Samsas Traum
I Dream In German

15.02.2011

Alexander Kaschte, the leader of a provocative and very original band called Samsas Traum, always seemed to me an unpredictable person with somewhat harsh judgments. And to tell you the truth, the actual idea of doing an interview with him seemed to me risky: I thought I would not be able to control the situation, and everything would depend on my partner’s mood, and there are fair chances that he would consider my questions not worthy of answering. But my concerns proved futile: having taken a seat at a table at Moscow’s Ikra Club, Alexander (who, contrary to my preconceptions, turned out a very friendly and talkative person) told me much more than I could have asked for…

Tonight you’re going to play a show called “The Best of Samsas Traum”. How did you choose the “best” songs for it?

We were playing one year ago in Germany, we had a “birthday-tour” for our 13th birthday. The tour was in connection to our last album, the black album with the dancing skeleton (“13 Jahre Lang Dagegen – Anti Bis zum Tod”, 2009), which unfortunately is not released in Russia. And for this “birthday-tour” we’d chosen a lot of songs from every album of Samsas Traum. And I wanted to perform these songs in Russia as well, so now we’re here and we’re going to play at least one song from every record.

Are these your favorite songs, or maybe the songs your fans like?

Yeah! The songs were chosen by the fans. The songs were chosen by the German fans. But they turned out to be quite representative. So it worked very well in Germany and was very much appreciated by German fans and I think Russians will love it anyway, because we’re gonna perform a lot of music which we never performed in Russia before.

As far as I remember, you said you’re ready to come and play in Russia for free. So are you playing for free today?

Of course.

Really?

Yeah, we’re playing for free. We’re just playing for the costs. So Spika Concerts organized everything, they paid for the flights, they paid for the hotel, they paid for food, for transfer… And we won’t get any money for this, we’re playing completely for free.

So you just wanted to see your fans and that’s the reason you’re here, am I right?

Well, basically I have a Russian girlfriend which is pregnant and we’re going to get married next weekend. And I wanted to play music for her family, I wanted them to see me perform in Russia for at least one time and I wanted her family to come to the concert, so she is actually the main reason why we’re here.

Wow! Unbelievable…

Yeah. I’m pretty much looking forward to getting married here in Russia, in Moscow.

And do you have any plans how to organize everything?

Oh, the wedding was organized by the family of my girlfriend and it’s going to be a big Russian wedding with a lot of Russian traditions like stealing the bride and freeing the bride and carrying the bride over the bridge and putting a lock… No beer, just vodka, wine and Champagne and… yeah, I’m pretty much looking forward to this.  And I’m going also to live in Russia for seven months next year. The baby will be born in February and we’re going to spend like half a year in Russia before we go to Germany.

Are you going to have a son or a daughter?

We don’t know yet. And I actually don’t want to know.

So you’re not thinking about names, are you?

Of course we’ve already chosen the names.

Are they Russian or…

Yeah, Russian.

Do you want to keep them in secret?

Yes, it’s a secret. (smiles)

Okay. Congratulations! It’s just wonderful!

Yes, it is. It is wonderful, because this is why I got to know your country from the inside.

Oh yes, you seem to be pretty much interested in our country. And I actually wanted to ask you a couple of questions about it too, but a bit later.

Oh, yes, just go on with the interview. (smiles)

Let’s discuss a bit your new release “Vernuft ist nichts, Gefühl ist alles”, which includes 3 CDs and 1 DVD…

Yeah, this release was in connection to the record I was just talking about. The record which is called “13 Jahre lang dagegen - Anti bis zum Tod”, the black one with the skeleton. The release that came out in March was entirely done by the record company. I had nothing to do with it. They just wanted to sell more copies of that “birthday-record” and this is why they made this special limited edition. It contains the album in another version, another mix, and again another version with another mastering and then they added a horrible DVD which everybody in the band dislikes and I don’t like it either, but it wasn’t done by me. And then they have a rarities collection of our old songs… But don’t bother, you don’t have to buy it! It’s useless. It’s useless crap. And it wasn’t done by Samsas Traum. It’ was done by the record company.

In March you were asked by one of your Russian fans if you’re writing new songs and you answered that you’ve “recorded drums for an entire new album”, and that you’re working on “another musical in the style of “a.Ura” and a massive black metal-epos”. Could you please tell more about these new projects?

