We Love Budapest: Your newest album, “Preservantia”, was a kind of summarization of your new lifestyle as nomads. What was the most important thing that you’ve learned from it?
Danielle de Picciotto:
We became nomads because we were sick and tired of the gentrification in Berlin, and we thought it was a Berlin phenomena. Now that we’ve been living as nomads for six years, we realized that it’s a worldwide thing, and the main thing about gentrification is the fact that the only thing that is important for the people in the industry is profit. And through this journey, we’ve realized that it’s more important than ever to initiate things that have nothing to do with profit, but with integrity. It is very important to find new ways to do that, no matter if it’s music, or as artists, humans.
Alexander Hacke:
And also, during the process of becoming nomads, we had to do some drastic changes in our lifestyle: we got rid of many of our materialistic values which triggered – in me at least – a transformative process. Some sort of catharsis, or epiphany, or whatever you want to call it. Basically I’ve learned that I’ve spent vast amount of my life, my precious lifetime, trying to obtain money to get materialistic things that I’ll be responsible for. And getting rid of them was kind of a euphoric thing. And I think that kind of feeling you can hear in the music.
We Love Budapest: You mentioned Berlin, and there is a lot of talk about Budapest being the new Berlin. Danielle, you’ve been an integral part of the German capital’s art scene – what are your thoughts about that?
Danielle de Picciotto:
I think that the things that are happening here with Sándor {ed:
Kozlov, organizer of the Friday concert and press agent at the A38 Ship}, for instance – and what we see, hear, and experience while we are here, is that he or you are still interested, or the A38 Ship is still very interested, in underground musicians, and I think it’s really important to keep up stuff like that. We feel that in general, here things like that are possible. As soon as it disappears, culture goes down the drain.
Alexander Hacke:
I think it’s the most important thing that the scene is not overrun by that overall climate of competition. If you manage to stick together and support each other in the underground, everything is possible. That’s one thing in many of the places we’ve been to, where life just got so hard that people lost focus of what is really important.
We Love Budapest: Like London?
Alexander Hacke:
Yes, like London or New York or even Berlin! In the ’80s, when Berlin was a secluded elitist little village, people were really looking out for each other. Now that it’s open, life got so hard that there is a competition, and everyone wants to be a star. It’s very different. But I think it starts to become a global phenomena – and we have to remind ourselves of what is really important.
We Love Budapest:
Danielle, you also wrote a book about your experiences as nomads, titled Now We Are Gypsies; which is a rather bold title.
Alexander Hacke:
First, I have to clarify that the title of the book comes from a silly rant of mine, because when we started our nomadic lifestyle, at every city where we performed, I came to the stage and said: “hey, we are gypsies now”! It was basically a joke, you know, implying that if we like their town, we might stay a few days. So that’s where the title comes from – but it doesn’t have that much to do with what the book is about.
Danielle de Picciotto:
Well, it certainly has something to do with not having a home. Interestingly enough, when we became nomads it was before the whole crazy migration thing started, and in the book, I’ve tried to express what is it like to not have a home. But of course, the two are not compatible. Normally, when musicians tour, they have a home they can go to. But not having a home is something which is completely different and obviously, the people that have been doing that are the nomads, the gypsies, or those who are basically homeless. Now, of course, it is becoming a huge theme, and I think this isn’t gonna stop but continue, because the more the nature and the climate changes, the more it affects people. They say that not only heat, but water too effects people, so I think England, New York, and all those places close to water, they are going to start to move soon. So it’s a theme which is huge, and of course every country and every city is reacting differently.
We Love Budapest:
You’ve already performed in Budapest many times before. What kind of memories do you have about those concerts?
Danielle de Picciotto:
I remember when we were at that hotel, with Neubauten – that was great.
Alexander Hacke:
Yes, once we were here for quite a while and we were booked at the Hotel Gellért, which was fantastic – I think it was like ten years ago… I was still working on Crossing The Bridge, the Faith Akin movie about Istanbul, so I did some mixes in that hotel room.
Danielle de Picciotto:
It was great, because the baths were in the basement and on the ground floor, and there were musicians in the hotel, playing traditional songs and instruments, and that really influenced me because they were playing the dulcimer. And now I play the hurdy-gurdy and the autoharp, so being in that hotel, listening to all the musicians playing on all the traditional instruments, really inspired me to play them too, but using them in a modern context.
Alexander Hacke: Many other memories are rather hazy, I must admit – or I cannot share them with media like this...
We Love Budapest:
You mentioned Einstürzende Neubauten, which had a song titled “Magyar Energia” (“Hungarian Energy”).
Alexander Hacke: Yes! That record was called “The Jewels”, and it was based on a certain system. One important thing was that all the lyrics were based on Blixa Bargeld’s {ed:
Einstürzende Neubauten founder-vocalist-guitarist} notations of dreams. And for some reason, one day he woke up and he had the words “magyar energia” in his head. You know how dreams are, nobody knows where they come from – but that’s how the lyrics came together!
