Recently my good friend Stephen Boyer told me about a band called Tyskerhar and that I should check them out. I immediatly checked out their MySpace cause I knew it would be good if he was recommending them, and now I’m hooked. Stephen is a writer that I met more than a year ago and we’ve become very good friends. Not only does he have impeccable taste in music but he also just recently started getting his new book Jacob the Unicorn published. He is incredibly smart, a good writer, and a great dancer which made me think maybe he should try to interview them, and he did.

Interview by Stephen Boyer:

Tyskerhar is my new favorite act out of Berlin. They are a two piece, Seek Zag Lazer from Germany and Mao Dou Mao from China. I was hooked instantly and can’t stop dancing.

SB:How long have you been Tyskerhar? How did you meet?

SZL: We met about 3 yrs ago, so we’ve known each other for quite a long time, the idea of making music came much later, I think it was late summer 2006 when we “just for fun” started the “Shanghai Lapdance” track.
It wasn’t even really meant to be a track, the chorus line ‘chou tou’ means ‘pig head’ that was just an inside joke between us, and one day we just put a beat to it.

MDM: We got to know each other at a party, he made music at home for a hobby at the time, and then I joined in and it was great fun to make stuff together.

Tyskerhar- “C-Pop” (mp3)

rest of interview

SB:What is it like going from China to Berlin?

MDM: In 2000, after College, I took a year off in Beijing doing nothing except learning German for a hobby, then I thought I should leave because I felt so bored.
I followed my brother to Berlin, he was already a student in Berlin at that time.
Berlin is an easy going city and fits me, here it’s not as crowded and noisy as in China, but in Berlin there are more than enough new interesting people to get to know.
I love the party scene in Berlin – so many choices, totally inexpensive to live and still very underground. Young people here drink a lot and many of them have a sense of black humor – for me it is Germanys charming point.
One of the most important things I discovered is Berlin’s Electro music scene. This had a huge impact on my current taste in music.
Berlin has countless stylish clubs and you can always find top DJs here to dance all night.

SB:Were you interested in electro before leaving China?

MDM: Not at all. First of all I had no chance to get to know much nice electro stuff back in Beijing.
Cheesy Chinese Pop music is so big over there and almost everyone is into it, so if there’s a scene that could be called underground it’s really as underground as can be. ,
If young people want to be different, they listen to rock music, from Ramones to NOFX, but not electro music.
At that time when I was in China, for most people electro was this cheesy Eurodance/Italodisco thing, like 2Unlimited or Ace Of Base. Nowadays it is better, the young generation gets to love electro; little by little.
Also my older brother plays in a big punk rock band in China and through him I got really much of a rock influence.

SB:What should Americans be expecting from China? Any recommendations?

SZL: I think Hang on the Box from Beijing are becoming quite interesting, they started as a classical girl punk band and seem to become really much of an avantgarde thing. Not that I like avantgarde, but I think this time where there between the genres, trying to find their new direction, that”™s quite interesting.
China is still very much in a process of discovering itself, people there still think that once they”™ve worked hard enough to finally buy two fast cars, and a big garage, their life will finally change to better.
They are still dreaming of a certain decadence – we in Europe grew up in the aftermath of exactly this decadence, knowing that even if our parents had two fast cars nothing changed.
I think this is a perfect culture medium for electronic music as it is famous in western Europe.

MDM: The music scene just needs some time to develop, many bands began to make music by imitating famous foreign bands so their own style is missing. But I think it’s okay, everyone copied Elvis Presley at first in the 50s.

SB:I love that you incorporate so many languages into your songs. Do you have a language you’re most comfortable with or do you enjoy working in English, Chinese and German?

MDM: I like to work with a lot of languages. We even used some Japanese for one track, it’s great fun. It’s a big advantage to be multi-lingual. We plan to use German to make a battle style track. I am excited about it. German is a good language for this kind of thing. They have lots of bad words and it sounds nasty.
Chinese is my native language and in fact there are not very many Chinese rappers. So probably we are unique.

SZL: It’s nice to have a variety of languages you can combine. Mostly we use English of course, to express ourselves to a wider range of people, of course my German is much better than my English which gives me some limitations regarding the lyrical depth of some tracks. Most of the time the songs are about drugs, fucking or fucking on drugs so I can do that in English. I don’t want to be an electro Tom Petty.

SB: Berlin has a long history of producing some of the best music, how do you feel you fit into this history?

SZL: Well, the funny thing is that you can’t really feel the glance of the old glorious Days of Einstrzende Neubauten or David Bowie because the presence of the actual music scene is so immense, there’s no time to just for a minute to look back.
The Minimal music scene is still huge, almost everyone you meet is a DJ somewhere, but in Berlin it’s never to get rich, it’s just for the fun of it. It’s like this city is breeding musicians, it has always been like this, people go there if they wanna make art, people leave Berlin if they want to make real money.

SB: Who are some of your influences/ favorite artists?

MDM: Miss Kittin, Mr. Oizo (and Uffie).

SZL: Definitely the old stuff of Miss Kittin, in the last time I discovered that whole Miami Bass thing which nowadays has a big impact on everything that happens around Paris which is again a big inspiration for us -
M.I.A. (the UK artist) of course, she influenced a lot of our drums…

SB: Who are you currently hyped up on? What’s on your playlist?

SZL: I really like what happens in the UK and Paris right now. I listen to a lot of Grime nowadays, and from Paris the whole Ed Banger Records Gang – diggin this shit!

SB: What should we be expecting from you in the near future?

SZL: We gonna release our new CD March 30, which is actually after a release which was more like a better demo our first real CD, playin live as much as we can.

SB: When are you going to tour America and get us dancing?

SZL: I’d come tomorrow if someone would pay me the flight, and of course gave me a permission to smoke cigarettes inside the club.

MDM: when the Chinese can get free visa to enter the US!

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