MDC Interview#63 " Istari Lasterfahrer "

born in munich, raised in formely west berlin and finalised in hamburg in the late 80ies istari lasterfahrer started his high grade digital music career with low end 80ies computer hardware. been using harddisk recordings in early 90ies where everybody was using still midi equipment he got pissed by that because of lack of storage space and switched to soundtracker files. he throwed some loosy but nice jungle partys in hamburg around the years 94/95 and started at that time dropping his tunes into bbs systems and the early internet, got big respect world wide in the early internet community and joined one of the first high profiled web labels commie. his first live performance was a hell of a rush of early harsh jungle riddims released on a party together with steve buck and vincenzo at hamburgs number one venue rote flora which still definies whats up front and true to the scene. istari lasterfahrer released uncountable tunes and releases on high profiled underground labels such as complication#27, stoopid plastics, cavage, dhyana records, pck, sprengstoff, mental ind., watch and pray, mash records, cobretti, bruchstellen, marasm, agriculture, klangbad, komod.o dragon records, soniq and his own imprint sozialistischer plattenbau. istaris energetic live performances and whack dj sets have captivated audiences and artists worldwide with their innovative sound, a mixture of everything mixed with his up to date soundbwoy dub technics and the useally kaoss pad gimmicks everybody does these days. his self produced videos and movies has been shown world wide on different festivals such as dark matter in canada and the flensburger kurzfilmtage in schleswig holstein and are sometimes a mindblowing part of his live performance which fills the gap between visuall aestetics and shitty sounding soundsystems. he also killed three times bass speakers with his enormous high kinetic square subwave breaks on raves. istari also played at highly acclaimed festivals he cannot remember anymore because of the ultra intense aftershow partys after it. istari lasterfahrer reminds us all that digital music can make you fall apart of the mystery of your own soul…

http://istari.sozialistischer-plattenbau.org/

Q. Where are you from? What kind of environment did you grow up in?

I grow up in west berlin till i was like 13 years old. then in hamburg where i still live. remembering berlin in the 80ies it was much of grey houses and dirt. bullet holes on buildings and abdone houses in the backyard. and we where still surrounded by the wall seperating us to east germany. i think it affected me but i don#t know in which way.

Q. Your mother played the piano, correct? Was she a musician? What kind of music did you learn from her?

My mother just played piano for fun and at home. she hated it to play in front of audience. beside of erik satie she also played frank zappas absolutly free. but i heared the original record version years later. my parents had a lot of different music. like frank zappa, stones, the beatles, the who but also jazz and german agit prop like the band called ton steine scherben but also 80ies new wave and postpunk. i learned from her to play chords. i think i learned more from her in other fields like cooking or repairing stuff. she was a crafted stailor.

Q. What are your musical roots? What kind of music were you into?

i am in a lot of music. first of all the collection of my parents. i think everyone is influenced by the music their parents listen to. in a good or bad influence. meaning positiv or negativ. later i listen a lot to punk and hardcore punk, loved something that was called jazzcore. that kind of music with a lot of changes in it. weird stuff. i was not so much into techno in the 90ies, even me and friends liked to listen to the 80ies acid house stuff for fun. like we liked to listen to kraftwerk, heaven 17 or grandmaster flash electro boogie music. this futuristic electronic music with a groove. later on in the 90ies i discovered jungle and dub music. the riot beats compilation was the first jungle record i heared. there i found again the kind of complexity and weirdness. and in dub i found, because i did lot of home taping 4 track music late 80ies and early 90ies, what you can do with limited gear and just a digital delay unit. to raise complexity with removing things, opening space and ghost notes.

Q. What are your musical roots? What kind of music were you into?

i am in a lot of music. first of all the collection of my parents. i think everyone is influenced by the music their parents listen to. in a good or bad influence. meaning positiv or negativ. later i listen a lot to punk and hardcore punk, loved something that was called jazzcore. that kind of music with a lot of changes in it. weird stuff. i was not so much into techno in the 90ies, even me and friends liked to listen to the 80ies acid house stuff for fun. like we liked to listen to kraftwerk, heaven 17 or grandmaster flash electro boogie music. this futuristic electronic music with a groove. later on in the 90ies i discovered jungle and dub music. the riot beats compilation was the first jungle record i heared. there i found again the kind of complexity and weirdness. and in dub i found, because i did lot of home taping 4 track music late 80ies and early 90ies, what you can do with limited gear and just a digital delay unit. to raise complexity with removing things, opening space and ghost notes.

