Interview with Manfred Thomaser from Arsine Tibé
ARSINE TIBÉ is a music project of Manfred Thomaser (!DISTAIN, THE INDEPENDENT SEASONS). We had chitchat before the actual conversation and we talked about music, art, cats and when I asked him about his story he said: “…it is not the easiest thing to talk about myself. I let the music speak, and I know this may sound like a cliché. If you want to know how I feel about society for example my lyrics may be best to read.” About art, music and being yourself with Manfred Thomaser…
Reflections of Darkness [RoD]: When you go for a walk, read a book, walk in the forest, dance, or talk to a beautiful person - do you hear the music?
Manfred: Music is always there but how much of it depends on the situation I am in. What I am concentrating on brings some music and ideas to me or not. Most of the times I go for a walk for example I take my music-player with me. So, music is all around but not in the way that I am composing. It is just listening and getting rid of the urban noise. I am not listening to music when I am reading, but it can happen that a melody comes up while reading so that I put the book aside to concentrate on the melody.
RoD: And I’m asking this for a reason cause your music seems to be the conglomerate of fantastic sensitivity but also great beat. When an artist combines energy and delicacy, I always wonder why s/he decided to do it. What’s your recipe for a good song?
Manfred: When it comes to start working on a new song, I think there is no recipe at all. This means, composing is a process I can’t really influence. Melodies come and go. Then the arrangement takes place. This is a process I can put a lot of influence into like making decisions about the length of the intro for example. One thing I do love about so many FRONT LINE ASSEMBLY songs is the way they walk into their songs. An intro of two minutes is no rarity. I really like this a lot. In the end I am not the kind of musician who is able to compose one hit after the other by following concrete directions. A lot happens due to intuition and by chance, too.
RoD: We talked about it before, but could we recap briefly - what’s your musical background? I know you worked with Eric Burton before… you say CATASTROPHE BALLET is your early experience, but I clearly remember the act… somehow… do you think an artist needs to be sensitive or strong? Ready for kicks or rather focused on his/her art?
Manfred: I grew up with New Wave and Pop but was also into Punk and Metal or EBM and Industrial. The first music group I joined was a typical band at school playing rock and pop music including blues elements. It was different from the music I heard but we liked what we did and I was the singer. Later on, Eric and I became friends and members of another Pop and Rock band at another school. We left that band as far as I remember to form CATASTROPHE BALLET. Eric did the lead vocals; I played the guitar. To me a musician needs a lot of sensitivity when it comes to composing and arranging songs. When it comes to who is to decide within the band everyone should be able to act like a team-player. Democracy is very important. If there are no team-players around an artist needs to be strong. I do regard myself as a team-player and some kind of internal manager who is focused on art. Sometimes not everyone likes that.
RoD: About !DISTAIN experience - how would you summarize it?
Manfred: The band was formed in 1992 and I became an official member in 2003 but had already begun composing with Alex Braun the year before. We released five studio long-players since then, had several independent chart hits in Germany and opened up for AND ONE during their complete “The S.T.O.P. Fulltimeshow” in 2012.
RoD: I notice you are wearing glasses on stage… very rare… I assume you’re not a vain person. How do you perceive physical beauty?
Manfred: Maybe my friends should make comments whether I am a vain person or not. What I can say is: I do not like contacts for my eyes. Never tried them. So, wearing glasses on stage is really, really helpful. Up to this I have never spent hours in front of a mirror to get aware of my looks or to work on them. Beauty comes from within.
RoD: What first brought you to music? You started ARSINE TIBÉ in 2006… it’s quite a while ago… how do you feel about your project? As you were kind enough in our conversation to share the songs you started with remixes - DAS ICH ‘Gottes Tod (Reincarnation Mix by Arsine Tibé)’ and SARA NOXX ‘If You (I Don’t Care Mix by Arsine Tibé)’.
