Interview: Skunk Anansie – Ace stand uns Rede und Antwort, bevor es ein außergewöhnliches Konzert gab.

Am Montag Abend gab es in Kleinen Sendesaal des Landesfunkhauses Hannover vom NDR eine ganz spezielle Aktion. Hörer von NDR 2 konnten sowohl über das Radio als auch über die verschiedensten medialen Kanäle Tickets für ein exklusives Konzert der Briten Skunk Anansie gewinnen. Tickets gab es dafür nicht, was die ganze Aktion natürlich noch exklusiver und interessanter machte.

Die Band, genauer gesagt Sängerin Skin und Gitarrist Ace, sowie als Unterstützung die Ehefrau von Drummer Mark, war an diesem Abend glänzend gelaunt. Gemäß dem ausgegebenen Motto „Stars and Stories“ erzählte vor allem Skin viel aus ihrer eigenen Historie, aber auch der Historie der Band, wobei sie immer mal wieder von Ace unterstützt wurde. In den knapp 90 gebotenen Minuten wurde alte Hits und natürlich auch neue Songs des am 23. Mai erscheinenden Albums „The Painful Truth“ in perfekter Unplugged-Manier präsentiert. Die Anwesenden feierten die Band von Minute eins an und es war fast schon so etwas wie Wehmut zu vernehmen, als sich das Konzert dem Ende neigte. Auf jeden Fall war es ein ganz besonderes Konzert, das in dieser Art wohl einzigartig gewesen sein dürfte und kaum reproduzierbar ist. Alleine schon aufgrund der tollen Atmosphäre wird das Konzert wohl vielen Fans in ewiger Erinnerung bleiben.

Doch bevor es los ging hatten wir das große Vergnügen ein recht kurzweiliges Interview zu führen, das hier (allerdings nur in englischer Sprache) zu finden ist. Ausgeschmückt haben wir das Ganze mit ein paar Bildern des Abends, die unser Fotograf Christoph machen durfte.

Hi Ace, it’s a real plessure meeting you and doing an interview with you. Maybe you wanna introduce you and the band for all our readers not familiar with the band.

My name is Ace, i’m from the band Skunk Anansie and we are a british rock band and we’ve been going for 31 years. So we started in 1994 in London and since then we traveled the world and we played with everyone from Rammstein to Metallica to Björk and we played gigs with Pavarotti (!) and we played for Nelson Mandela and we broke a few records in our time. It is a very interesing band, very diverse with a lot of messages in our music.

You’re in this business now for more than three decades. The music business has changed a lot since you started as a band way back in 1994. What is the most important result as a fact if you look back all those years?

The only thing that stayed the same is that live music is the only way to touch fans and for them to feel the band. Writing a good song and playing shows has always been the same. Obviously the amount of people doing music and the amount of records that there’re out there right now, is it hard not to get lost in a million other tracks. It’s really hard to cut through the commercial noise of music. I think that is really difficult. The others factor is musicans always say it’s hard to survive because of the way the music is sold, give it away and marketed. That’s the hardest things. Still writing good songs and playing live hasn’t really changed at all in 30 years. We are using the same guitars and microphones.

If I counted right „The Painful Truth“ which will be out on Frontiers Records, is the seventh album and the first new full album recordings since 10 years. What has changed since then stylewise?

A lot has changed, because people change and the world has changed and music has changed since the last time we made a record 8 – 9 years ago. Today everyone consumes music faster. The songs are shorter because of TikTok, they want different things, society has changed and we kinda moved with that. We are influenced by the way everything is, but we don’t write for an audience. The new album is very modern, with weird arrangements, quite short songs in certain places, it got different kinds of sounds in it, almost experimental. It is not a follow-up, it is a brand new kinda thing.

As I first listened to the new songs they seemed to me very catchy and that’s not what I expected so far. Your previous albums where more angry and aggressive. Does Covid had an impact as a fact?

It is definetly catchy. I don’t think that covid had impact on the songs. It’s been a long time since the last album, covid increased the break. So covid didn’t changed much for us to be honest.

There are 10 new songs on the record. How many songs did you wrote for the new album?

We wrote maybe 20.

If you look back to the writing/recording process. Did you send files through the internet or did you meet anyone in the studio like in the good old days?

We were writing all together in a old barn on the countryside, stayed in the same hotel every single day. We demoed the album, not in a good quality and brought them to the producer in L.A., so he can see the essence of a song. Him and Skin deconstructed the songs and put them back together and then we played them. When we played them, we threw all the old stuff away und replayed them in a different way. Some of them were rewritten while we are recording them. A lot of improvisation. I never did improvise a record and and not done it twice. It was easy in one way but very difficult in another. None of the record was edited or cut or anything, it is literrally how we played it.

Does any of the songs carrie a message to the world?

I think they all do. In Skins lyrics like „Cheers“, „This is not your life“, all of them really have different messages of parts in her life. So they don’t need to be particually political. They are about us in general.

Do you have a favorite song on the new album?

Um, I don’t know. Not really. They are all about the same to me. I really like „This Is Not Your Life“, but I don’t play on that track. It its all synthesizers. I did actually played on it when we recorded it, but it didn‘t really work, the guitars in it. So it changed into a more electronic track which is really cool and I think it’s great.

Coming to the live situation. What changed for you over the years?

In the live scenario nothing has changed. We are still playing the same venues. Touring is exactly the same. You get on a bus, you live that lifestyle. On the technical side it got a lot more expensive. When we are on tour now, it still feels the same way like in the 90s. Fundamentally the gear is all the same.

But still no chance to live from music alone?

If you tour like 50 weeks a year, you could. You can’t do that anymore and touring is so expensive. And you don’t really make money of the records. There is no money in Spotify. In the 90s with Skunk I had just this one job. I did music education, teaching, mentorship, like master class. I was so busy with Skunk 48 weeks a year. I wasn’t until we hit the other side of the 2000s where it kinda changed into okay I can do this, but I can’t support a family doing this. It would work for a certain amount but I need to go to work as well. I enjoy to go to work, it’s good.

Are there any songs the band is tired of playing but the fans still want to hear them?

I don’t think of anything that I’m tired of playing live. The big songs everyone likes is „Weak“, „Hedonism“, „Secretly“ are the big three that everybody loves, and „Charlie Big Potato“ is another one as well. They are all loved and there is a big reaction of the crowd that makes you feel good. You don’t get bored, you get a different feeling every night. I don’t get bored of playing any songs really. Some songs are quite difficult, challenging. From a guitar standpoint „Secretly“ is a complicated and complex song and that’s about it.

Is there a song you wish you could play live more often?

A song we don‘t play often but I really like playing live is „Intellectualise My Blackness“ because it is so heavy. It comes and goes in our set. When we played that I really enjoyed that. And „We Don’t Need Who You Think You Are“.

So you are more into the heavy stuff?

Yes, I am a rock guitar player.

What do you think about your new italian record label Frontiers?

They gave us a label, FLG. They have been really amazing actually. A lot of stuff is happening. So far so good. But I have met the English people only. In a week or so I will meet the Italian people.

Thank you very much for taking the time to talk to us.

It was nice to meet you.

Niedergeschrieben von Jens-Peter Topp. Mehr Bilder sind hier zu finden.

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