In the 80s, we were still living in a kind of Cold War environment. Stephen Mallinder More Quotes by Stephen Mallinder More Quotes From Stephen Mallinder We were coming from a completely different place, which was saying "sound" is what you want to define it as, and you can shape it into music in whichever way you want. Stephen Mallinder shapes different sound We were responding to a period in the 70s when we started that it was very much you cannot be involved in music unless you studied to do music. Stephen Mallinder responding involved periods We've always been journalists - and have seen ourselves in that way. But we sort of recontextualized it through music. Stephen Mallinder journalist way We've always been observant of things, and I think Crackdown was very much like that and the film interpretation was that journalistic view of that situation. Stephen Mallinder film views thinking Some of it was shot in Berlin, but a lot of it was filmed in Hamburg, along the Reeperbahn in Hamburg in the famous red light district. Kino is obviously German and "film" and "cinema" and we were always cinematic in our thinking. Stephen Mallinder cinema light thinking [Kino] worked really well as a song title, and to build into a lyric, and also how we embraced mulit-media at the time. Stephen Mallinder titles media song I think probably underneath it all, film [Kino] has its own rhythm and its own dynamic, and we were trying to capture the movement of film and cross-reference it with music. Stephen Mallinder movement trying thinking Going there [Japan] in the early 80s was quite a culture shock. I think the bombardment of Shinjuku and all that would have filtered through, which certainly informed things we later filmed. Stephen Mallinder japan culture thinking I edited Big Funk, some of the footage was shot by Peter Care. We were film buffs as much as music buffs, and so there are film reference as well as sound references. Stephen Mallinder film care sound I think in everything we did, there's a sense of tension and a sense of things pulling in a different way. It's interesting calling it "beat music". That's quite true, the rhythm is up to the fore, it's got a slap bass, and it's got "funk" in the title. But I think there's always a level of irony when we did those kind of things. Stephen Mallinder titles interesting thinking I think underneath it all [in the Big Funk] was a little bit of a Europeanness in it. Stephen Mallinder bigs littles thinking Even though we were influenced by American culture and music, we like the rest of Europe have been colonized with that in the post-war period. At the same time there's a sense of dirty earthiness and Europeanness and Britishness in it as well. Stephen Mallinder europe war dirty In that period, we had the Cold War mentality imbued through us - the Post-war [environment] and the Cold War. I think we were reflecting some of that. This was before the Wall collapsed, etc. Stephen Mallinder wall war thinking I think that's the fascinating thing that exists now. This contrasts with a celebrity art and celebrity music culture. Stephen Mallinder culture art thinking Music doesn't have to be so rule-based - and so strict in its structures, construction and perception. Stephen Mallinder construction structure perception We were sort of coming from an angle where we wanted to break rules. Stephen Mallinder angle break wanted We were iconoclastic. We weren't there to sort of follow the trends really. So it was important that we were making a statement against that. Stephen Mallinder statements trends important I don't think it had a name when we started. If punk has any roots, Dada is part of it. And we saw ourselves as part of a kind of Dada tradition. Stephen Mallinder roots names thinking This was in the sense that if Dada was reacting to the morality and aesthetics of pre-WWI, then we were very much a reaction to the pomposity of rock that existed within music at that time. Stephen Mallinder reactions morality rocks I think we saw our reaction coming from Dada, but at the same time, it formed into punk, which was very much a reaction to the social conditions. That was part of it for us as well, and that's why we were kind of swept along with punk. Stephen Mallinder saws kind thinking
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