Gestammelorchester

Who are you and what are you doing in your normal life?

 

Shane: I'm Shane, I just got a grant which means I don't have to work for the next 2 years. I like punk/hardcore gigs, zines, gang movies, computer games, mid-late 90's east coast hip-hop and the odd bit of black metal. I play drums in Hoilkrampf too.

Tom: I'm Tom. I mainly play the electrified rock and roll guitar with Gestammelorchester. In my normal life i stare at a computer.

Emma: I'm Emma. I play music and try to pay my rent, sometimes simultaneously but mostly not.

 

Why do you call yourself „three losers from Ireland and Scotland“?

 

Shane: I'm 28, no girlfriend, no skills, no money, I'm about to be evicted from my flat and I play drums in bloody Gestammel Orchester. Do the knowledge.

Tom: It's a more-or-less accurate description. We don't have proper jobs, just like most of the people I know here. I do a few different things for money. We've had stretches of relative homelessness and relative poverty. But being a loser isn't a bad thing. It keeps you focused.

Emma: Because we try to work as little as possible, which limits our lifestyle choices somewhat. Tom and I earn money to eat by playing music on the street. But we mean 'loser' in a good way, it's a good way to live. And we're from Ireland and Scotland.

 

 

You are inhabitants of Berlin by choice. What do you like on Berlin, what do you miss?

 

Shane: I like the fact that there are many shows happening in Köpi, Subversiv, lokal, Scherer8. People are polite and people are fucking tolerant and people are open-minded. In general, it's a lot easier to be who you are and do what you do. Things that piss me off about berlin is the sometimes jaded attitude some people have. I miss going to gigs and having people say 'hallo' to me. I miss messy, drunken fun sometimes.

Tom: I like that Berlin is a city that allows people to survive pretty cheaply, which can be a blessing and a curse. If you have something to do -- a band, an art project, or whatever else -- then it's great. If you have nothing to do, then it's pretty easy to become a slug and spend all day drinking Sterni in the park. I try hard to do things, and make things happen. It doesn't always work, but I like the fact that I live in a city that lets me attempt it. I'm stubborn, I suppose. As for what I miss, not so much. I used to live in Dublin. I miss my friends; I miss the sea. But not much else.

Emma: I like that the cheap rent means the city is full of people who choose to be losers, like us. I like the cheap beer and the fact that you can never tell what day of the week it is. I miss decent tea and pretty much nothing else.

 

 

How did you come up with your great name and how is it connected to your music?

 

Shane: Originally it was a german-ified version of 'jackals and arabs'(Chacals und Araber?) which is a song by the very fantastic band Sweet Cobra but then it became 'Arab Orchester'. Then it became Gestammel Orchester...don't know why.

Tom: We played one concert under the name Schakale und Araber Orchester, which is a kind of cool name, but possibly a bit awkward to say, or to put on posters. So we decided to change it, and we liked the idea of having a German name (even though we don't speak very good German).

At around the same time I was listening to a lot of music by Alvin Lucier, the American contemporary composer. He has a stammer, and he's well-known for a piece called 'I Am Sitting In A Room', where he uses this speech impediment as a compositional tool for his music. I was fascinated by the idea that Lucier was using his 'disability' in a creative way.

As a band, I like to think that we try to do something similar -- we're not great musicians or singers, but we use what we have and try to do something new with it. A lot of the older post-punk music I love has a similar aesthetic -- The Fall, Young Marble Giants, No-wave stuff, lo-fi stuff. It's stammering, stuttering, strange music.

Apart from that, I think the word 'Gestammel' is quite elegant. Apparently it sounds a bit strange to German native speakers to combine the two words.

Emma: I don't know, I joined after they came up with the name. I like it, though.

 

 

What is the concept behind your band, your music and your lyrics?

 

Shane: If there's a concept, I'm not aware of it. I like to damage the drums, that's enough for me.

Tom: The listener decides. I don't like to spell things out.

Emma: I have no idea. I can't hear the lyrics because Tom mumbles.

 

 

You are not a Pop-band, what means it is not so easy to listen to your music... why are you no Pop-band?

