The Electronic Years
“I had enough of band rehearsals and the stuff. I just wanted to do something I could fully commit to, without others interfering.”
Kazz started a new journey, playing solo with electronic devices and thus recording his first CD Trancedancer, a double album, in 1998.
“It wasn’t new to me. I’ve been recording solo electronic experiments since 1982. But they were just side projects. There have been some rare solo gigs every now and then. But in 1998 I had enough of playing in a band so I decided to do it on my own.”
“I’ve been a fan of music from Klaus Schulze for a long time. Having enough of playing in a band, just meant I’d have to do it on my own.”
Kazz knew there was a huge market for this music in Germany and decided to concentrate on that region.
“Strange things happened. I sent a copy of Trancedancer to the PR-man of Klaus Schulze. He offered me to join a Klaus Schulze Tribute CD he was preparing with musicians from all over the world. I gladly accepted the offer and recorded a special track for that occasion. As a reaction to that contribution a small record label offered me a recording contract. I only had to edit Trancedancer to fit on a single CD. The company also became my booking agency so it all seemed to okay. Well, to a certain extent as I soon found out. They booked me for gigs at house or tecno parties to play in chillout rooms. That was fun for a while but it wasn’t the audience I was looking for.”
“After a gig in Regensburg I met some guys who introduced me to a circuit called Living Room Concerts. They organised gigs at people’s houses, sometimes with only 25 people around. I did a couple of gigs and it was a lot of fun, because these audiences were there just for the music.”
After two years and two albums Kazz decided to quit the record company.
“It was pretty obvious they wanted to push me into that dance or tecno direction, wheras I wanted to go the opposite way. I had recorded a couple of tracks for a live album. One of them was a very ambient track, recorded at one of those living room gigs. The company made it immediately clear they would refuse to release that track. I then decided to quit. Though they had offered me full freedom of creativity (which was one of the reasons I had decided to join them) they just proved the opposite.”
Kazz then released the live album in his own right. Left without a booking agency it meant he had it to do it all by himself again. He played more living room concerts before he started working on a project Monologue Interieure, which would occupy him between 2001 and 2003. It would become a massive 4CD set, released in January 2004.
“Originally I had thought of a 2CD. I wanted to record an album that should feature various incarnations of electronic music. It got a bit out of hand. It was a very inspirational period. As there was no record company looking over my shoulder, I was free to do what I wanted.”
In between Kazz had released another live album, which was a kind of revenge, as it was recorded on one night and featured mainly danceable tunes.
“It was just fun to do that one more time. The idea came from a lady percussionist I knew, Barbara Derksen, who played on one of the Monologue tracks. She invited me to do one show together. I edited down some of the longer tracks, wrote a few new tunes and there we went. The album was a limited edition, only available for those who were there.” This album, called Metropole Disease, has been reissued as a free downloadable album from this site in September 2012. Find it in the discography section.
Monologue Interieure had its live premiere on December 14 2003 at a place, one might consider an very unappropriate stage for an electronic music event, The Nix BBBluesclub in Enschede, The Netherlands. Electronic music in a bluesclub??? But it has its story.
“About a year earlier I was introduced to the club by a woman I knew. I knew only very little about blues music, but I was struck by the great atmosphere. I soon joined their monthly jamsessions and it was great fun to do. When my old band Eternal Flame reunited in 2003 for a couple of gigs one of the gigs just simply had to be there. When Monologue was finished I asked the guys at the club about the possibility of doing a one hour show, prior to a jamsession. I expected them to turn it down. But to my surprise they agreed.”
So Kazz did the short set, followed by the monthly jamsession, which would turn out very special.
“Somewhere during the jam a lady came on stage, asking us to play Gershwin’s Summertime. I fell in love on the spot.”
Over the next two years the two saw each other a lot.
“I started having the idea we were having a relationship but it wasn’t a mutual affair. I felt very disappointed. I had to leave her which was painful for both of us.”
Eventually this was the inspiration for Kazz to improvise a slowblues at the next jamsession, with a line which read: The day I met you was a good day for the blues.
“That day I sang my heart out on stage. From that moment I was able to express my feelings again, on stage or in a song.”
The rest in history. It was the beginning of the story of B.Loose.
In 2006 Kazz released a further instrumental CD called “Transformation: The Last Journey” where he tried to put down the experience of the huge fireworks explosion that struck his town in 2000.
The release of B.LOOSE did not mean the end to electronic activities. Kazz has released three albums since B.LOOSE.