Q. I believe your music has a large "DUB" component. Who is your favorite DUB Producer/Engineer/Label?

First encounter with Dub was on a recording vacation i did with friends, something like maybe 1992 or something around. A friend brought some tapes with dub. He also dubed me a tape compilation with his favorites. Later i discovered in hamburgs fine recordshop called 'unter dem durchschnitt“ a lot more. First mention Neil Stephen Fraser and Hopeton Brown which are these i recognized in the first place and had a big impact, also Jah Shaka, Crucial Bunny, Gussie P, King Jammy, Sly and Robbie and of course King Tubby and his posse. But there are more to discover.

Q. What is the DUB scene like in Germany? I want you to tell us about the German DUB scenefrom your point of view.

Well i don't know. In hamburg we allways had a quite alive dub and dancehall scene. People like pensi, i-livity and other soundsystems. I allways liked to their sounds when they play. But i would say i am not really deep into the dub scene.

Q. When did you first learn about Rave music/culture? What did you get from Rave music/culture?

First time in the 80ies, acid music was the first touch, later came techno but i was not into that at the time it was high in the 90ies. I dropped like directly into jungle and something that was called triphop. Visit the one or other night a gabba party in hamburg. But i was not attached to something like a culture. But friends and me throw some party and played there jungle and tiphop.

Q. When did you start your music career?

i started doing recodings with a friend, in the beginning with two tape recorders doing overdubs by playing a recoding on one device and then recording that and more sounds with the other one. Like pingpong recordings. That was in 1986. Two years later me was given a 4 track tascam recorder. We build own instruments but also used what we could achive at shops or fleamarkets. That was a kind of band projects. Me and three to five friends.

At the same time i started doing music on a macintosh computer with a programm called super sound session. 6 tracks with notation sequencing, but you had to use the samples of instruments the company put with the programm. In 1991 i buyed a second hand sampling device for the macintosh and did some collages in a programm called sound edit, later sound edit 16 (for 16bit sampling). This was basicly just a sample editor with effects you could render into the samples. Cut and Arrange without any time signature. But this was lots of fun. Using selfrecorded sources. Just a year after a friend of mine who was into amiga computer told me about the soundtracker programms. So i found one for the macintosh called playerpro. I buyed it by mailorder, the program came by cd. I was into bbs systems at that time. So uploading mod tracker files was then the thing. Years later, at the end of the 90ies, i switched to a hardware sampler and cubase.

Q. When did Istari Lasterfahrer start? What is the origin of this name?

In 1994 or something i released a self copied tape in small amounts with the name istari and also the soundtracker files spread in early internet and bbs and amiga network had the name istari. The lasterfahrer came later. Actually it was just the title for my first 7inch i pressed. But then became istari lasterfahrer for some reason.

On one hand istari was like in rastafari the i and i but i star i. On the other hand its from the lord of the rings.

Q. Istari Lasterfahrer is recognized as a Breakcore artist. Do you consider yourself a Breakcore artist? What defines Breakcore for you?

Yes and no, some parts yes and other music not really, actually i wanted to to jungle or drum and bass and was not good in it, or maybe just weird. I did not know about that term till like 2000 or 2001. Breakcore is like a cake nobody knows the recipe for and tastes different to each one.

Q. Can you tell me how Sozialistischer Plattenbau got started? Why did you start your own label?

I did the first two 7inches after being tired of just tapes or home burned cds. I did because i don#t wanted to discuss with others in a form of something that is more like a bussines what i wanted to do and release.

I did some other side label things but these do not really operate. One is called Immer am bedarf vorbei, which means always missing the need. One is called wir rufen zurück, which means we call you back, together with felix kubin. But this is for our demo dandie project, not music by us but from other people. Stuff that needs to be gathered out of basements and dusty shelfs to the bright light. Only on tape. We did some dj happenings where the audience brings us their demo tapes and we play them at that night. Later we did tape compilations of the tracks we recived. A collection of the best we light. Doing a kind of snapshot of the local scene. We did this in hamburg, halle, berlin and luxemburg. We would like to go to belgium, paris, london and japanese too. But still waiting for invitments. Other labels are invisible and hiding in shadows.

Q. What kind of people and scenes supported the early (1999-2001) Istari Lasterfahrer/Sozialistischer Plattenbau records? Which early records do you particularly cherish?