We’re going to release one of these projects in March. I don’t know yet which project it will be. It will be in combination with a new Weena Morloch record, which we’re already recording. Currently I have two albums ready, so the music is composed already for two albums. One of them goes more into the melodic death metal direction with electronics and orchestra. That’s the one I was talking about when I said that that we’ve recorded drums for the album. We recorded these drums with Alex Krull from Atrocity and Leaves' Eyes, we were at his studio at the time I gave the interview. It’s a very strange record because it deals a lot with death and suicide. I started writing the lyrics for this record in the period when I was extremely close to death mentally. I was thinking about dying, I was thinking about decay and suicide a lot.

Can I ask you why?

Because I met a lot of deaths in my family and in the family of friends. And it was like compressed death everywhere. In the period of two years there were always people dying around me. And I got sucked into a mental spiral thinking about that topic. I started dedicating the record to this topic. And the artwork is also very morbid and sarcastic and horrible. But the funny thing is that in between I started doing something else, so now my point of view changed completely, because now I’m going to be a father in February and we’re going to be a family soon. So there is no time and no sense to think about death at all. Death doesn’t matter anymore. It shouldn’t matter anymore. And this record is very interesting because it has two opposites. I wrote the first part of it when I was in this strange and hard period and I’m writing the second part now. So it’s gonna be like a mixture between life and death.

In between I had a lot of inspiration for this new orchestra record. And I think I wrote it in six weeks. After a long time I was interested in orchestral music again. And it was very-very cool, because I just sat down and started writing music. And I wrote 15 songs in six weeks. This album is called “Asenka” and it’s just a fairytale about a little girl getting lost in a forest and trying to find her way home. On her way home she meets a lot of characters from Russian fairytales and folktales. So this is my Russian record. One week ago we just finished recording drums for this album too. And the thing that is like “metal-epos” is still in the making. I wrote three songs, but every song is fifteen minutes long. I’m going to release it some time in between. I hope in Russia as well, but the problem is that nobody wants to release Samsas Traum in Russia anymore.

Oh, why?

Because we broke up with Irond. They didn’t want to pay us anymore, they told us that the market is breaking down in Russia, because people keep on downloading and downloading and downloading and they sell less CDs.

So now you have to find a new label here in Russia, right?

Yes, I have to find a new label in Russia. We still have our old label in Germany, but in Russia nobody wants to release Samsas Traum. This is why you didn’t see the last album. They wanted to give us… I can tell you how much money they wanted to give us… (picks up a cell phone and sees a new message) Oh, I’ve got a message… Ksenia wrote me. She is our webmaster. So look… (shows a figure on the phone screen) They wanted to give us ten thousand rubles for releasing the entire album. Do you think it’s a lot of money for a whole album? And I can tell you that this is a lot of money – this is the pay off for Samsas Traum. And now I’ll show you what Irond offered other bands from my German label for one record. (the screen shows even more moderate figures) Can you believe that? This is the reason why I’m not going to release any records in Russia, because this is shit. When I release records in Russia like this, for this amount of money, people re-import our records to Germany and I lose money again, because people start selling Russian copies to German fans. I think it is a big problem, because your country is always complaining about Europeans not releasing enough music in Russia or not coming to Russia too often, but… strange policy.

Well, I believe that there’s nothing to be done with it these days…

At least not with Irond.

In one of your previous interviews you said that you’re going to print English translations of your lyrics in every booklet of your new albums for your fans all over the world to understand what you’re singing. Haven’t you ever thought about not translating your lyrics into English but writing them in this language?

No. No, because I’m German and I speak the German language and I want to represent my country and I want to express myself in the German language. It’s not a good idea to sing in English. I want to be authentic. I want to be truthful and I want to say what I want to say and I can say it in German. I can’t say it in English. Of course my English is quite okay, because I spent a lot of years in England and I meet English musicians all the time, but German is my native language, I speak it since 33 years, so I know this language quite well. I think in German, I dream in German and I express myself in German.

What about your side projects? You’ve just mentioned Weena Morloch…

Yes, I’m gonna carry on with Weena Morloch. As I told you we’re going to release a new record in March, which is called “Amok”. But I’m not going to carry on with the other projects.

So you’re going to concentrate on Samsas Traum and Weena Morloch, right?

Yes. You know, Samsas Traum has music for at least two years now. I have music in my studio for releasing records like two years. When I come home we’re gonna release a little five inch Weena Morloch vinyl and then we’re going to release a double-seven inch Samsas Traum live record on colored vinyl. And then I have, as I told you, the death metal album, I have this black metal epos and I have this “Asenka” record for Samsas Traum.

Well, then let’s talk about Russia.

Yeah!

