Selections
from 2001, and 1994...
CHAPTER 22: The North American "mini-tour"
JULY 1st : CANADA DAYRemi and I have arrived in Waterloo and I'm really excited as we managed to get on the cover of the K-W Record's Entertainment section(Great article!). We also made it into the Waterloo Chronicle, and to top it off I did a small interview on CKCO NEWS our local news TV to promote the upcoming concert. We were playing in "Times Square" which is a nice upstairs loft where once our hero NASH THE SLASH has performed. In order to avoid jetlag, we stay up and go with my family to watch the CANADA DAY fireworks.....
JULY 5, 2001
First concert. Jeremy (DJ Antithesis) who also arranged a RATIONAL YOUTH gig and Yolk (Art Of Fact) are here and we have T-Shirts (2 different designs since both my father and ART OF FACT label have made their own shirts!) There's a stand with the Canadian "Sanctuary E.P." and IMPLANT's releases.
IMPLANT starts the show with their ethno-ritual trance and already gets people twitching in the first row.
By the time PSYCHE gets on there's a room full of old friends that I haven't seen for 10 years! (Such as "Insomnia Theatre" and "Daydream Avenue" producer Richard Blohm) and relatives. Most of the audience have never seen PSYCHE live and so are astonished at our live presence. We get more action when the crowd jumps up to "Sanctuary" and "Renegades" once again proving to us that the new material is really universally appealing. "Prisoner To Desire" also reminds people however of the early days and my brother Stephen is there this time as an audience member to see the new PSYCHE performed. We end with an encore of "THE OUTSIDER 2001".TORONTO "DARK RAVE" July 7, 2001
The club is called REVERB and is celebrating 2 years of alternative electro parties. As we arrive to do soundcheck however, there is a film crew in fact working where we'll play. I ask quickly what kind of film, and although they say "romantic comedy" I find out they want extras for a "fetish scene" as well as indie-electro bands for the soundtrack. So I give the director our "Sanctuary" MCD and we all wait until we can do our soundcheck. Later Len and Nicolas from IMPLANT arrive and we set up our stuff for the show. It's a big high stage with plenty of room for both bands and our props. I always have my "barbed wire" design with me now to represent "The Hiding Place" artwork. Remi also made a brand new Psyche backdrop for the concert which looks great.
There's great lighting here and after the soundcheck I go and do an interview with Sophia from Toronto's EBM show on CIUT 89.5 FM. The audience seems to go out real late as even at 22:30 only few people are wandering in.IMPLANT starts at around 23:00 and suddenly a whole bunch of rather interesting looking electro-fans get out there and start dancing madly to their aggressive trance. Len isn't able to use his voice fx as he planned but somehow the sound is ok. DJ LAZARUS introduces us, and PSYCHE starts with our new intro that builds up in rhythm before moving into "Unbreakable". This gets everyone excited although not too many know the song yet. Highlights include "DROWNING POOL", "SANCTUARY", "RENEGADES", "SEX DWARF", and "THE HIDING PLACE" which we decide to play spontaneously as a bonus. The audience is a mix of gothic, cyber, and techno image. Lots of "glow in the dark" accessories. Some people even look like members of SIGUE SIGUE SPUTNIK or SPECIMEN. This time we end with "UNVEILING THE SECRET" and we're knocked out by the great response and the heat!
On the following Sunday I dress up as a "fetish" extra for the movie SNOWBALLS IN HELL. I find out the production team was at our concert and we talk about the soundtrack. I notice they've already got CD's from CONVENANT, APOPTYGMA BEZERK, and VNV NATION. During the pauses I talk with some of the extras and trade notes on the North American electro/goth scene. We're all dressed like Cenobites from the HELLRAISER movies. One girl has an old Psyche record on vinyl. I hand out ART OF FACT promo postcards and then go back with my parents and Remi to Waterloo. Remi looked around the CN Tower rather than join the film crew. It was in fact a long shoot and I'm wondering how much will be in the final edit, but if Psyche gets on the soundtrack we'll promote the film here on our website.
