Ancient Astronauts

Features • Wednesday June 10th, 2009 • 12:00 am

With a release that’s one of my favorite hip-hop products so far this year, the Ancient Astronauts are an act on the rise. The German hip-hop duo collaborated with some heavy hitters on We Are To Answer, including a couple members of The Pharcyde, Raashan Ahmad and Entropik among others, to create a moving, organic, expansive album that needs and deserves to be heard.

To get the full story, we sat down with both Dogu and Kabanjak to discuss the upcoming album and to hear why they two had to look international for their influence since the German hip-hop scene sucked for so long.

SSv: We Are To Answer drops soon, so how are you guys doing with everything?

Dogu: We’re stoked. We’re looking forward to the release world-wide through ESL music. It’s definitely a progression for us. We’re already also making new music and looking much much more forward into the future.

SSv: What about anticipation in terms of the release in the States?

Dogu: Well, it’s a worldwide release so it comes out here the same time it comes out in the United STates. Overall we’re just having a blast. We’re really excited. On the one side, it’s just a normal thing where you’re looking forward to the release. But it was a very special release because we’ve been doing music for so many years. We see our music which is a beautiful platform in the background right now, but we can reach so many more people than ever before, so that’s why we’re nervous. We’re wondering what the result of this will be. Then again, we always knew it takes time to move forward and now that time has come, so we’re looking forward to it.

SSv: The album spans so much diverse material, so is that something that comes from your own musical tastes?

Dogu: Yes, definitely. We have different musical backgrounds, but it all melts together in our Ancient Astronauts recordings. We love rock. We love jazz. We love folk music. We love all kinds of stuff. We want to bring our love for music and passion for music into all of our productions.

SSv: That has to be a challenge to blend all those sounds.

Dogu: Well, I think it comes naturally. We’re in the studio making beats and it comes from all the years from shaping the sound that you make together. We’ve learned to combine all these different elements from all these musical styles over the years and you shape those down and know where you go. It takes time to get to where we know how we want to do it and how we want it to sound to get our kind of significant sound.

SSv: Can you tell me about the hip-hop scene there in Germany?

Dogu: Well, the beginnings of hip-hop in Germany is crap. I started to be a part of it and it was breakdance and hip-hop jams and everything, which I didn’t like. It was very copycat of American stereotypes for hip-hop. Nothing was very original in the music. So it took some years for the first band to come out who really did their own German version of hip-hop and where the German people can relate to the lyrics. That took some time. But there was some good ones.

The thing is that we weren’t really a part of that scene. Hip-hop, like other genres, has a worldwide following. It’s worldwide music. So hip-hop in Germany sucked and we didn’t go in that direction. The hip-hop influence came through other places like Norway and that sort of thing-

Kabanjak: Yeah, and English hip-hop.

Dogu: Yeah there’s lots of good stuff from Holland in the ’90s and the U.K. But German hip-hop is great now. We have a big following for good hip-hop here in Germany in places like Cologne or Hamburg, you have a good audience for jazz or old funk or hip-hop in those places. You don’t have a scene really for this kind of 50 Cent hip-hop, but only for the older stuff or underground. That’s just shit for commercial parties. But the real hip-hop scene is really solid and conscious.

American hip-hop guy love it when they come to Germany because they can’t believe all the people who come to the parties. We’re allowed to party until five or six in the morning, so it’s a good condition to party. [Laughs]

SSv: Was that frustrating for you early on to not have the German hip-hop scene up to par?

Dogu: Not really because we’ve always been connected to American or British hip-hop so the German hip-hop scene wasn’t a thing to us. Not really important for us. It’s no good so we were always looking internationally to see what’s coming from other countries. And when something good came from Germany, it was like, ‘Oh, all right.’ But that wasn’t really the case very often. [Laughs]

SSv: Can you tell us about Switchstance?

Dogu: Sure. That’s our label that we started in 2001 to release our music. Since the beginning, I had built up contacts in the industry and so the first. In the beginning, we were just interested in instrumental music. We were never interested in vocalists because they’re not hanging on the trees here. Does that make sense?

SSv: Yeah.

Dogu: So we would have to work with international singers. So in the beginning we just worked with what we do had and that was instrumental music. So we just did what we could do and that was trip-hop to some funked drum and bass stuff with live influences. We always try to keep things as organic as we can. We did more and more stuff with that and here we are.

SSv: Has it done for you what you hoped it would? The label, I mean?

Dogu: Well, everything we did in the last years, we knew no one could take it from us. We have our own publishing and we’re always in control of our music. We never did some other electronic beat camps to sell out with house beats or something. We start with breaks and that’s what we do with music. It was the longer way to take. Some people who started with us aren’t there anymore, but that’s how life goes. But we don’t regret anything. When we have success, we’re happy because we knew it was something that we did. Sometimes when money is missing and then here comes the check from the German… like ASCAP in the States, you’re happy.

We knew it would be hard, but you just make as many contacts as you can and get more serious about your music and we knew we weren’t going away. We worked on our music for two or three years now with this family and it took some years to get to know each other and appreciate the music of each other. So now it made sense how we did it.

Kabanjak: Yeah, we always had our own vision of our own music that we produced. That was definitely a chance to bring our music to a brighter audience, which makes us very happy. Things are growing and so obviously that’s good. Of course, there were bad times, but I think it’s good to have to work for what you believe in.

SSv: You mentioned the word organic earlier and I’m wondering if you could talk about that.

Dogu: Yeah, we like to use live instruments and then combine that with computer sounds or synthesizers, but we want to sound as analog as we can. [Laughs] We like the raw beats and we prefer to use analog drums than digital drum machines, I would say.

SSv: How’d you hook up Pharcyde?

Dogu: I like the manager of the Pharcyde. I met him some years ago in France at a conference. I don’t know. Somehow you just meet people and you stay in contact and a year later, I got in contact through the Internet with a guy who produced a lot of tunes with the Pharcyde over the last few years. I hooked him up with some contacts in Europe and then I asked him for some contacts with the Pharcyde. That’s just how you do it – you help each other. Then I got an e-mail from Bootie Brown and I couldn’t believe he’s mailing me. [Laughs] Then I got in contact with the manager again who remembered me and we just did it.

SSv: What about a dream collaboration? Do you have a list?

Dogu: [Laughs] Yes. I would love to work with Tom Waits and Mos Def. And if Aretha Franklin is still alive… [Laughs]

Tagged as: Germany, Hip-hop