SPEX Interview w/Strify (translated)

Strify, real name unknown, is a singer of German youth band Cinema Bizarre Room. These mixes Glamrock Quotes and melodic vocals with Japanese Visual-Kei looks and is therefore often confused with Tokio Hotel. As a representative of a generation, from childhood on was networking and quite naturally, says of himself that her self-confidence have found through Google, Strify talking here about the Auto-Tune effect, psychological terror in online communities and not the rest of humanity digitalisierbaren .



Photo: © Yves Borgwardt / Spex

Strify, you're twenty years old. What does it mean for you, a> digital native Without the Internet I would not be me, I would not Strify. Without the Internet today, I would not even singer of Cinema Bizarre, or even a band. I can say with certainty, because I still remember exactly what kind of a gray mouse I had before I started with about twelve years for the first time went into the Internet. I was a complete outsider, was very introverted, had few friends at school and found in the small town with 60,000 inhabitants, from where I live, which is otherwise no people with similar interests. I was infinitely bored that my classmates all looked the same, the same that all wore jackets and trousers. I looked around and saw nothing but a big Einheitsbrei. Nevertheless, I tried to adapt myself. Few successful: My nickname then was "Harry Potter". I looked really like Harry Potter!

In the internet you found a better look and new friends?
Exactly. My father was still a time, successfully defended against the internet, but when we finally got it made when it hit me immediately. On the Internet I noticed: I'm not alone! There are other people who are on it so like me! I learned from the Visual Kei scene, there was this androgynous, fantastievollen looks, in this scene be taken toll and then very quickly gained self-confidence. When I returned the summer back to school came, nobody saw me again.

The online world was therefore a strong feedback effect on your everyday life?
Absolutely! The Internet in this respect is of course a double-edged sword, it is clear to me: Internet-communities can also have the negative effect that this is totally closed to them. It then lives in his great online fantasy world, but in real life will be much more shy and unhappier than before. I have even seen the beginning: When I was a newcomer in the Internet, I went for a time, barely out the door, hung only in forums that had a thousand different Messengers subscribed and surfing through dozens of different communities - until I noticed that my online Friends, this type of communication effectively for the real life did. There was quite unpleasant situations, for example I got from people I never met had bitterly angry messages à la: "Why do not you flagging more? How can you do to me only? "I could only reply:" Can it still? I was only briefly on toilet! "

The extent to which Visual Kei was just important for you, that is, a particular dress code on communicating scene whose Aufstyle and make-up practice known as> Second Life without the Internet One must understand that from the Visual Kei Japanese culture is, so a culture that is much stricter than the European one. For children and young people in Japan, there are an unbelievable number of rules - how long the hair has to be how far the stockings over the knee to extend and so on. Everything is strictly regulated. That is why in Japan there is little room to act out individually. Visual Kei offers as a valve. People meet at the weekend, stylt completely to slip into a character into it, flees for a few hours. I have Visual Kei for me as an escape but never grasped. I myself never wanted to just briefly go into a character, but I wanted to be a separate character! And I then also in other German Visual Kei followers found: they go to school so that they style every day, for them, the look absolutely everyday.

Your band colleagues from Cinema Bizarre did you also know about the Internet?
Yes, it is also about the Visual-Kei community. First I met the guitarist of the band know, Yu. With him on the internet, I emailed back and forth already, before we then for the first time in a Visual-Kei-Convention met. There we learned then still Kiro also know, our current bass player. That was the initial spark for Cinema Bizarre. We stayed on e-mail contact, exchanged ideas, and studied with the aim of the band's founding through the Internet or on other members. Without the Internet would be our band that is actually never existed. If I had the guys not in this way to know, I would have after my first attempt rather unpleasant as a singer in the school band and choir probably never thought to become a musician. All members of Cinema Bizarre are, where they grew up, made a similar experience as me. We were all outsiders.

Today, says her quite deliberately Cinema Bizarre: We are not classic garage combo, we are an internet and Style-band, we make conclusions with the usual rock Authentizismen.
I think that is authentic, who is not adjusted, that is, who's not as sold something that he is not. Britney Spears in this respect is the authentic pop singer at all, because it does not do as she was a great artist. It is simply what it is: a performer. Point. This is totally> true <. We have never as a typical rock and roll band output. Why should we? We are not. Our first reference point was not music, but there were styles and looks. I have recently read an interesting quote from Jason Brandon from the Killers: He said that Nirvana and grunge in the early nineties, the whole fun out of the rock'n'roll disappeared. I would sign it. In the seventies and eighties, there were quite a number of artists and bands that are well defined on their look as about music - great people like David Bowie, Grace Jones and Adam Ant! In the nineties, but then came to Grunge, and as a musician who is now thinking about making his appearance, was considered vain and was therefore not authentic. How Cinema Bizarre but not! We want to create an overall picture - and I do not want to just play music, but also images in the minds of the people to send!

Therefore, a band name like Cinema Bizarre, so the reference to the cinema as a space in the picture and sound come together?
Exactly. We knew at the beginning is that we necessarily say> Bizarre Cinema Bizarre, "a lo-fi, trash and splatter-division of the seventies, until then we all do not know. We liked the concept but and for what he is - just because the cinema is the place where image and sound combine. We then turned the concept simply. > Cinema Bizarre <- that fit into a band who not only heard but also be seen.

