Entrevista para a Industrial Nation (29/01/98)
Novidades Áudio Letras Fotos Links Diversos Contato

Entrevistado: Kurt Harland

What has happened with the band since Peace and Love Inc?

http://InSoc.org/NewDays.HTML - That's my new website. I can now answer any question with a URL. Paul quit the music business in 1993. Then he started again in 1994. But in the interim, I purchased the name and the logo and the right to sell records under the name "Information Society" from him and Jim. We got off Tommy Boy/Warner Bros. records in the same year, and I fired my manager. So, in July of 1993, I had literally nothing to go on but the name and a sense of a new kind of music I wanted to make. 4 years later, I released "Don't Be Afraid" (http://InSoc.org/NewAlbum.HTML) on Cleopatra records. Now I'm getting the paperwork in place for a Brasilian album and tour funding. Playing live is the issue for '98.

So there weren't any hard feelings?

Hard feelings? No... Paul wanted to quit.

What took so long for the album to come out? Brasilian album? (no offense, but i hate having to buy import albums of american bands)

It took a long time because no major labels wanted to invest into it because they didn't get the sound at all. An all-too common story for bands who appear in your magazine, I would imagine. I had to raise the money myself by playing shows in Brasil. Don't worry, the Brasilian album will not be for sale here in the States. That's one of the stipulations. They want something that sounds more like "old InSoc". I said, "Fine, but you can't sell it here.".Don't worry, you won't need it. "Don't Be Afraid" is the new album. But Sam, it's just a Brasilian record. You don't need it.

And the psychotic completists can go to brasil?

Don't worry about it. The psychotic completists can buy import via cdnow.com.

You LOVE plugging your website, don't you?

I LOVE LOVE LOVE plugging my website. I spent a year on it. It is, as far as I know, the most extensive website for or by ANY band anywhere ever. I may be wrong.

Lets get the annoying remix question out of the way, then we can head toward your numan obsession

My Numan obsession can be accessed at ANY time! Well, the remix album won't have anything to do with my Numan obsession except for the fact that AFE will be one of the songs. I got into Gary Numan in January of 1980. I was driving my car to school, and the radio staion played "Are 'Friends' Electric?". I was so moved that I had to pull the car over and listen to it. I left school 2 hours later to go to the record store to buy the album. It really struck me... all of his music did. Gary Numan and DEVO were about 80% of what I listened to in my senior year.

What do you think of the new numan cd?

I'm still a fan of his older stuff, yes, but I haven't liked very much of what he's done since "Dance", which came out in 1981. I haven't heard it. (...) I just did a re-mix of his NEW version of "I Die; You Die" for Cleopatra, by the way. The Numan albums gave me something very unique when I was a teenager. He perfectly expressed a certain sense of futuristic isolation which resonated with me. I think Gary's lyrics and music are indescribably beautiful. I guess Cleo is doing a release of a re-mix album of Gary's re-makes of his older stuff. Or something. I'm not really sure. I only did it because it's my second favorite Gary Numan song, and it's Gary Numan! (...) You were asking about the InSoc re-mix album...

As far as "Iceolate" goes, I'm not 100 percent sure that that's going to happen. That was Brian's idea, but I haven't spoken to Bill and Rhys yet, so we'll see.

I'll ask about the notoriously small pressing of your remix of ausoween. how did that come into being?

I have been going to goth clubs here for a few years. They were playing "This Is Halloween" from The Nightmare Before Christmas" soundtrack EVERY TIME I went out. I LOVED it. They were also playing, at that time, "Ich Bin Ein Auslander" by Pop Will Eat Itself. I could help noticing 2 things: 1 - This Is Halloween" needed teeth. And it was too short. 2 - The 2 songs were practically the same song anyway. They were even in the same key! I put them both on my hard disc and used Sonic Foundry's Sound Forge software to blend the two together. Burned a few CD's, and gave them to DJ's here. (...) I wanted to be able to dance to it. And I have had that privilage about 15 times. It's cool.

What is authors you read excessively?

Thomas Mann, Milan Kundera, Buckminster Fuller, J.R.R. Tolkein, Anne McCaffery, William Gibson and Fyodor Dosdevsky. (...) Bucky was important because he was a living example of starting over thinking from SCRATCH.

He just came up with a way of looking at 3-D space from ground zero. I admire that.

You wanted to make insoc a darker being?

Not really... The only boundary I pushed was the boundary that said "don't do what you REALLY want to do... do what other people will accept.". "Other people" being my former bandmates, label, and management. But I don't think that the music on this album is in any way "extreme" compared to other things that are out there. They would have been more like the new one. But I really didn't learn to effectively create entire songs until about 1989.


Aqui selecionei algumas partes da entrevista. Em muitas ocasiões, o entrevistador, com o nickname GameCat e o Vector (Kurt) ficaram falando sobre a própria revista e sobre assuntos não diretamente ligados ao Information Society. O texto foi extraído da reunião concedida pelo Kurt no IRC do InSoc (irc.insoc.org - #Insoc), e adaptado para esta página.

® 1997-2024 InSoc Brasil - www.insoc.com.br - Desenvolvido por InWeb Internet