(10.03.2017)
Tokio Hotel are among the most commercially successful musicians from Germany, with up to now 7 million sold Albums. After the departure from the major label Universal, the band is now under contract with the ProSiebenSat.1 subsidiary Starwatch Entertainment. In addition to singer Bill Kaulitz and multi-instrumentalist Tom Kaulitz, bassist Georg Listing and drummer Gustav Schäfer belong to the Tokio Hotel (photo: Lado Alexi).
Through the monsoon – and back on top!
After almost three years of work, Tokio Hotel will return to the spotlight this spring with a completely new sound and new album. I met the four full-blown musicians for the music and recording magazine “Beat” to an astonishing, relaxed and open chat about the production of the “Dream Machine” recorded in Los Angeles and Berlin.
Really, Google? “. I look at my smartphone and distrust the directions in “Maps”. It will be over field roads. And of course it’s raining. “By the monsoon,” I muttered murmur to myself. But actually: At the end of the muddy paths, an old commercial area off Berlin is waiting for me. And in that the studio-ship of Black Box Music, where in addition to a technology rental are also various rehearsals and interview lofts. And a lot of space.
A successful environment for a reboot. And that was urgently needed in the case of Tokio Hotel. The 2014 album “Kings of Suburbia” could no longer build on the rushing successes of its predecessors, a clear musical line could not be identified and the long-standing no longer a reality of a mature band with the previous major label ran out. The fact that Tokio Hotel would once more stick to the ephemeral enthusiasm of a teenager generation now reaching the age of 30 appeared more than uncertain.
Meanwhile Bill and Tom Kaulitz, Georg Listing and Gustav Schäfer are free from the embrace of their previous label, former producers, songwriters and consultants. They stand firmly on their own feet. And, at the beginning of March, they presented an album with “Dream Machine” that hardly anyone expected from the four musicians. The sometimes shrill teen-skirt of days gone by gives way to an ambient-soft electro-pop carpet, which immediately fogs itself in ear…. A venture, sure. But also a deep inner satisfaction for a band that is ready for whole new chapters off the beaten tracks of the mainstream. There is much to tell.
You started working on “Dream Machine” as early as 2016. What was the production period?
Bill / In January 2016, we started work on Dream Machine at the Berlin Red Bull Studios. Tom is constantly producing in his own studio, and so we met for the first time to listen to his demos and ideas. We have also heard music from other artists. This creative brainstorming led to the recording of the first five pieces.
How did it go from there?
Bill / Tom and I took the ideas to Los Angeles to take them to our studio and write more songs. This actually lasted all over the past year. We made the final touches here in Berlin.
In the meantime, we have almost reached spring 2017. Is there actually still a feeling for the partly one year old pieces?
Tom / Yes! We’ve just left some songs quite a long bit, which always does music quite well – if you listen to them a few months later and still find good, then it is ready for finalization.
Bill / In fact, “Boy Do not Cry” is a song that we all had lost something for. This was one of the pieces we recorded in Berlin. And now everyone wants to hear it (laughs).
Looking for the signature sound
The sound of the new album is insanely coherent. How do you do this if you work on it for over a year?
Tom / Especially after the last album “Kings of Suburbia”, it was our goal to find a sound for which we stand. At the same time, this caused us some worries. But we wanted to draw a clearly recognizable musical thread through the album.
Bill / Actually, people have asked us lately about the “typical sound of Tokio Hotel”. It was hard to get an answer.
Especially as additional pressure is created.
Tom / We have therefore decided, first of all, not to think about it any more. Because the big difference between the current albums and all the previous albums is that we have done everything ourselves – a “signature” sound is created automatically.
Anyone who works on an album for a long time must have a consistent music taste.
Tom / Bill and I have a quite similar taste. That was not the case before. What we ourselves hear inspires us again for writing and also for production.
And what are you listening to right now?
Bill / Chvrches! We saw the last year at the Coachella-Festival, and that was awesome!
Tom / The songs are just as great as the production.
Bill / Rationale I like to listen!
Tom / And I love Banks – she is very well produced and has beautiful sound worlds and melodies.