If you say that the Internet has helped you, to find your identity, you observe the other way, that Cinema Bizarre on the Internet today, teenagers in search of self-help?
The three 13-year-old boys in New Zealand Cinema Bizarre after making me on the Internet are still not met. But in France has given me time a journalist says that the Internet is a band that we have as one of their biggest influences is called. And of course we have over the Internet much contact with our fans, we always say that they just want to be like us. If I were fans in this way can help to become self-confident and to find their way, then this is for me the greatest. Because that is so often forgotten: that we give children self-esteem needs. Today everything is so multimedial and global, one has to so many simultaneous access, which is a toll. However you can get but also very quickly feel very small, especially as a child - you know you do not remember which of a thousand identities, codes scenes and you really should decide. So I say to our fans again and again: It's great when it's copied and pasted so you stylt like us - but it is just okay, if you own something ausdenkt and simply does what you feel like you.

How to explain you the confidence that your fans pay to you online? After all, they speak essentially with art figures: Your sign all crafted pseudonyms, your middle name and your home are not known, and otherwise we know next to nothing about you or your private life.
Everyone has things that he would rather keep for themselves. Not everyone needs to know everything about me, and not everyone needs to know my entire family. In a normal job you want not even that all my colleagues every detail about a know - and yet you trust each other. It is a kind of self - perhaps even from that experience which I have described: that online reality very quickly otherwise übergriffig may be that someday we thus no longer can go to the loo, without logging off. No matter how much we give of our private lives: We are not a fake. We are what we show. This is what we show is what we want to show. That we are looking for exactly. And we have plenty to tell - about our trips, concerts, on meeting with fans. That is why we remain interesting. We are constantly in contact with our online community, I support a Facebook fan page and our MySpace page, and we now also use Twitter.

The title of your new album, "Toyz," reads well, as he was taken directly to a Tweet.
Yes, the big> Z
For example, he writes on his own unique way, "rawk" instead of "rock".
Exactly. Or he replaces each> J Y <- that he has taken over from the Japanese, because you> Y J <. He hears a lot of Japanese music, someday, he then transferred his slang. It has almost a little bit of a cool secret language. A separate Internet secret language to allow the search engine also makes a little bit harder. Somewhere Yu then> Toys Z Toyz <. This was also visually very good.

Apart from the fact that you've met on the Internet, Cinema Bizarre is also a fully band in the sense that all your products - music, videos, photos - offensively are digitally processed. Photoshop, Sampling, Auto-Tune, etc. Use it for your texts even translation tools?
No, that would be great if I write lyrics in German and they could then only in the translation from Google paste mask should. From translation tools but for now I think nothing. The English cover version of real "Do you weep" on our new album is not as incurred. Poetic language is entirely in digital translations lost. Otherwise, it is true but of course we are fully digital, our aesthetic is very different from computers. That has to do with the times now that we all grew up with digital tools are. Our toys were digital, today is my favorite toy my MacBook. From technology and their ability to be surrounded, for us is completely natural. Recently I read an interview with Dave Gahan, who was again reminded that electronic music in the early days of Depeche Mode still not as> real
Are there language translations, apart from something that is also not digitalisierbar?
Of course, this is the man! Personality. Feelings. Machines are the people can never fully replace - I think at least. People are much too complicated knitted, they think illogical to have mood swings are sometimes totally unpredictable, even if it should succeed once, something like an artificial intelligence to create, could not think and feel like people do. This is the analog core of the whole. That is why in times like these even concerts again is so important: the concerts are the moments in which real people on stage, they are the basic essence of the music business that are not digitally can be calculated. Therefore, we are constantly on the plane and even more in the bus on the way to the next concert.

Annoying and sometimes it does not have its own biomass constantly hoist to transport, only to anywhere in the world to prove that behind the whole performance computing incarnate man is? Would not you sometimes like a digital duplicate losschicken and even stay at home?
Until now, travel for me is a pure joy. To me six years ago someone had said that I have with twenty almost the entire world have seen, then I would have never believed. I can not really complain. We fly for the first time to New York, our concert there in the High Line Ballroom is sold out, and the people bawl with all of our songs - that is what I want to do! That's why I make pop music!

How do you find it, your voice as a singer with overexcited Auto-Tune effect to hear?
Auto-Tune for me is twofold - firstly, a natural extension of my vocal range, so a new, interesting timbre, the other a reflection of digitality built. There are songs in which Auto-Tune would be the most dreadful, what we could do to them, and there are songs, which makes the effect for the decisive kick. The latter is the case with some "Toyz," the title track of our new album. That was from the outset a very electronic number, in principle, it is a digitized children's song. Here, the Auto-Tune effect for one Extraquäntchen character.

And how do you assess the effect on other musicians?
I found "808s & Heartbreak" toll, the last album from Kanye West. However, using the Auto-Tune effect on album length appreciably, it is also somewhat exhausting. Another successful example is the song "Hide and Seek" by Imogen Heap. He is an a cappella singing, without instruments, the song consists only of voice and Auto-Tune effects. A true statement of our time. Why should not his creativity in this way can run free?

Many take the Auto-Tune effect is still not true as an aesthetic decision, but as a license to bungler.
Yes, people think that we can today with Auto-Tune is everyone in the studio are! And of course: This plug-in allows even people presentable to sound, which otherwise do not meet single tone. But what we never will be automatically achieved - and what do not ever plug-in will create - is the audience emotions trigger. Emotion and passion in his voice, those are things that no digital tool can reproduce. These traces of humanity, these traces of personality are exactly what the people in a most touching song - and why it not only once, but always want to hear.