Music’s newest supergroup Von Sudenfed began when The Fall singer Mark E. Smith attended a performance by the German circuit-benders Mouse on Mars. “Mark saw our show, and he really liked it because it had sort of a rough, distorted feel,” says Andi Toma, one half of the MoM production team, during a recent phone interview. This meeting led to Smith recording vocals for the Mouse on Mars 12” single, “Wipe That Sound.” The song was a hit with critics and clubbers alike, and it led to another meeting between Smith, Toma and Mouse’s other half, Jan St. Werner. “We did some crazy improvisations, and we decided to start a band.”
Whereas “Wipe That Sound” was recorded by Toma and St. Werner, creating the backing track, and then sending it to Manchester for Smith to record the vocals, the songs on Von Sudenfed’s full-length debut Tromatic Reflexxions were recorded with all three band members in the same room together. “Mark came over to our studio, and it was very productive,” says Toma. This closeness allowed Von Sudenfed to develop their chemistry together. “The way we work is very emotional,” says Toma, “and I think (Smith) does the same.”
But the recording experience was a little different than what Mark E. Smith is used to with his band The Fall. As Toma describes, “We do most of our songs on software...on a few songs I played drums or bass or guitar, but most of the tracks were done as a production unit, so for him it was maybe kind of strange because he doesn’t like technology, it’s not his world.” Toma talks about how they, “involved him more in the producing process, saying this we don’t need, this we do need. He would be shouting, ‘Lay it down! Record it!’, and then the track was finished.”
If Smith is uncomfortable in the world of software-based songwriting, it doesn’t show on the finished record. Songs like “Family Feud” (which is, by the way, as Toma says, “Mark dissing us,”) find Smith’s spastic, slurred vocals melding perfectly into the twitching and grinding of the production, grounding the songs in a rock feel while keeping the atmosphere of surrealism through the free-association of the lyrics. It’s what you would expect from Smith, just as the music is what you’d expect from Toma and St. Werner, but it’s also something completely unique. Smith’s reservations almost proved well-founded, though, because the same technology that brought us this dazzlingly bizarre album almost ruined it. “Right after Mark left,” says Toma, “the hard drive crashed completely, so most of the songs are taken from rough mixes, with Mark shouting, ‘Put it down! Put it down!”
With it’s manic beats and rumbling bass, Tromatic Reflexxions has already generated quite a buzz in the United States, and the combined interest of both bands’ fans along with other interested audiophiles will hopefully equate to commercial success for the record, but this doesn’t matter much to the band. “We don’t go into a project with commercial expectations. But I’m very excited and happy about the reception the record is getting.”
As for their upcoming live shows, expect to see just the three members. There will be no backing band; Toma and St. Werner will play elements of the songs through a sound system while Smith sings his vocals. And Toma is excited to see it happen. “We have so much trust in Mark,” he says, “we are trusting in him that this will work.”
So with all that creative chaos emanating from three of music’s most frenetic personalities being in the same studio together, there must be some pretty crazy stories about the recording of the album, right?
“Everybody asks me that, but it wasn’t like that at all, it was all very professional.”
--John Frusciante
Photo by Benjamin Huseby
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VON SUDENFED's TROMATIC REFLEXXIONS is out June 5, 2007 on Domino Records.
http://www.dominorecordco.com
http://www.myspace.com/vonsudenfed
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