 

Tom: I don't know. I think of some of our songs as pop songs. A lot of the music I go to see in concert in Berlin is from the noise/improv/electronics scene, so compared to that, we could be considered pretty 'pop'. But then great pop is often really weird, anyway. I was recently watching the video for Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' again, after hearing that he had died. It's universally hailed as a transcendent pop artifact, and it was the lead single from the best selling album of all time, and it's simultaneously a really unsettling, Pinteresque sort of terror fantasy. So, pop is what you make it, I suppose.

Emma: We are a pop band. Have you heard 'Hesitate'?

 

How does the audience react on your music? How do you want it to react?

 

Shane: It ranges from polite head-nodding to sneers to the odd person being blown away. Fuck it.

Tom: It depends. Some people are bored. Some dance and laugh and sing. People in Berlin never seem to shout or heckle, which is somewhat disappointing -- I like when people shout. As for how I want them to react, I don't really know. Some of the best reactions we've had have been when our gear has broken in the middle of a concert. We have a bit of a habit of destroying our drums by mistake.

Emma: Sometimes people look confused, sometimes they nod their heads, sometimes they walk out and occasionally they buy a record. But they always clap politely. I'm happy if they stay in the room.

 

How did you get your two 7“ out? What network did you need to put them out?

 

Shane: Tom can answer that. Pay for it too!

Tom: We didn't really need a network, but we got some help from some friends along the way. Recording and putting out a 7-inch is something any band can do. It takes time and money, and phone calls and emails and effort, but it's not a huge task -- anyone can be Ian MacKaye. The records themselves were pressed at Ameise in Hamburg. Tell them we sent you...

Emma: I didn't play on the first one, because I wasn't in the band then, but I did go to Hamburg to help print the covers. I fell asleep though, and Tom and Shane did it. The second one, I played bass and I stuck things on the covers. The covers where the stickers are squint, they're my ones.

 

 

How do you view the current musicunderground scene in general? If you could magically change one thing about the current scene, what would it be?

 

Shane: I think that's too much of a general question to be honest; you could take any sub-genre of underground music, then analyse that scenes network, bands, percieved attiudes etc etc. I don't know what that would achieve. I certainly don't think we, as a band, are part of any 'scene' as it were and I don't feel part of one as an individual either. I like seeing mixed bills at concerts though; in march we organised a show for some friends of ours, Hands Up Who Wants To Die, from Ireland. They play a noise rock in the vein of The Unsane and bands of that ilk and we played also and some friends of ours played a noise set afterwards. I like this sort of thing. It's not like when you have 3 d-beat bands all playing the same rubbish...maybe that's more of a comment on berlin and the variety of touring bands that give people choice but inevitably end up being a sort of cultural ghetto. But if people are happy with that, there is nowthing you can do I suppose.

Tom: I'm not sure I'd think of there being a single underground music scene, but the DIY/weirdo/noise/hardcore/indie/crust/punk venn diagram is always inspiring, and always frustrating. Recent inspirations: Action Beat, Calcination, No Nebraska!, Valina, Cotton Ponies, Antihairball, The Wednesday Improv gigs at Maria, Ruby Tuesday Rock Camp. Recent frustrations: lots, but nothing too terrible.

Apart from that, the 'music underground' (in Berlin and elsewhere) can be a bit fragmented -- hardcore concerts for hardcore kids, noise concerts for noise freaks, indie concerts for indie wimps, and so on. It'd be nice to have some cross-pollination. And if there's one selfish thing I'd change, it would be to somehow make it easier for us to book concerts and tours. But maybe we're just going about it the wrong way.

Emma: I have no idea. I have terrible taste in music.

 

What future do you see for you and your band?

 

Emma: I love the polite applause and I would like to play more gigs where people clap politely. I also want Tom to be heckled.

Tom: If all goes well, we're going to do a tour in November in Eastern Europe with Hands Up Who Wants To Die (from Dublin). And some other concerts. After that, record and release an album. It's trapped in my head at the moment and I'd like to get it out into the world. After that, I'm not sure. Tour, record, play gigs, have fun. I'd love to do this all the time. I have ideas for ten albums and I want to play all over the world, but it can be hard to predict and it might end tomorrow, so I try not to get too frazzled about it.

Shane: Practice, tour, fun.

 

 

Questions by Gunter