Northern Lite - November 2006

Interview with

Andreas Kubat (vocals) and Sebastian Bohn (co-producer) of NORTHERN LITE

2006 was probably the most successful year for German Electro-Pop act NORTHERN LITE  and definitely a very busy one. Their first half of 2006 was earmarked by the two successful 12” singles “Something” and “Cocaine” – the video clip for the latter even got some airplay on MTV – plus a lot of touring and the re-release of their older albums “Temper” and “Reach The Sun” as a midprice double-package. The second half, to precise September, was dominated by the release of the brand-new album “Unisex”, their third album in just three years(!) and preceded by the very successful single “What You Want”, which was in contrast to the first two singles also available in CD format for the Pop market.

After several festival gigs in the summer, the release of a new album of course meant even more touring, so the Erfurt-based NORTHERN LITE hit the road for a full European headlining tour. A very busy band indeed, but to add even more activity there were also DJ sets, remixes for other artists, a live concert available on iTunes and the sixth volume of the Neo.Pop series which was compiled by the guys of NORTHERN LITE. Good that NORTHERN LITE’s Andreas Kubat  and Sebastian Bohn aka DJ Boon had some time to talk with us about their music, gigs, their own roots and the affair of the Techno/Dance disciples with “our” scene, as they also have a lot of fans among the dark community…
http://www.northernlite.de/ / http://www.myspace.com/northernlite 



First of all, hello and thank you for taking some time for us. It seems like you have a very busy schedule!
Yeah, that’s true. In general there are many activities on various levels, but right now we have some time off before tonight’s show. The sound check has been done so we have some time to relax and talk.

Tonight’s gig is at some sort of Techno/Dance venue and there a re a few DJs on the schedule as well. Most of our readers will know your songs from Goth/Electro clubs or they saw your performance at festivals like M’era Luna or the Wave Gotik Treffen in Leipzig. It’s pretty striking that NORTHERN LITE works within quite diverse contexts and scenes.
That’s true, and it’s something we are very very happy about! After all our influences are pretty diverse anyway and this somehow reflects in our music. Andreas has a background as a Hip hop producer before NORTHERN LITE came together, and Sebastian has been a DJ in the Dance scene with quite some success. But these are not the only roots of ours. We like Rock a lot, to be honest that’s the kind of music I listen most at home. I love QUEENS OF THE STONEAGE, for example. Or TV ON THE RADIO and EAGLES OF DEATH METAL.
Well, we hoped to be scheduled for a later time, not really in the evening but a little later in the afternoon as we already have a certain reputation and we already did the Wave Gotik Treffen and got a great response. But we don’t complain, I guess the promoters wanted to try out things and perhaps we get a better spot at the M’era Luna in the future, after this year’s gig went down pretty good too. It was rather odd to perform in sunlight, though. I actually don’t like that too much; I prefer gigs in the dark, preferably in clubs. But you have to grab your chance when you are offered one, and on festivals you can introduce new people to your music.

Obviously you got a very good response at the M’era Luna, sunlight or not. Probably the audience liked your gig better than you yourself.
Good to hear! And we weren’t really unhappy with the M’era Luna show; we were just not used to this kind of situation. It was a good start and we hope to be on the bill of this or similar festivals.

Is the Gothic scene something totally new for you or do you have some roots in this scene too? Some elements in your music do appeal to this kind of people, and I know that the part of Germany where you come from has a rather strong EBM/Electro community.
Actually we don’t know much about this scene. Of course we listened to stuff like FRONT242 back in the day, as that was the state of the art of electronic music when they became big. But all in all, this scene, however you wanna call it, is a whole new world to us. People from this “dark” scene have given us a very warm welcome, and it was interesting to see the peers of this music genre performing when we were at this kind of festivals. Not everything is our cup of tea from this scene, and we found a few performances pretty awful to be completely honest. Maybe some bands rather focus on clichés instead of the music itself, and that’s why they are relatively successful. But there were also a lot of very good bands who do great stuff. Astonishingly they are often those who are not at the top of the line-up but rather the ones who perform early in the afternoon. Anyway, something like the M’era Luna is pretty manifold; it’s not just one scene. And the audience seems to be pretty open-minded; they enjoy electronic acts as well as guitar bands and the odd bagpipe as well. That’s good!



You are also gaining more and more ground in the Pop market, or mainstream or however you wanna call it. The videos for your last two singles “What You Want” and “I Don’t Remember” got quite some airplay on MTV Germany, and I guess on other music channels too.
Really? We knew that we got some airplay there but we don’t know often. We only know that our videos got played, not how many times and at what time of the day.