SNOWBALLS IN HELL - Movie where Darrin appears as an extra finally nearing completion: http://snowballs.quietnoises.com
USA JULY 9, 2001Going to the USA is hell. Customs are hard, the drive is long. But if you like travelling.....
So I'm not going to go into great detail of the work it takes to get merchandise or even performers across borders.
Let's just say "indie" artists have to do everything they can according to rules that best suit each individual...NYC July 10, 2001
Pres. G.W. BUSH Jr. was on the way to the airport as we arrived in NEW YORK. Nice of him to have stayed out of the way. We found "The Batcave" at DOWNTIME fairly quickly. We saw that due to some strange coincidence ECHO AND THE BUNNYMEN (sorry I missed them!) were playing the same night and that PSYCHE was billed with the hits "Sex Dwarf" and "Bring On The Dancing Horses"(instead of Goodbye Horses"). Sad that only our cover versions were mentioned. I had invited some people I got to know over internet contact and am happy they showed up as well as a friend from Edmonton, Alberta who I hadn't seen in 16 years. So this was our main highlight. There was in fact another local band added by the name of SOVIET, who although some might consider "retro" they were quite nice to listen to, and I picked up a CD. I would have to admit the main part of the audience had never heard of Psyche before. Although "Sanctuary" is slowly getting known in the clubs through DJ Cesar and we thank him for that.
I bought some new stage clothes while walking through New York shopping with IMPLANT before the soundcheck, and Remi and I sent postcards and sat in an Irish Pub drinking Guinness with our crew. Everything is expensive when you consider the exchange rate to Euro, so forget about buying CD's! We sold some T-Shirts after the concert and a couple of our CD's. My friends wanted to hear all kinds of songs we weren't playing like apparently "Secret Angel" is real popular in some clubs. Oh well maybe next time. I can't say what the highlights were this time because the people sort of just stared at us like they've never seen PSYCHE's form of entertainment before. I did my little acapella intro of SOFT CELL's "Entertain Me" to warm things up a little.... Thanks again to MARC ALMOND for this brilliant insight into performance in the music biz. I guess we shouldn't have left "Land Of Broken Promises" out of our set. ha ha.
To quote from our soundman I had to ask myself, "Am I happy yet?"
As we drove in the night past the Satue Of Liberty and went to a hotel in New Jersey we left all confusion behind us.LABYRINTH, DETROIT - JULY 12, 2001
The whole day yesterday was one long drive through Pennsylvania getting lost and passing by Pittsburgh (home of George Romero's Zombies, and the "Videodrome" signal). This got us into talking about the commercial film business and that if a sequel is made to a big film, there always has to be a part 3! Well that seemed to be about right in almost every case other than that there was only 2 "Jewel Of The Nile" films and so far 2 "Caspers" but for the most part we're full of the 3rd part of everything possible this year. I was discussing this with Nicolas who in fact was a guest keyboarder for IMPLANT since his main project is his own solo industrial stuff which is looking for release. Anyway between us we've seen alot of horror films and every crappy HELLRAISER sequel. Although I never watched the 3rd one completely it was too stupid. We later stopped near a forest where Nicolas could look for a Praying Mantis. This brought on a whole newsubject about people's "fetishes" like mine for classic disco 12"s and fridge magnets. Also the comparisons to the weirdness of the insect world with human behaviour.
