Publication Date: Friday Dec 5, 1997

Trailblazers on an electronica highway

For more than a decade, the German industrial wizards of KMFDM have been marching to their own electronically-produced beat. Now, the rest of the music world is catching on. Whether you refer to it as industrial, dance, techno, house, rave, or electronica, one thing is clear: The type of groove-oriented synthesizer-based music that KMFDM has long specialized in is now big business. With the fairly recent and huge success of new industrial rockers Nine Inch Nails, as well as electronic darlings like Prodigy, Moby and the Chemical Brothers, all the major labels are rushing to sign bands to plug into a category that has often been tagged as "the next big thing."

During a recent telephone interview pumping the trio's Dec. 11 gig at The Edge in Palo Alto, KMFDM's En Esch carefully avoided talking too much about the coming of age of industrial and dance music. The fact that KMFDM is part of "the next big thing," En Esch says, is purely coincidental. He pointed out that KMFDM was trailblazing the electronica highway long before techno-oriented artists were making the covers of Rolling Stone and Spin magazines. That's their course and they'll stay on it, whether or not it's trendy.

"I don't want to be involved in any genre or cliche," vocalist and percussionist En Esch said. "We did similar stuff before it became hip. And we are going to do similar stuff after it's through being hip."

The Germanic acronym KMFDM stands for Kein Mehrheit Fur Die Mitleid, which roughly translated means "no pity for the majority." Ironically, KMFDM's music is in danger of being accepted by the majority. The band is clearly benefitting from the push and attention that electronica is currently receiving. Touring for the first time in two years, the band is now reaching a new--and slightly larger--audience.

"We are playing the same places, but now we are selling them out," said KMFDM's En Esch during a recent phone interview. "I would say half the crowd is kids; the other half is in their 20s. There's new people coming in all the time. It's going to be interesting for them to discover our back catalog."

There's certainly a wealth of KMFDM material for new converts to check out. En Esch estimates that the band has 36 releases, which includes nine full-lenth albums. KMFDM is currently touring in support of a recently-released work with an unpronounceable name. In typical "let's-do-it-our-own-way-and-the-hell-with-the-marketing-department" KMFDM fashion, the CD's title is just five symbols. There's a burst of light, a skull and crossbones, a bomb, a spiral and a clenched fist. And, in typical "let's-do-it-the-corporate-way-and-the-hell-with-the-band" major label fashion, TVT Records simply calls the work "KMFDM."

En Esch explains that the original title needs to be taken in context with the album cover, which shows a woman fiercely slapping a man. The symbols are placed just below the man's gaping mouth, like a bleeped expletive in a dialogue balloon in a cartoon.

"It's like a curse (word) out of a comic book," he said.

The band began the laborious process of recording the album in late 1996. The core members, En Esch, Sascha Konietzko and Gunter Schulz, along with various contributors, met in Seattle and over the next seven months and broke every instrumental part, every sound and every note into individual bytes, then systematically reassembled them like a giant electronic jigsaw puzzle.

"The rhythm, of course, is the first thing you start with," En Esch said. "Mostly the vocals are dubbed on the second level. So, the music has a little more direction (than the vocals)."

The process is computer science, and the result is a very diverse set of modern dance music. A song like "Torture" flirts with heavy-metal guitar riffs and low-fi Trent Reznor-style (of Nine Inch Nails) vocal delivery. "Leid Und Elend" relies on En Esch's German words and a repetitive dance beat that grows louder and more complex as the seconds go by. "Megalomaniac," the closest thing that the new album offers for a radio-friendly single, is full of throbbing beats and metal crunches that are pure power for the feet. But the music goes beyond just being flavorful fluff for the dance floor.

"It still has a lot of tradition on top of the electronics. We still try to erect a song," En Esch said. "We are song writers that use electronics."

What: KMFDM in concert; Rammstein opens

When: Thursday, Dec. 11; music starts at 9 p.m.

Where: The Edge, 260 California Ave., Palo Alto

How much: $12 in advance

Information: Call 324-EDGE 

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