Bill / Chet Faker aka Nick Murphy I think well. There are also bands I’ve always heard – Depeche Mode, for example.
How did the collaboration between you look at the new album in detail?
Tom / Bill and I mainly wrote the songs together. I myself then produced them. Twice a year, we hire larger studios to record the recordings – for example live basses and percussions. We also use the time in the studio for sampling.
What are you sampling?
Tom / We have rehearsed many of the new songs with real drums that Gustav has recorded. However, in most cases these recordings have not landed on the album. We have sampled Gustav’s entire kit and used Loops on the computer.
How do you start a song?
Tom / As a rule, I bring demos to the studio, which contain almost 80 percent of the bass and drums. Georg and Gustav then play in the studio again.
Bill / The “problem” is that Tom’s demos are always quite right out. He is just quite detailed. There is often little room for experiments.
Georg / Tom usually has a clear idea of how a song should sound when it comes to the studio.
Tom / Still, the pieces are, in my view, already anything but perfect. Sometimes I just bring loops that go over eight bars. And from this we develop the further song and the vocals.
Gustav, how does Tom make himself as a virtual drummer?
Gustav / He does it quite well (laughs). In this respect, too, he is very precise; Every bassdrum, each snare and hi-hat can be worked on for hours.
Tom / We do not use finished work sounds or sample libraries. All the drums you hear on the new album are created from scratch.
Fight the egos
When did the songs of Dream Machine give you enough confidence to make everything yourself from A to Z?
Bill / For “Kings of Suburbia” we had already tried a certain self-sufficient way of working – some of the songs we had written and produced completely ourselves. We were able to fill a lot of self-confidence. However, there were also numbers, at which five other writers were involved.
Sounds like stress!
Bill / Above all, we were dealing with American songwriters whose egos are huge. Some of them already came to the studio with their manager – makes you really want to puke.
Tom / This “writing-room” is really bad!!
Bill / In the US some of the songwriters are already stars themselves. Then it is already clear who and which share in the rights and who gets the funds. And when the song is ready, they want to hear the mix. Then the egos are popping up. That was for us all too stupid
How did you get rid of this situation?
Bill / We were still in a certain “scaffolding” until our last album. For example, we still had our “newcomer deal” from ten years ago and were under contract with the same producers. So we had to constantly look within this contract to see how far we could move. For Dream Machine we did not have to worry about all this anymore, signed with a new record company and put together our own team.
I find it difficult to leave the pre-made opinions about your sound and your image just behind you.
Bill / Yes, especially because we had been working with some people since we were 12 or 13. There is already a journey behind all the participants. But since the last album, we’ve started to build our own studio, where we can move without anyone talking.
This must be a huge liberation.
Tom / Especially because I love working in the studio.
More than the life situation?
Tom / Of course I also like to play live. Both are completely different worlds. But if I had to choose, I prefer the studio. I am also very fond of days and weeks. Optimal is the cycle, two years to produce, then go a year on tour.
Dream Machine sounds like the soundtrack to a movie, which takes place while listening to the mind’s eye.
Tom / Our music is generally inspired by movies. We think very strongly in pictures and scenes.
Bill / In addition, we have a very strong affinity to science fiction.
The cover is reminiscent of Sci-Fi radio plays from the eighties. A conscious association?
Bill / Actually, I have to think of “E.T.” when I see the cover. Even the forest can be seen. The only thing missing is the bicycling bike with the basket (laughs).
Tom / Anyway Dream Machine has a certain retro feel, not only in the instrumentation. Because for us, too, we were certainly back to the roots, because just as we did in the beginning, we did everything alone.
How did you imagine that?
Bill / There were some producers, songwriters and some others around us. Sometimes it was ten people.
Tom / Added the people from the Major label. If the one word was not right, we had to do it again
Equipment intoxication in the studio
Which synths are used primarily on the album?
Tom / In Dream Machine there are a lot of things to hear from Roland – both hard and software. For example, the system One and the Gaia. Korg’s legacy plug-ins are also widely used, especially with the arpeggios. The NI Komplete stories I actually almost always take for the pianos. An incredibly good bass plug-in is the Renaissance bass from Waves. We also frequently use the Helios 69 on the UAD-2 card.