... back to the theme of our tour. I had in fact been having some troubles with my voice trying to get used to the air-conditioning and maybe due to a slight cold I had before the trip. Mainly it was ok and I sang forcefully but I was unable to do the "hoo ooh hoos" intro on "Goodbye Horses" to my satisfaction. It's very frustrating for a singer to have the people say you were great when you don't feel you're at your best. Len had a similar experience in that he wanted to use his special fx on his voice but had to perform twice without them and no one seemed to mind. Anyway in Detroit I was a demi-god, and IMPLANT had the dancefloor shaking as well. This of course was strange because here the sound conditions were working against us.But first, we arrived at our hotel in Detroit. The Ramada Inn. Detroit is "The Motor City" and yes folks, the smell of fresh oil in the air will convince you. The hotel was massive and every room looked like a setting out of a David Lynch film. "Wild At Heart", "Twin Peaks", "Lost Highway", take your pick. Len took a picture of us eating on the floor in the front lobby. It was really cool, and the best part is that the "Labyrinth" is underneath the hotel. Where else should a Labyrinth be after all? Our promoter was Joe Darque and he's great. He treated us like royalty, and so here a big thank you to him and the rest of our crew at Labyrinth who despite this last minute addition to our mini-tour really tried to make it work for us. Joe showed us the really big disco that in fact is the "goth-industrial" mecca in Detroit.
Len and I were drooling over the design and big stage space asking where will we stand, and Joe said "Oh you're not playing here, the disco is only open on week-ends, you're in the basement". I'll admit I found this hysterical.
Someday I hope we'll return to the big disco! But it's obvious that the audience for at least "live music" of our "genre" is smaller than I thought.
Anyways, both IMPLANT and PSYCHE gave phenomenal performances to a small but appreciative audience and this time I sang a line from KISS' "Detroit Rock City" in "Prisoner To Desire" rather than my usual Yazoo homage and it got recognized! I found out later that nearly the whole audience was under 25 and therefore didn't even recognize "Sex Dwarf". Many thinking it was a PSYCHE track. (The horror, the horror- Marlon Brando, "Apocolypse Now")
Very many "cyber-groups" in the USA sound like DEATHLINE INTERNATIONAL for those who need to know. There seems to be the same war going on between the "trance-techno" scene and the "industrial-goth" purists. This is always odd for me because PSYCHE has been through all genres except for that one where people are inspired only by NINE INCH NAILS. We are apparently going more "electro-trance" but we still have the older "Dark Wave-Industrial" and "Synth-pop" songs in our history, so um, if you're confused by all this, well so am I.
Lastly our conversation turns to art. Len was debating which music is "worthy" with me, and whether or not what we do has a value. I feel very strongly that it does, but we all ask ourselves this question sometimes when we wonder "what's it all for?". I'm not going to get into this here, instead I'll just quote from one of my favourite films "The 4th Man" from Paul Verhoeven. "creative artists can make beautiful things, but when they do crack they're vicious!"
But consider this, apparently there is a man in Italy who in fact redently sold a new sampling of his excrements each day as high priced art, and at a gas station in America I found "bubble gum" CD's of Christina Aguilera that had just pictures of her and a chewing gum instead of music. Collect all 15! Know what I mean?
Darrin Huss. July 24, 2001
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Here, we go back to the period just after PSYCHE played support on the Anne Clark Tour up to when "INTIMACY" was released in 1994. It was the end of 1992, after "Daydream Avenue" had been released, and Johannes Haeusler and I had survived the 23 dates throughout Europe on tour with Anne. Between my time living in Hannover and then in Kassel, I somehow ended up recording a single in Axel Breitung's studio called "Heaven In Pain" which was to be my first rare attempt at a solo career outside of Psyche.The track started out as an instrumental demo from a guy calling himself J.Venus, who had somehow been making demos of various dance-tracks with the now very, very successful Axel Breitung, who as I write this has a No.1 hit in Germany with "Spirit Of The Hawk" performed by Rednex. Mr. Breitung of course is also known for his writing and production of many DJ Bobo hits, but enough of that. I was just in some big studio trying out something new. I had in fact been here already as I re-recorded "If You Believe" as a promo single in the hopes of reaching good radio airplay for "Daydream Avenue". But this endeavor remained a promo.