My first question is: you seem to be interested in Soviet cartoons like “Hedgehog in the Fog”, so what is it you like about them?

I’m generally interested in any type of Eastern culture, which is connected with Soviet or post Soviet countries. My grandparents, the parents of my father, they are from Czechoslovakia, so I felt connected to this type of culture somehow without wanting it, like biologically. When you know that your grandparents are from there you just belong to the place somehow. And when I grew older I was interested in historical events and political ideologies and views like socialism, communism and radical terrorist movements in Germany like the Red Army Faction in the 70’s that were connected to these beliefs and ideologies. I participated in several German leftist movements, so there was some mental connection. Then I filled my interest for Eastern culture with reality. It was really cool to me to be in Russia in 2005 and play concerts here because it was one of my biggest wishes to play in Moscow. And the more time I spend here the more I get connected to this country, because it’s very hard not to have an opinion. On the one hand there are lots of things that are massive and impressive and that you can see like as a tourist. But when you live here like a normal person and spend regular time in a city around Moscow, like not in the touristic center of Russia, when you see more of Russian life like going to a Russian hospital, going to a Russian policlinic, seeing the color of Russian water from the tub, smelling its smell, getting stuck in a lift, needing 5 hours to drive with a bus from Moscow to Zelenograd, seeing a bridge in front of you falling down, seeing militia just dragging out people randomly from the street, seeing rats on a train station, seeing 30 street dogs crossing the road in front of you, seeing drunk people lying somewhere in their own puke… that’s very strange. That’s very strange for a European. In total I’ve spent now like three months in Russia and in the beginning it was extremely difficult, because the more I got to know, the more I had to find my opinion and find my position towards all these things. Because this is everyday life of my girlfriend, this is everyday life of her family and it became my everyday life too. And I had to get used to this. And for a person who comes from Europe this is very difficult. You have to be very tolerant. You have to have a lot of patience. And you have to forget about a lot of things which you are used to as a European. So I really can say that the last year and the year ahead are the most interesting and the most difficult period of my entire life.

Some time ago you asked your Russian fans to tell you what they think about Stalin, Gorbachev, homosexuality, Chechnya and Germany. What were the results of this experiment?

Yeah, this is very interesting, because when I came to Russia I heard the opinion of several people about the things I was asking about. For example I heard from a person that you consider gayness as sickness. So when a person is gay, he has a disease, which can be cured. That’s what a person said. Another person said that people from Chechnya are no human beings. They are monkeys. And another person said that Gorbachev was a U.S. spy, that he destroyed your country and that he is the son of Satan and wears the mark of the devil on his forehead. So hearing all this was very strange, because in Europe we think that Gorbachev is good, because he helped Germany to reunite, he gave back the Soviet part of Germany. We think that people from Chechnya fight for freedom. And we think that homosexuality is something normal and people can do it if they like and don’t disturb others. These opinions seemed to be very unnatural to me, because they are the opposite opinions of what we have in Europe. You know, we think that Gorbachev is good – some people in Russia think that he is son of Satan. We think that they from Chechnya fight for freedom – you think that they are monkeys or terrorists or horrible persons. I just tried to find the truth, I just tried to find the balance, because I know that you live here, you have another point of view, you have another opinion and you can correct my view, because we’re Europeans, we are not here and we don’t know about the details, but still we judge and we think about what you do and maybe we are wrong. So I just tried to find the balance by asking my fans and almost every answer was different. There were many people saying different things and it was very interesting to read it. You have almost every opinion from ‘Gorbachev is the son of Satan” to “you can’t make him responsible for the downfall of the Soviet Union because the Soviet system was broken somehow from the inside anyway, so it can’t be the fault of one person” – for example. It was very interesting.

And don’t you sometimes feel like not only Russian way of life is strange to you, but also your behavior as a European is somehow strange to Russian people? For example for your girlfriend’s family?

Yeah, there’re a lot of conflicts. I have a lot of conflicts with Russians, because I’m from Germany, and in Germany we are very strict, we are very precise, we are very punctual, we are somehow totally different to Russians. Russians are slow, they don’t care about time, they don’t care about distances, they are different to Germans. Sometimes it’s colliding. But we always try to find the compromise, though it’s hard. Sometimes it’s hard.

So you do believe that people of one nation have some special features in common, don’t you?

Yes, I do. It’s a fact. I think it’s history and mentality, because you experienced different things, you come from another part of the world, you’ve seen different things and had different history. And it’s always different with people from different countries. I don’t think there’s a particular racial difference, but I think that the country, how it looks like, its nature, if you live on the coast or in the mountains – it all matters.