Manfred: I guess it was listening to the radio and watching musicians playing their songs on TV. At school I played the flute, later on I got an acoustic guitar as a gift from my grandparents. My talent to play an instrument is limited. It feels much easier to sing. But when I compose, I hear the (guitar) melodies in my head and try to play / program them. ARSINE TIBÉ is very important to me. This project does not have to care about compromise. ARSINE TIBÉ can do his dark version of Lounge Noire or play some Ambient, New Wave and a few Jazz elements or pure Pop music. It is something I do not have to justify myself for.
RoD: ARSINE TIBÉ appeared in 2006 officially with two remixes done for a compilation of the US label “Synthphony Records”…
Manfred: 2006 is the official year I gave birth to ARSINE TIBÉ. But by then I had already finished my first solo-album which I released as a bonus disc of ‘Synthphony REMIXed: Vol. 8’ in 2008. So, yes, the New York based Synthphony Records opened all doors to let ARSINE TIBÉ taking place in the outside world. Remixes are hard to find. So, I included them here...
RoD: I know CATASTROPHE BALLET and Eric Burton, too so you are actually quite experienced but you also changed the projects quite often. Why? Are you this independent or need change?
Manfred: There has never been the impression of changing the projects quite often. The first band ended up after we left school and headed into different directions. About CATASTROPHE BALLET: I was kicked out of the band after about three years and before they recorded their first vinyl album. They were looking for a guitar player who did fit more into the Gothic style of those days, and someone who could play the guitar better... but that changed the band’s sound and style too, of course. The next project was with Stefan Lamberts and called IT'S JUST ME. We changed the name into THEDISORDER later on after CATASTROPHE BALLET’s keyboardist Dieter Schultheis had left the group to join us. Mathias and Sabine Wien became band members after the first album had been released. We split around the middle of the 1990s as we were all heading into different directions.
RoD: Does it often happen with the projects to split quite quickly? Why does that happen in your view?
Manfred: Maybe bands are comparable to couples / relationships. People come together, do know or do not know each other very well and co-operate / live together as long as possible. A lot of relationships end due to the ego and a loss of respect. If a band member thinks being better than the other ones... no chance to survive.
RoD: And with Eric? What was the relationship like?
Manfred: We were close friends, I guess. We spent a lot of time together talking about music, listening to music, and making plans. Like said before I was fired later on. More than ten years moved on before we talked again - as far as I remember. We speak from time to time these days. But as the band had meant a lot to me it was a tough time go on without CATASTROPHE BALLET. I had written a lot of the music and melodies during those three years but everyone had her / his input. Eric and I wrote the lyrics... maybe 50% / 50%.
RoD: And now? How do you feel now about yourself as a musician? Because your music is fantastic… ARSINE TIBÉ is cool - energetic, intelligent, energetic but also melancholic. Is it you in this music? Reflected in the sounds? It sounds club-like but also personal and I love it.
Manfred: Thanks a lot! This is a difficult question to answer. I am glad that the only person who needs to like my music is me. The music is a mirror of course. Yes, there is a lot of me inside. But it will be you to describe it and I am glad that you like the songs that much. What I can tell you is that composing means being free at all. [and then I have all look at the original CB line-up and the artwork of a tape the band released.]
RoD: Like I said as the very beginning your music is very delicate, fragile, but also dancy. Do you like dancing yourself? And what is the effect that you want to reach with your listeners? You want to make them relax, forget about the reality (because that’s also the quality of your music - the trance it introduces), release energy or any other?
Manfred: I do not regard myself being a dancer. What I do on stage... not sure if you could call that dancing. If the listeners take their time to listen that is all I can ask for. One example: it took me about ten years to get into the complete ‘Black And White’ album the stranglers released in 1978. It is so different and difficult to understand. I can’t expect that from anyone listening to ARSINE TIBÉ. But this may explain my own background. It would be great to see people listening to my music and asking themselves about their own lives. Like: am I happy, what needs to be changed... some of the basic questions some of us do not ask because they hurry from meeting to meeting, from party to party etc.
RoD: You also sent me some old songs of yours… I have a feeling you used to employ the vocal line more often than you do now. What is the reason?
Manfred: I am a freelancer / journalist and I am surrounded by people talking when I am working for my clients. Doing more and more instrumental music is a reaction to that. Up to this instrumental music gives more freedom to leave the typical arrangements of Pop music behind.
