Kopfer Kat

Can you present yourself and the band?
- "I can talk about Michael as well, I know him pretty well. But my name is Jimmy Andersson and I've been into electronic music very long here in Gothenburg. I've got a small home studio and I've been working with music a long time now. I was one of the crew behind the club Phobia earlier as well. Michael makes trance music and has released one trance album and two ambient albums. During the spring 2001 we got together and started Kopfer Kat. Quite early we decided to make something like synth, but more like EBM. We got a live session at Phobia and the crew started to play some noise music and we thought like "What is this?" and then we decided to make music like that. Our intentions are that the music should be fast, aggressive and danceable. We use to dist all sounds. It's very fun to create music; to take a sound and make it sound all messed up."

I can imagine that. But if we look outside the band, what's the scene like in Sweden?
- "There's almost no scene. I don't know if there is something in Stockholm but as a club that only plays hard electronic dance music doesn't exist. When I asked Roger Tell, who was the man behind Phobia, if we couldn't start such a club he said start up Phobia again. So we did but the crowd wasn't ready for such music that time. I hope they are now."

True, we need something new. The clubs already existing plays the same music.
- "I've been in Germany on clubs and thought like "this is a synth club" but they mix both EBM and gabber. Noise and gabber is like the same genre there."

Okay, let's go back to Kopfer Kat for a while. Where do you get inspiration?
- "The crowd. When we started Phobia we had a live set on maybe half an hour and when we we're done the crowd just stood there shouting for more so we played one of the songs we've already played. It was a really successful evening."

Future plans? Maybe an album?
- "We've been offered a release, but it's nothing decided yet. I can't say more."

Do you have any secret messages in your music?
- "No, no such things. Only full on and nothing more. We want the crowd to have fun and to dance until sweating. But it's still fun to use sounds and making rhythms. We want to make rhythmic music that talk to the instincts. Even if you don't like the music we want you to at least nod your head to the music."

A popular subject for discussion is music spreading on the internet. What's your stand in this?
- "Well, for small bands it's not so good if you want the music as living. If you release a record then it's out on the internet soon after and you have to accept that. If we release an album we don't count on having it as a work to earn our living. The only way for us to earn money is on the live shows. Because everything becomes available on the internet live shows is important for small bands, especially within such a small genre as this."

How will you do tonight then?
- "I hope it will go very well. There?s been some pressure actually. Both on the SHOCKS-site and on people we've been talking too. There are many who want to go. When we had Phobia it went well the first times but later on the crowd was failing and we got lesser visitors. But now it's maybe a new generation and a new opportunity and maybe the crowd is ready for this kind of music now. The most important thing is that we succeed in creating a scene for hard dance music in Scandinavia."

This interview was made 2005 and initially published on Neurozine.com