Are you going to learn Russian language?

Yeah. I’ve already learned a couple of small sentences. And I can understand a little bit. And the family of my girlfriend puts little stickers like on the table, or on the fridge, “comforka” and so on… (laughs) And then I try to remember it. And I watch a lot of Russian television. I’m going to focus on learning Russian more when the baby’s there. I’m not going to focus on music so much, I’m going to focus on the baby and learning Russian. And on the other hand, my girlfriend will focus on learning German, because the baby will be raised bilingual and speak two languages.

And what about Russian literature? They say that Europeans find it pretty special and interesting. Do you read any Russian authors?

Currently, since I’ve known Anastasia, I’m reading Russian literature quite a lot. I want to know about her favorites, I want to know what she likes to read and her background. So I read a lot of Dostoevsky and I bought a lot of other Russian classical literature – Gogol and so on. I read them in German, I can’t read them in Russian, but even in this form they are different to German literature. I like the madness in Dostoevsky very much, this is something you can get addicted to. I also read Mikhail Bulgakov, his “Master and Margarita”, which is a perfect book, I liked it very much. And I even read Vladimir Sorokin, which the family of my girlfriend hates. But I just wanted to know about him and he’s quite a strange author. So I didn’t only want to read classical Russian literature, I also wanted to read something contemporary. And the only person we know in Germany is Sorokin. So this is why I read like “Ulyot” and “Bro” and I’m going to read “23.000”. I think he’s painting a quite realistic picture of Moscow life.

Well, you told me quite a lot of negative things about Russia like bad water and rats and drunkards. But are there some things about Russian life you like?

That’s an interesting question, because basically the life which I’m leading when I’m in Russia is very small. So my horizon is not very big. For example I haven’t been to the Siberia, I haven’t been to Vladivostok, I have never been to St. Petersburg. I have only been in Moscow and the Moscow region. I got to know the life of a normal Russian family with a normal average income. And I got to know about the life in a small Russian city, not like in a big city like Moscow. And actually the best thing about Russia is my girlfriend and our future child. I have to deal a lot with the processing of the impressions, because it’s so different. Your world is completely different to Europe, you behave different, you eat different food, things work in a different way, things look different, everything is different starting with people. And I think it will take another six month to feel normal. To be able to recognize positive things. Of course we have a special café where we like to go to and drink coffee and of course we have special routes where we like to go for a walk and of course I’ve been to monastery and of course I’ve been to Kremlin and Red Square and so on. But I still look at Russia from the point of a European, because I’m not Russian, I wasn’t raised here, I haven’t lived here for 25 years and this is why I always see Russia through the eyes of a European. My relationship towards Russia is only nine month old and I’m not ready yet to judge it and to separate positive from negative, because I’m still working on it. Do you understand what I mean?

Yes I do. But, you know, there’re always some things you can see or hear or taste for the first time in your life and like them immediately. You don’t need time to decide if they are good or not. You just like them. Are there things like that in Russia for you?

Yes, there are things like that. What I personally like very much is drinking vodka with the father of Anastasia. And singing songs with the family.

What kind of songs?

Russian songs. And then I take the guitar and play German songs. And of course I like going to shops and buying Russian DVDs and Russian music. I like listening to Russian music. My favorite Russian band is Aria. I love Aria! And I like Mumiy Troll and the band which is called Night Sniper.

Nochnye Snipery.

Yeah! I like it! It’s very-very cool, very good musicians.

And do you know what they are singing about?

No. But it doesn’t matter. I just listen to the voice and I try to adept the way they pronounce words, how the music is composed – it’s very different to German music. I like Aria’s live concerts, I want to go to a real concert of Aria, which is very cool – I’ve just seen the DVDs. I like Russian trains. I like going to Moscow by train, because in every new city a person comes into your wagon and sings a song or plays violin or plays accordion or tries to sell you something. I like “kasha” and I like chicory… I like Russian street dogs. I like jogging around in Zelenograd. I like reading books about Russia. There’re a lot of things I like… And I like Russian people. I like how people are, how they treat each other, I like Russian women of course. Your mentality is different and it’s a pleasure to be here.

Samsas Traum on the Internet: http://www.samsas-traum.info/

Special thanks to Vera Dmitrieva (Spika Concert Agency) for arranging this interview

Interview by Ksenia Artamonova
Photos by Olga "Omena" Dendymarchenko
November 5, 2010
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