When i think back to this time i have to point out joel amaretto and caro from koolpop, boris from cavage, broklynbeats crew, death$ucker with parasite. And of course the whole fake core crew from leipzig and erea like alphacut, phantomnoise, stupid plastics, restroomrecords. And lfo demons sprengstoff records. Maybe i forgot someone.

Q. In the early to mid 2000's the Breakcore movement was happening in Europe. What is the situation in Germany? What was your feeling at the time?

It was small in my hood, i heared it was bigger in other parts of europe. But it did not happend that i was there when it was big. Basicly it feels like now. We had this club called pudel in hamburg where ralf and tim invited a lot of so called breakcore or glitch people to play on their notorious sunday nights called music for our children (mfoc). But also lots of idm stuff and other weird music.

Q. What is your view on the categorization of Raggacore? Can you tell me what you know about the history of this subgenre?

I would not call it subgenre really. I think it was describe a cerntain type of breakcore that moved ragga jungle a bit further into highspeed and distortion. As far as i remember it was used to describe things like speedhall or releases by snaresman and nomex with dj scud.

Q. Your music has a cynical humor and a rebellious spirit from PUNK. I feel it has been there since the beginning and is still there today.What attitude/thought do you put into your music making?

Sometimes i think i am punk but maybe i am just a slacker. It just happend that i do things how i do them. Sometimes it please me and sometimes not. I think i have not a good feeling for harmonic relastionships.

Q. What kind of equipment do you use to create your songs? What DAW, speakers, analog equipment, etc. do you use?

Any speaker is good as long you have a good relationship with it. Using some synth and effects, springtanks, digital delays, tape echos. I used trackers, then switched to cubase, got back to renoise tracker, tryed out ableton but don't like it. Still on cubase, if you quick in one application its hard to learn a new one.

Q. About Sozialistischer Plattenbau's Dubcore series. What is the theme of this series? Which releases have particularly impressed you?

The idea was to release upfront material that is somewhere inbetween hardcore, jungle and dubscience. I am impressed by any of the one i released, else i would not. Sometimes i was like: hm is this still in the idea of dubcore or something else. But i think they all are. Even i can really make up hard or soft rules what that may be: dubcore.

Q. How do you feel about the modern Jungle revival? Which artists and labels resonate with you? Do you think Jungle has established itself in the dance music scene?

I think it allready did. Somewhere for the headz and also everybody enjoying it. I appreciate a lot of the reissue stuff from the 90ies that are coming back at the moment. I feel a lot resonate with LXCs alphacut label, but he is busy since ever keeping the jungle science alive. There are maybe a lot to mention but Lickshot, 3am ethernal, myor, cat in the bag, vibez 93, spandangle, lost city archives...

Q. I like your DUB releases very much. What is your DUB philosophy? And what do you think is the definition of DUB, excluding the effects part such as reverb and duray?

First og all it has something to do with by removing things and opening space. This way much can happen. I like just music with drums and bass, there was this jazzcore band called SABOT, i really like. So just having a bass doing a melody and percussive patterns going on is the other hand. Effects are there to drive all of this out of this world. I like when the effects turn in dramaticly, with something like a gentle anger, kicking you out and shifting sounds in a time axis of repeating tantras of sonical ghosts.

Q. I would also like to know about the equipment you use for your DUB tracks.

Mostly the same as for other music too. I have a couple of different spring reverbs, my old DE1400 digital delay, Ibanez HD1000 harmonizer, Beni Dub Delay and that old japanese Stage Echo from Korg. Sometimes a Vocoder. And more important a box full of percussion instruments and a melodica.

Q. You have been releasing records for over 20 years. Why do you stick to records? What are your thoughts on streaming services?

You know what, i was releasing music over internet since like 1993 or something, late 90ies on i was part of one of early weblabels called commie, with people from suomi and other parts in the world. You should find out about the dogma00 manifesto. But anyway releasing on internet feeld and still feels detached from the world in some ways. Limitations are allways good, having something to touch is good, having something to give away which may hurts if you do so is good and someting you have to take care of. This is why i do records or tapes or whatever.

For streaming services, i do not like the companies doing it and the people running it, i think i do not have to point out who i am talking about. I just don't want to be part of it.

Q. What are your upcoming plans?

I am just to release the Prince Istari rids the world from the evil curse of A.I. Album and working all the time on the riddim dub school. Rehearsal for a concert with the band PAF and there is a collab in the pipeline with LXC from Alphacut. Let's see what time brings, looking out for more dubcore releases.

Q. Any final message to our readers?

Thanks for the question and reading, greatings!