The free spirited, groove-oriented spirit of krautrock lingers larger than ever over today’s musical landscape.

From Portishead to LCD Soundsystem, via the space disco jams of Lindstrom and Riton’s Eine Kleine Nacht Musik project, the influence of future-thinking mid-70s German producers is writ large across a staggering number of contemporary endeavours. None more so than 2ManyDJs’ latest project, Die Verboten – a kraut-inspired super-group of like-minded friends consisting of the brothers Dewaele, artist/drummer Fergadelic and Riton.

Having recorded an album’s worth of material in Ibiza over the past two summers, Dave, Steph, Fergus and Henry – aka ‘the Verbotens’ – have just released their stunningly packaged debut 12” in partnership with The Vinyl Factory, with a short film and album to follow later in the year. We caught up with Fergadelic to find out more…

What were the recording sessions in Ibiza like?

“Rad! We had a mini studio set up by the pool outside, with a mixing desk, synths, sequencers, guitars, drums, etc. Just a stripped back version of all the stuff we normally use in the studio in Ghent. We’ve done it two years in a row now and it’s always really fun. We work in a very angst-free way anyway and obviously in Ibiza we had the added dimension of recording outdoors, in the warm in a really beautiful environment with a whole bunch of people hanging out there. It was commune vibes! I’ll never forget the first time we were there, recording my drum track outside as the sun was setting. Most Balearic!”

There was a fair bit of musical experimentation going on, eh?

“We constantly try to experiment and make music in a very free way. The whole experience is an experiment, in fact. We never sit down and write a song and then learn it and then record it. I think of it as posh jamming! The only thing that we’ve sampled so far is ourselves; in that we record live elements and then take the best bits of those and manipulate them and collage them together – it’s in this way that the tracks are built up. Henry is the one who’s most into recording weird stuff and that’s included filling bottles with different amounts of water and playing them as tuned percussion, or when we were in Ibiza he immersed cymbals in the pool and played them under water. He’s also very into his field recordings, so various bits of environmental sound can be heard in our tunes.”

Why choose the name Die Verboten?

“I think it was Steph who came up with that. Our decision-making tends to be very harmonious so all the ideas could have come from any of us. We get into the mode where we think with one mind.”

There’s obviously a strong krautrock influence, but what particular bands and producers are you all inspired and influenced by?

“First of all, I’d like to say that while of course there is a strong (probably overt) krautrock influence going on, I personally feel that our music is European. Partly that is because of the influence of various continental European music, like Kraut, New beat, Cosmic, N.D.W, Vangelis (especially for me his Earth album), Balearic, French stuff (from Heldon to Plastic Bertrand), etc. But it’s also because we record in Belgium and Ibiza & these geographic locations feed into our sound. I should add that for me, the European vision has always been exciting & futuristic, ever since I saw the comics of Moebius and Jodorowsky as a kid and I love the idea of trying to evoke this sensibility in music.

“Anyway, back to the Kraut thing, we love Neu!, Can, Kraftwerk, Ashra, Harmonia, Peter Baumann, Michael Bundt, Lilienthal, Achim Reichel, Harald Grosskopf, Klaus, the Tangerines, Amon Duul II, Popol Vuh, Faust, La Dusseldorf, Phantomband, pretty much anything on the Sky, Brain and Innovative Communication labels. Man, I could go on and on…I think the influence actually comes from the attitude of krautrock: that genre-less, futuristic questing. Their reconfiguration of what a band was, how it should be structured and so consequently what it might sound like is a lesson that every generation of music makers can take something from and make their own.”

What plans are there for your first release in terms of artwork and music?

“We’re releasing a vinyl only 12″ to start with, ‘Live In Eivissa’, which will be the 18-minute-plus long track that we made during our first Ibiza trip. In addition to this we’ve completed an album’s worth of music and this will come out later in the year after that first 12” and a film on a DVD that will be called Die Verboten Disc.

Can we expect a lavish gatefold affair along the lines of the first Ash Ra Tempel album?

“For the 12″, we’re going to package it in a folding cardboard pyramid, that should be pretty tasty and whose geometric configuration is designed to focus deep Cosmic powers on the vinyl housed inside.” [check out the finished product here]

There won’t be any live shows though, right? Why all the secrecy?

“We’re not ruling live stuff out, but just as we’ve recording in interesting ways, we’d like to play in an unusual environment. It’s not that we’re keeping things secret; it’s more that there are so many factors to get right, we’d rather work behind the scenes quietly to resolve these and then unleash something awesome!”

Die Verboten’s ‘Live In Evissa’ is out now in a super-limited vinyl-only edition, available to order from thevinylfactory.com. Their album, Die Verboten Disc, will follow later in the year, also on The Vinyl Factory label.

Sean Bidder

Artwork and pictures: Fergadelic