At the same time many of the groups that are now considered the vanguard of "alternative electronic music" were just beginning their recording careers. AND ONE, PROJECT PITCHFORK, DE/VISION, WOLFSHEIM, to name a few. Also European dance music in the form of SNAP, and ACE OF BASE, and DR. ALBAN were at the peak of the charts while I was trying to make some kind of electro-jazzy lounge style somewhat BOMB THE BASS oriented solo dance song.
"Heaven In Pain" originally had a completely different style as what our CD buying audience finally received as a final release entitled Our Heaven feat. Darrin Huss(Psyche). Anyway, I recorded this thing which had an east-indian flair and simple electro beat, and away I went to try to sell this song with J.Venus, Axel Breitung's "Bishop songs" already being the publisher. Of course it ended up at SPV since this was in fact the label of PSYCHE after all. At this point SPV had just signed Karl Bartos' ELEKTRIC MUSIC which they felt was going to be as big as KRAFTWERK. It was a very expensive deal, that probably just got more expensive as they decided "Heaven In Pain" should be remixed by this new signing. Although we thought the original could be a hit, it seemed just a little too minimaly arranged, and so I had to sign some kind of contract enabling SPV to pay various people alot of money to produce this song, and me only getting a small percent of the sales. I assumed it would be a big hit and so agreed to some pathetic deal which to this day I'll never understand. A few weeks later, (and I'll admit here I have a blackout as to what the hell I was doing or where I lived after recording "Heaven In Pain") but then I was driving in a car with J.Venus on the way to a photo session
with him and his brother(who had nothing to do with the song, but what the hey, we all want to be popstars, right?), and hearing the mix for the first time!I heard the 12" version first, and had to laugh as I first heard "Touch me, hold me" sampled out of the chorus and re-arranged as an intro. There were some modern techno sounding beats and noises, and I was sceptical but felt this was actually more a hit version. All the ethnic stuff was removed, and later I noticed my voice was slightly lower pitched, to sound more "masculine"!!!! But well I mean it was remixed by Karl Bartos. My God wasn't that something!
After the photo-session, and pathetic artwork was decided, (sorry, but really the 'Statue of Liberty head' really didn't make sense to me at the time, and even worse nearly the same design graced the cover of a DANCE OR DIE single a few months later), I went to Düsseldorf to meet Karl Bartos and Lothar from ELEKTRIC MUSIC. I saw golden KRAFTWERK records around the studio and sat at a desk with friends of mine from Kassel who'd I'd invited to show off to, and share this great moment with. Karl came in as I asked Lothar if my voice was pitched, and to complain that my backing vocals were too low in the mix. I know, I can't believe I did this either.
However, Karl complimented my singing and assured me all vocals were used. He looked kinda neat in black shorts, and top. (Think of "Sprockets", a skit from Mike Myers on SNL if you know what I'm taliking about. ) I thanked him, and said I'm glad he liked working on the song. I remember later begging to have my track added to the ELEKTRIC MUSIC album "Esperanto" since Andy McCluskey of OMD was to be a guest as well. Fat chance I guess.
I met Lothar once more in 1994 at SPV as he was looking for some master tapes, and I pulled out my "Intimacy" CD to show him that I'd added the radio edit as a bonus track on my PSYCHE release cause I felt "Heaven In Pain" hadn't recieved it's deserved attention.
Now Karl is free from ELEKTRIC MUSIC and starting a solo career. I hope "someday I will meet him again" to quote from "The Model". I think his "15 Minutes Of Fame" single is great. (No I'm not shmoozin! I mean it really), so I wish him the best and hope he forgives my arrogance at the time, but I think I was kinda pissed off that I wasn't getting any real big money for my efforts. After allI wrote the lyrics and sang this ridiculously expensive song, and all I got out of it was to show off Karl Bartos to my friends, ha ha!
Stay tuned for more, I hope to at least get up to the success, and disaster of PSYCHE's debut in Poland, The release of "Intimacy", and the tour with DE/VISION all within the coming months.
Stay tuned....
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 1994 - A new chapter in "Synth-Pop" began... |
