Interview #2 - Misanthrop

The Musical Limit Exceeder

Ask the average Swede if he knows anything about German hip hop and most of them probably don’t have a clue. A couple of people might smile sarcastically and say Die Fantastischen Vier and some might mention Snowgoons, but apart from that the silence will be ringing. There are more interesting artists than the earlier mentioned though; Misanthrop from Munich is one of them. I can’t say that I know much about this man, I just recently discovered him when he was featured on the compilation Goosebumps 4.0.  His track Kein Video auf YouTube became one of my favorites and I decided to check out his other material. What I found was an artist that had released quite a lot of music and I got interested in the guy behind it. So I tracked him down and asked him some questions.

How come you started making music?

I simply had to. From the first cassettes and records I bought, I always wanted to know how music, and especially rap music, was produced and I quickly started making compositions with my computer and other electronic equipment to find out myself. This was in the early nineties when I experimented with many different styles of music. I always wanted to be different from the others regarding my musical taste. In 1995, I started rapping as I was not satisfied with the quality and intellectual level of German rap lyrics in those days. In my humble opinion, one could do it better.

What is your purpose with the music and lyrics?

The intention behind my music is to aim for the hearts of people and touch them emotionally. At the same time, I try to avoid musical patterns of others who already achieved this emotional impact. Otherwise I could just copy those patterns, but I try to discover my own way. As such things work very subjectively, I can only follow those musical attempts of mine, which I personally can bounce my head to. Now the lyrics are more for the people's heads. I am always confronted with people saying that my lyrics are better to listen to than to dance to. I have not given up the idea though of people doing both to my music, and I will carry on trying to accomplish that.

How would you describe your music and could you briefly tell us about the music-making process?

My music is partly sample-based, partly based on synth based sounds. Sometimes I start with a piece of a krautrock, free jazz, a German songwriter or whatever record I could find.  It could also be a sample of some south-east Asian music that I have brought home from one of my trips that gets me going. Sometimes a melody pops up in my head which I then play on my controller keyboard. After that I add the drums by playing, programming or by chopping up some drum loops. I might add some additional synth based or sampled layers, and after that a coarse arrangement and then I have got a new beat sketch I can write my rhymes to or send out to my collaborators. Writing lyrics is a bit harder than making beat sketches, but the hardest part is of course to record and arrange everything for the final version. The results might sound like anticon-influenced underground rap or like mid-nineties boom bap mixed with oriental music. It can also sound completely different, the important thing for me is, that every track is unique or at least that is my intention.

Since my knowledge of German is almost non-existent, what kind of subject matters do you usually deal with?

My lyrics are abstract according to the original meaning of the word, i.e. I do not rap about Rap so much but more about what's going on inside of me or what is, in my own opinion, happening in the world around us, in the outside world. I rather rap about political and social topics which are not covered by many musicians at this level of depth. Currently, I preferably talk about the decrease of western societies and the rise of others, for example of several Asian countries. In my professional life, I deal with these topics every day, so I am very interested in that. Generally, I always rap about my personal experiences, which means that I don't deal with ghetto topics, street problems and party hopping because that wouldn't be real and authentic.

What’s the scene like in Munich compared to the rest of Germany

This is difficult for me to say. The type of music I am making and listening to is only applicable to a few hundred people in Germany so we have to find each other across city boundaries. The general rap scene in Munich, which I partly know from my connections back in the days and by browsing the event announcements and musical publications, suffers in my opinion from the lack of interest people here have for this kind of music. That does not mean that rap in other cities make people rich and famous.  As I sometimes have to deal with the promotion of events like the Rap History Munich and of concerts for friends from overseas or other parts of Germany, I know that it is pretty tough in Munich to get even only a couple of people to visit the events.

Any upcoming projects?

Yep. I am always working on many projects in parallel, and some of them will hopefully manifest in concrete releases soon. There will be an EP called Fatalist, which I did with THMS from Stockholm, to be published on Milled Pavement in the US. There will be a joint album Gefahren im Anzug with Cocon to be released on our collaborative label postrap. There will be a new album of mine called Das Ungeheuer und sein Kritiker (with the title derived from J.R.R. Tolkien's The Monsters and the Critics) also published via postrap, and then another instrumental EP I did with 88:Komaflash's producer Aqua Luminus III. The releases may be in this order, maybe not.

Last words?

Thanks to you for giving me the opportunity to do this interview. Thanks to everyone listening to my music and to everyone relieving me from all the CDs and records stored in my basement. I also would like to thank all promoters giving my friends and me the opportunities to play abroad, especially our friends in Switzerland, they are awesome! Furthermore, thanks to my collaborating friends from which I mentioned a few above already, and of course to the whole postrap posse, to Equinox Records, Analog Alpha, the Knertz collective, Mism Records, New Cocoon, Milled Pavement and to all I might have forgotten. Peace out.

http://www.misantropolis.de/ 
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Misanthrop/241972734000
http://www.postrap.de/