Do you mainly use your own equipment or do you rely on the respective studio equipment?
Tom / As a rule, the things belong to us. But there are exceptions. We recorded the Minimoog at the Red Bull Studios, because it was there. The vocoder, on the other hand, I recorded in a studio in LA – that was some old Roland part. Because I simply do not find a reasonable vocoder software.
The guitars are very punctual, almost like other arpeggios.
Tom / The guitars we use almost “only” as a stylistic, so they listen almost like sample loops.
The last piece “Stop Babe” is almost out there with it’s guitars. By the way, the real highlight of the album, I think. Although it is almost like a foreign body when you first hear it.
Bill / True, that transports in the first place such a happy feeling. Personally, it was therefore initially a bit too friendly. Stop Babe was one of the last numbers we recorded in LA before we flew to Germany. Meanwhile it is also one of my favorite songs, because the emotion is true.
Do you have tips for the combination of synths, guitars and drums in recording?
Tom / In production itself, I feel the relationship between bass drum and bass most critically. There is no standard formula that you can use continuously, because this interplay is different from song to song. R-Bass and Helios are incredibly great help in the creation of sensible sub- as well as synth-basses around the drums. Because this is the foundation for a good production for me.
My real tip, however, is to start with the song-writing and not enter the production right away. Previously, I was completely lost in sound programming. In the end I had a great sound, but the song itself was rubbish. And that is annoying, because then the sound is burnt together. Therefore it is better to work with a sound that is quite okay.
You seem very methodical.
Tom / But it is not that we are looking for certain days that we want to mix. I mix anyway directly on the production line. While I am playing the guitar, I can see what is missing – whether the snare is tight enough, whether a bottom snare has to be added, and so on. Sometimes it even happens that we do not need a separate mixing session anymore. And that is why it is doubly important not to do the mixing already during the song-writing.
7 Laptops for a Hallelujah!
Your tour starts in March. Now it is about the sound of the album for the Live situation to implement. How do you get it?
Bill / With seven laptops (all laugh). For the vocal processing alone, we need a separate computer.
Georg / Our studio looks like a space station.
Bill / We break the typical band structure on the stage. We can no longer bring the sound of the album with guitar, bass and drums. Tom and Georg are in such a kind of mission control.
What do you use on stage?
Tom / First and foremost, MIDI controllers with which we drive MainStage 3 from Apple. We use many of the album sounds as samples.
Bill / On top of that, our Vocal-Processing also runs live on the stage.
Tom / Each plug-in is automated. All the effects that we use on the album are live on the stage. For guitar effects we use various Kemper-Amps.
How did you divide the instruments among you on the stage?
Tom / Georg and I play keyboards and jump back and forth between synth, guitars, bass and percussions. So it can happen that I play three or four different instruments within one song.
How about the drums?
Gustav / I play live drums and a complete SBS-X-E kit. There comes together – in part, I control 16 samples per song.
Are you downing partly a quite sound from the powerful Dream Machine to make it live-compatible?
Bill / No, I would not find anything worse than if the theatrical and the volume of the album would not come over. We want to be conscious of this, so that the listener gets real goose bumps.
Which sequencer system does it use live?
Tom / Ableton Live handles the main show, automates and sends the MIDI signals. And as I said, MainStage is responsible for the keyboards and the vocal processing.
Probably you use the MacBook Pro?
Bill / I even have the new one with the touch bar. Frankly I use the but only for the word completion in my emails (laughs).
Tom / In the studio I have a relatively obsolete MacBook, because I worked with Logic 7 for years and had to use the OS-X version, which still supports this. On the way I use Logic X. Every now and then we also mix Pro Tools.
How do you use old songs on the tour? Do you work in the new sound or are there also original versions?
Bill / It is quite justified to recognize that the people like “monsoon” and would not like to hear a 30-minute jam version of it. On the other hand, the song will remain interesting to us and fit into our current sound. It is and remains a balancing act.