Well, the vids were mostly played in the evening as the day hours are still exclusive for all the crap they show (everyone laughs) but in the evening, yes, many times!
Glad to hear that! The visual side was always very important to us; that’s why we started doing videos for our singles pretty early.

But that must be damned expensive!?
Yes and no. We are not doing high-budget videos; we rather rely on good ideas. There’s a guy called Eric who is responsible for the visual side of NORTHERN LITE. He’s a good friend, and he is responsible for all our record sleeves, the visuals we use on stage and for the video clips for our singles too. His career proceeded parallel to our musical career, and he founded his own agency for graphics and media design called “18Oktober”. His agency is going strong, and the videos for our songs are more or less a fun thing for him. This allows us to deliver great clips without spending a fortune. Of course that doesn’t mean that you will automatically get airplay! There are so many great bands who never ever get played on MTV, or VIVA. It’s more about your contacts, to get to know people who are in charge for programmes. If there’s an editor who really likes your music it obviously helps your chances to get airplay.

Did the fact that you’re now releasing on a major label help in this matter?
It probably did help a bit, as the people at ‘Universal’ have good contacts to the media people. But we aren’t exactly signed to ‘Universal’, we are still releasing on our very own label ‘1^st Decade Records’ and licence our stuff to ‘Universal’. So it’s not a sub-label of the major or something, and we are still in control over everything that affects our releases. Pretty complicated contractual und juridical stuff, but ‘Universal’ is just the licensee and for us that’s the perfect way to work.

Does working with a major make it easier to make a living out of music? I guess it’s a lot harder to make money with music than say 10 or 15 years ago.
Yes, it would have been easier but there’s no complaining on our side that we didn’t start earlier. When we began to release records the music biz was already in decline because of internet piracy. So we are used to it from the start! And every band has to struggle with it, so there is no distortion of competition. It’s “only” the decline of CD sales in general, and every musician has to suffer from that. We cannot make our livings from CD sales alone. That we are working together with a major doesn’t affect this too much. It’s playing live that allows us to concentrate on music exclusively instead of doing day jobs to pay the rent and making music only as a hobby or a side job at best. But we’re in the happy situation that so far each album sold more copies than the one before, but I think that has more to do with the fact that more and more people know and like our music. And playing live has always been important to us, anyway. That’s what we really love to do. And very often it’s the case that we’re doing our own label on weekdays and doing gigs at the weekends. Apparently not right now, as we’re on a fully fledged headlining tour with shows every day. But very often that’s the way we work.

Apart from internet piracy – is there any good effect of the internet for you as musicians?
Sure! The internet makes it much easier to turn people’s attention to your music. Of course you have to make good music in the first place. (laughs) You know, there’s stuff like Myspace which is good for networking. Our own website http://www.northernlite.de/ is very important too. And we have our videos on stuff like Youtube, which helps a lot too. The internet makes it easier to reach people simply by word of mouth. You just have to do your own thing and work your way. And we also use the internet as a distribution channel and offer our stuff at iTunes etc. Simply a must these days.

So, back to your live shows. As we already said you are playing gigs in very different scenes and at very different events, from Techno raves to Rock clubs to Goth festivals or whatever. Do you customise your setlists, the songs you play, to the kind of event or the kind of audience which is to be expected?
Not really. We are what we are and we just hope that people will like it. So even if it’s a Dance event we still play those tracks which are not danceable, our ballads. Take tonight for example, it’s a club with a high-profile in the House community, and there are DJs playing House before and after us. But we are going to do a full 90-minute set with all the different songs, not just the tracks which are danceable. We want to show all aspects of our work, and people are open-minded enough to enjoy that. Hopefully.

Your music got much rockier edge to it since you introduced guitars to it. On this tour you have even two guitarists on stage. Do the old fans follow your route?
You have always people who are not happy with changes. I guess any band knows this phenomenon. Sometimes to the extent that it’s funny. You know, there was one guy who was complaining that we didn’t rock at a particular gig. Keep in mind he was complaining about our guitars – but we didn’t rock in his opinion. (laughs) Later we found some clips from exactly that gig on Youtube and it was quite clear from those clips that the whole place freaked out and was full of energy. We found that pretty funny.

Thank you very much for your time and good luck for 2007!
You’re welcome, and thank you too!



Interview in German (by Jörg Uhlenbruch and Daniela Vorndran) and translated into English.
Pictures by Daniela Vorndran (www.black-cat-net.de)
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