Michael Fakesch's Solo LP on Cubase
Michael Fakesch’s name has until now been almost exclusively been associated with the German electro duo Funkstörung. For over 10 years, Funkstörung produced some of the best electronic music in Germany, including remix work for international stars such as Björk and Wu-Tang Clan. As one of the most influential bands in the movement that later came to be dubbed Intelligent Dance Music, Michael Fakesch and the other half of Funkstörung, Chris de Luca, became part of the annals of music history.
After Funkstörung decided to split last year, Michael has been concentrating on his solo projects. On top of his work for film and TV projects, Michael’s second solo LP, "dos", has just been released on Berlin’s ultra-trendy !K7 label. While its intense and highly crafted use of audio editing and sound mangling is reminiscent of Michael’s earlier Funkstörung work, the new album is more song-orientated, with a dance floor-filling fusion of cutting-edge electronica with mouth-watering, body poppin’ modern funk and soul. Another highlight on the record: the impressive vocal talents of Taprikk Sweezee, whose effortlessly fluid, funky style helps take soul further into the future than ever before.
How did you get into making music?
It all started with me organizing techno club nights. That was my entry into the music biz at the tender age of 17. When I was 19, a friend showed me how easy it is to produce techno, and that really got me infected. I asked Chris De Luca, who I booked as a DJ for club nights back then, if he wanted to do some music with me, and that’s how Funkstörung started. Our first music instrument was a TR808, by the way, and the second was a TB303…
After Funkstörung split up, you started work on a number of other projects, on top of the work for your solo album…
After the split I worked a lot with video people and did a lot of sound design and produced music for (short) films. Among many other things I produced music for several Toyota ads, which were produced by my friends at Zeitguised. In total there were about 70 ads, of which only one was ‘real’ as in that sense. The others were teasers (5-15 seconds) for Channel 4 in the UK, so it was more of an artistic project than actual advertising as such. I also did the sound design for a teaser for MTV’s Baltic, as well as sound for several short films including a Paul Getty Images project. Another project involved reinterpreting the score for Bert Haastra’s ‘Glas’, which won an Oscar around 50 years ago, as well as the complete sound design for Siggraph, which is one of the world’s most important motiongraphic conventions. You can check all that out at www.michaelfakesch.com. I should also mention that I did remixes for Herbert, Booka Shade and a charity project for Greenpeace.
How did you get to working with [Hollywood composer] Paul Haslinger?
Mathias at Faderfox introduced me to Paul. Paul and I emailed a few times and realized that we didn’t completely dislike each other. Paul thought my ‘dos’ album was pretty cool, and because of that he asked me if I wanted to work on some of his own projects. Not the kind of offer you turn down, eh? We’ve worked on two things together: once on the New Line Cinema film ‘Shoot Em Up’, that I did some simple beat ideas for, and the other project was for the ‘Vacant’ soundtrack, for which I remixed one of Paul’s songs.
Going back to your solo project, how long did you work on it and what was the biggest challenge?
Because I come from a track-writing background and never really learned how to write songs, it was quite a challenge to write real songs. Also, I didn’t want to ‘overproduce’ the album, which was hard for me. Sometimes it’s a lot harder to recognize the quintessence of a song than just creating one long series of breaks and sounds. Funnily enough a lot of the songs had first versions that were a lot more complex than the final versions. And it’s still sometimes difficult for me to judge when a song is finished. With a computer you have infinite possibilities and focus on ever-smaller parts of a project, So sometimes deadlines a good, because you can’t just fiddle around with songs for ever. We worked for about 6-7 months on the first few ideas. It was only when !K7, our label, said they thought it was great and just about releasable that they set us a deadline, and from there it went pretty quickly. So about 80% of ‘dos’ happened in the last 3-4 months.
What was it like working with Taprikk, the singer?
We pretty much got on very well from the beginning. Of course, it always takes a while before you find together musically, especially as Taprikk comes from a band-based background, and paradoxically actually wanted to make a completely electronic album, while this time I wanted to work in a more acoustic and song-orientated way. But it’s that compromise between these two approaches, and the clash between hi-tech sounds and old school sonic elements that makes this album so interesting. Actually, we only once worked together in the same studio at the same time. We both worked on our own, Taprikk was in Hamburg, and I was in Rosenheim [in Bavaria]. We phoned and emailed each other almost every day, and our FTP servers were under a lot of strain.
Did you produce the album on Cubase 4?
I started in Cubase SX3, but I moved to the new version before Cubase 4 came out (thanks for letting me take a look at the new version before the release!). Then I continued with all the songs in Cubase 4. Thank God that moving the SX3 files to Cubase 4 went pretty smoothly.
What do you like about Cubase 4, are there favourite features you like particularly?
For a lot of people it might not be that important, but I was very happy with the new EQs, compressors and the Ampsimulator. Apart from that I’m still really pleased with the audio editing functions, but they were there in Cubase SX1. You shouldn’t forget the fantastic sound quality in Cubase. Taprikk even did an A/B comparison between Cubase and another software with an exported song without any processing at all, and the song definitely sounded better from Cubase 4.
What advantages does Cubase offer compared with other systems, what made you decide on Cubase?
I’m a big fan of the audio editing in Caubse. It’s absolutely perfect for the type of music that I do – I construct a lot of breaks – as well as for any sort of sound design where you’re working in sync to picture. I find Cubase easy to understand, comparatively inexpensive (especially the smaller versions that you can also work well with) and the support is great. Apart from that, Cubase was my very first sequencer, and there’s that saying: “Never change a winning team”!
Do you use other Steinberg software like VST instruments or WaveLab?
To be honest, I have to admit that on ‘dos’ I hardly used any VST instruments. I wanted to use more hardware, just to attain that concept of a rough, dirty funk album. Taprikk used two or three software instruments, but played most his stuff with hardware synths. I really like using WaveLab for mastering, as well as for just analyzing or editing.
So what’s going on now that the album is out, are you going on tour?
Definitely, I want to play this stuff live, especially because Taprikk is a brilliant vocalist and it’s great fun performing with him. I’m not sure if we’re going to do a block of dates on tour, or if we’re going to be doing them at weekends. With all the other stuff I do, I can’t really afford to be o nthe road during the week.
What’s your musical future looking like? Are you going to concentrate on your solo projects? Are you planning on other co-operations or are you still looking to move into film scoring?
I do whatever feels good. At the moment I can really imagine working with Taprikk again, but I also would really like to do stuff with other people. I’ve got a project with High Priest of Anti Pop Consortium/Airborn Audio in the pipeline, and I’d also really like to do a techno album again with my friend Quietpoint, without a computer: back to basics! Film scoring is also very interesting, but I think that sound design for film, advertising and computer games is even more up my street. But like I said, I do whatever I feel like doing. :-)
Website: www.michaelfakesch.com