RoD: Tell me about how your music actually comes to being? Is it the idea, bum and you sit and write it down or rather it takes long hours of analysis and re-work to create a good piece?
Manfred: Both of it can happen. Sometimes melodies appear in my mind so that it is best if I am close to the studio. Sometimes I start the computer and experiment with sounds and ideas coming up later on. There has never been a manual for composing songs in my life. I had a few guitar lessons, and a few vocal lessons. That’s it. What needs hours or days is to arrange and produce and to re-arrange and to produce anew of course. You may know how a song is to sound but you may have no idea how to get there. ‘Universe I – III’ is an example for this. It still does not sound the way I wanted it to but I had to accept that I could not get any closer than with the version I released this year on ‘(previously unreleased) archive songs II’.
RoD: Tell me more about your new release. You’re definitely proud of it (and you should be, because it’s great). Tell me about the inspiration, cooperation (if any) and the production process?
Manfred: Composing has nothing to do with making myself proud. I never felt being proud of anything I ever did. Music is taking place on a level which does not flatter the ego. And that is the place to go to. Due to Covid-19 I had no offer from my clients for 3 1/2 months in spring / summer 2020. So, no income but a lot of time. I opened my archive as the time felt right doing it. The songs I found had not been forgotten but not been released, too. Finding the time gave me the opportunity to collect, re-open and finish some of those archive songs. I started working on ‘Aerial’ in 2004 for example. Many years later on Aidan Casserly wrote lyrics to it and recorded the vocals. I returned to the song during spring 2020 and finished it. More or less the same happened to ‘We Are Tomorrow’. So, it took years to produce all those songs, and they did not seem to fit to any album I released while I was working on them. The inspiration comes from music, literature, life in general, the way we live...
RoD: You were also kind enough to share with me your recent productions - ‘The Independent Seasons’ - ‘The Visitor’ - it has a tint of Gothic Rock to it, but also a lot of synths and electronics. And that makes me think… what are your musical inspirations in general? Does it change with time or you are rather stable in your musical taste?
Manfred: I composed ‘The Visitor’ shortly after I had finished my third ‘The Independent Seasons’ album which is to be released in 2021. The song comes up with an influence from that album as well as it has been influenced by JOY DIVISION and NEW ORDER because I read John Savage’s book about JOY DIVISION during that period. So, maybe ‘The Visitor’ has the dark Punk Rock spirit of JOY DIVIsion and the electronics of NEW ORDER combined with my own ideas? I did not listen to JOY DIVISION or NEW ORDER more often than I normally do while I was reading the book. It happened due to reading. My musical taste is stable. THE STRANGLERS and FRANKIE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD are my all-time favourite bands. Kraftwerk, THE CURE, A-HA, PET SHOP BOYS, DEPECHE MODE, KILLING JOKE, BILLY IDOL, FIELDS OF THE NEPHILIM, THIEVERY CORPORATION, PRINCE, IRON MAIDEN, SKINNY PUPPY, FRONT LINE ASSEMBLY... bands I discovered lately or a few years ago: FRENCH FOR RABBITS, KHRUANGBIN, ALTIN GÜN...
RoD: You were also involved in remixing - like ‘People Theatre’ - it’s a very beautiful, heart-touching song. There are so many approaches within artists while remixing somebody’s song - what’s yours?
Manfred: The idea of remixing is to come up with an alternative but without destroying the heart and soul of the original version.
RoD: What makes an artist in your view? What is the difference between an artist and a craftsman?
Manfred: We should be careful when it comes to comparison. Everyone can be creative in a way no one else can.
RoD: What are you planning to do next?
Manfred: The third ‘The Independent Seasons’ album is the next one to be released. I am thinking about a third part of ARSINE TIBÉ’s archive recordings and may come up with some music for meditation. I already started that project but have not decided in which way to release it. I am also working on a new project with a friend of mine. But nothing else to say about it actually. In 2021 ELEKTROSTAUB will release the second album. It includes three songs feat. !DISTAIN on vocals.
RoD: Thank you very much!
Pictures by Barbara Anders
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