d like to explore? Do you have any idea of what comes next?
No, I don't, but I really liked to work with live played instruments. It's lots of fun and much easier to get your own sound, so I want to expand into that direction
I read in an interview that “Heroine” was done in two hours. Does that mean that you had the beat already in place and then put the vocals together, or was it built entirely from scratch that quickly?
It wasn't fully produced after 2 hours, but all of the vocals, guitars and basses and the structure of the song were pretty much done in that time.
I was surprised how smoothly “Iron Man” fit onto a dance floor. What makes Sabbath so ripe for that kind of cover?
Ozzy for sure is very cool. Black Sabbath can be very funky in a way. I think nobody totally knew how it would turn out; we just gave it a try.
How do you keep your eye out for new music? Where do you turn?
Friends who are musicians and DJs as well are very important. and of course several record stores and the internet (online stores and MySpace.com)
For those of us who haven’t had the chance to see Animalia brought to life in concert, what’s the Lotterboys live show like? Does it stay close to the record or does it veer off the map?
I think you will still recognize the songs if you had listened to the record before. Live, we're more dirty and quite loud. At least that's what people tell us.
We know that Paris likes Jack Daniel’s to help keep the night going. What about you and Fetisch, do you have drinks of choice?
Fetisch: Vodka Red Bull. Me: Gin & Tonic or a good mixed Mai Tai (hard to find) |
