“We just want to have a good time”, said a member of God Loves Fags when reminiscing the reasons for their trip to New York, the city where the band was born. But someone argues that everything happened during a nap on the S-train to Zürich airport. Whether their birth belongs to dream or reality, what really matters is what we got as a result: a psychedelic mash-up of styles which trail listeners over cosmic inner lands, melancholic oases of delights, psychedelic mental realms and adventurous tumbles between beauty and decay by means of post-industrial, broken beats, krautrock, synth-electronica and folk rock. We had a chat with a delegation (Glenn was in Mallorca, while Michael answered from Zürich) of this amazing band, whose record “As We Took a Power Nap” comes out on the Swiss label Spezialmaterial.
Chain D.L.K.: Hi guys. How are you?
Glenn Breda: Fine, drinking beer and eating chorizos.
Micheal “Koko” Eberli: I‘m with your questions, at this moment, as stipulated in your bet to answer them. Which is not so easy with my limited English.
Chain D.L.K.: I’ve carefully listened your last record and I really enjoyed it, but before speaking about it, can you introduce yourselves in your own words?
Glenn Breda: To have the opportunity to make this record deep in the woods of the Catskills Mountains 20 miles from Woodstock – as we came to know afterwards – was quite a special thing for us. Normally we record in our basements, which is fine too, but damned we loved that place. The whole area had a pretty hippie-esque and colorful impact on us. A lot of artists, young farmers and self-supporting people live in that area and there’s also a huge Jewish community who spend their summer time there. So this scenery between very liberal and very conservative had just a welcoming and pleasant effect on us.
Micheal “Koko” Eberli: Thanks for enjoying it. That was maybe the point, to enjoy ourselves in making and producing it and you as a listener to have a positive contention with it. In general it was 2 weeks of Overdub & Jam-Sessions in Upstate NY. Nature, music, swimming, cooking, collecting eggs on the fields and no girls, which was very productive.
Chain D.L.K.: One of my favorite songs of your album is “Pale Saints”… you enlisted a lot of things that are just in the listener’s heads, didn’t you?
Glenn Breda: I took the lyrics from an old Hard Coming Love – my former project- 70s kinda blues rock song that we never used and it kinda felt good to use them in a different context. Marco Crosina came up with the guitars and the composition. While I was hearing it I had the desire to break it up a bit and change the scenery, with those pop-like vocals. At the end of the day we have a heart for pop music too;-)
Chain D.L.K.: Another gorgeous track is “Glen Wild”… what do the lyrics refer to?
Glenn Breda: To nothing special to be honest. I wrote down the lyrics in 5 minutes and 10 minutes later we were already recording them. For sure we had a few glasses of whiskey and we were missing the city and the beautiful women we left behind.
Chain D.L.K.: What’s the leitmotiv which connects all six tracks of “As We Took A Power Nap” together?
Glenn Breda: Not to have one. No dogmas. No thinking too much. Everything kinda goes, as far as it feels right to us, to transmit and record the ideas as directly as possible.
Micheal “Koko” Eberli: To document an extraordinary time in the form of an album. Which we didn’t know anything about before we left the space.
Chain D.L.K.: Have you performed it live on stage yet? What were the reactions?
Glenn Breda: We didn’t play it live yet. Tim Frei, our first drummer, left the project 2 months ago and Michael Sauter replaced him. So right now we are heavily in rehearsal mode. We will play our first gig on the 17th of July at the “Oh See Festival in Zürich”. We’re looking forward to lose our virginity. Also our Brazilian friends “Boogarins” will join us on stage for a special jam. Can’t wait for that Space Boogie!!!
Micheal “Koko” Eberli: We’re all damn hot and want see tears!
Chain D.L.K.: “Zufallskomposition#6” sounds like the REM part of your power nap… which kind of dreams or nightmares occur while eyes move rapidly?
Glenn Breda: The ones you can remember.
Micheal “Koko” Eberli: Thats a matter of your personal mental state. Maybe the quality of dreams is better with the right education of the heart and LSD than a with a white nose all the time.
Chain D.L.K.: What does that swine on the teaser video inhale from nose and launch from the eyes?
Glenn Breda: Astral dust & laser-beams.
Micheal “Koko” Eberli: I thought Red pepper paste. But Glenn is right: harrisa and swine don’t match.
Chain D.L.K.: Did the guys from Spezialmaterial allow you to choose the color of the vinyl?
Glenn Breda: Yes. We choose to make the first edition in black because the cover is already very colorful.
Micheal “Koko” Eberli: Yes. They’re very cooperative. I’ve been working for Spezialmaterial for 15 Years, we’re a collective. But the wonderful cover is by Silvio Waser from Buffet für Gestaltung.
Chain D.L.K.: Is there any by-gone band you’d like to see performing?
Glenn Breda: Canned Heat, The Bar-Kays, Sun-Ra Arkestra, Kraftwerk around 1971.
Micheal “Koko” Eberli: Coil in association with Funkadelic playing Maggot Brain.
visit God Loves Fags on the web at: www.godlovesfagsmusic.com
