In 1989, a young duo from Bayreuth in Bavaria created a revolution in the gothic world and pulled it out of its apathy by mixing symphonic arangements and electronic architectures to create a poetic and macabre theater of a self-centered obsession. The doors to the second goth generation were opened, the fields of experimentation vast, and the tomorrows deliciously morbid. 10 years later, Stephan Ackermann (singing) and Bruno Kramm (music) continue to lead Das Ich's raft againts winds and tides. In their wake, a plethora of bands which pay them a tribute through a double album of remixes, "Re_laborat Re_animat", simply fantastic. This is the opportunity to browse with Bruno through a decade of shadows and light.

Bruno Kramm: A lot of things happened to Das Ich throughout these years. We toured all over the place, in the US, in South America.... It's fascinating for us because the scene in which we made our debut has changed a lot in the last 10 years. It's very interesting to see all these new people, all these new influences, and to realize that the main spirit is unchanged. I remember that when we started the German scene was really small, there were no labels, no magazines, there was almost nothing, especially around where we lived. We were really the only ones and the media wouldn't keep from making fun of the goth movement, like "the suicidal teens," etc. All this has changed now with the gothic-electro network, everything has become easier. We would have been really happy when we started to have the opportunities that new bands can have nowadays. But it's great that this scene's becoming more and more important, to be able to easily read in Elegy what's going on in France, and in Zillo or Orkus what's going on in Germany, and together to create this kind of European space.

SL: How do you view your evolution since Satanische Verse until this album of remixes ?

BK: We've improved a lot, technically. We are also one of the groups who experiment the most from album to album, so that none sounds like one we've done before: If you listen to Egodram, then Morgue, and today Re_laborat, you'll realize that those are really three different things. But for instance, if you take a band like Project Pitchfork, you take two songs from two different albums and they are identical! To not repeat oneself, that's the most important thing for us, and it was from the beginning.

SL: Let's go through to your main records. Satanische Verse (1990)...

BK: That was like a milestone for us, because we'd had a lot of experience with other bands and when we recorded Satanische Verse at once it represented our definition of Das Ich. And it worked really well in Germany. To start with, it was only a simple demo and it was afterwards that our distributor offered us to put out a CD. The title, borrowed from Salman Rushdie, was chosen because it has the same meaning for christians and muslims, it was a kind of provocation.

SL: Die propheten (1991)...

BK: This album is somewhat similar to Satanishce Verse because it contains titles from the demo, re-recorded in improved versions. We tried to go further along the demo's concept with Die Propheten, a concept based on religion, christianity. We tried to bring more answers for our critic of religion.

SL: Staub (1993)...

BK: It's a deeper and darker album than Die Propheten, with fewer clichés. It's our most depressing creation because at that time we had a lot of personal problems with our girlfriends, my label, Danse Macabre, was facing big financial difficulties and everything seemed to go wrong. We were totally depressed, frustrated and you can feel it in the record's atmosphere. We were through with religion and tried to address modern society and its evolutions, the transformation of physical systems into chaotic ones, the environment problems, for short, an apocalyptic millenium..

SL: Atrocity's Album, Die Liebe (1995)...

BK: It was a lot of fun making it but we didn't really involved ourselves too much. For us it was more of a collaboration. It was kind of the beginning of the German crossover between gothic and metal, which was not really popular at the time. When it came out, a lot of people said: "Oh my God, what have they done, working with a metal band, it's disgusting !". Today it's almost normal to mix both genres, but I think it was a little too early at the time.

SL: The soundtrack of the movie Das ewige Licht by H.-H. Hässler, Das innere ich (1996)...

BK: It was very interesting to make a soundtrack, because we were always making music for movies in our heads, and that time, they gave us a movie to make music for. They didn't want something with too much singing, but rather ambiance and atmosphere, and we really enjoyed making it that way. The only problem is that we had only 2 weeks for the recording and it was really stressful. The movie did OK in Germany in "Program Kinos" theaters, but there is very little chance for it to come out on video.

SL: Egodram (1997)...

BK: It was the first time that we decided to make an album without a concept or big philisophy behind it, something for people to like to dance on, which was, again, very interesting and new for us. But in the end, I don't think it's really a "dance floor" record, Das Ich being much better at making a more spiritual music rather than corporeal. It's true that Egodram can seem a little commercial because it's so dancable, but people have to know that that has nothing to do with our label, Edel at the time. The record was already done when we signed with them. For us, Egodram was only one more experimentation.

SL: Morgue (1998)

BK: It's an album based on poems by a very famous German writer, Gottfried Benn, whom one could compare to Baudelaire in France. His texts are full of very deep atmospheres and he was one of our first inspirations when we started writing our lyrics in German. Time had come for us to make that record, in a view to presenting what Das Ich's roots were. That produced an album that's very close to our initial works, very dark, very gothic.

SL: Finally today, there is Re_laborat Re_animat; why did you choose to celebrate your 10 years anniversary with an album of remixes rather than with a simple compilation ?

BK: Because I always see a compilation as just a way to make more money. Besides we never had people remix our songs in the past because we were afraid that the remixers would have no idea how we'd like the remixes to sound like. But then, eventually, we thought it would be interesting, for the first time in our career, to put our songs in other people's hands, and why not, to make an album out of it. Something special for our anniversary. I hope that people will like that double CD, it is very dancable, great for parties !

SL: How did you choose the remixers ?

BK: The first people we contacted where our old friend Steve Naghavi from And One, and Ernst Horn from Deine Lakaien, and then, all the other bands called us asking: "Hey ! You want us to make a remix for you ?" It was really funny.

SL: The final product is a kind of tribute to Das Ich. Are you flattered ?

BK: Yeah, we're really happy to see all these bands remix our songs. It has given us the opportunity to come in contact with people like Funker Vogt or :Wumpscut:, and now we have a bunch of new friends !

SL: Which remix is the best one, in your opinion ?

BK: not easy to say.... It really wouldn't be nice of me to say which remix I like the best because all these bands really worked a lot. I would say though that I really like the one by Laboratory X (Chad Blinnon's band - Faith & The Muse) as well as the one by And One, especially because it's Steve singing on that one.

SL: By the way, didn't Stephan get peeved that he was replaced by someone else on that one ?

BK: It's a remix, right ? That wasn't a problem for my music, why would it be one for Stephan's singing ?

SL: As a conclusion, what is the strongest memory that you'll keep of these 10 years with Das Ich ?

BK: It was a concert in New York, during the Procession Tour (1994), with Faith & the Muse, Rosetta Stone, and Corpus Delicti. It was in a club, the Limelight, which is in fact an old church. We played in front of 1500 people: the atmospehere was such that we felt like preachers...