Doing some renovations wiTHin my Site. If you find someTHing not working, or missing, or jus', not right, feel free to ask me about it

(27.02.2015)

Cult Kids, All-Grown-Up – AN INTERVIEW

Love has no gender or religion, no borders” – Tokio Hotel told KALTBLUT as we chatted about their new album “Kings of Suburbia” [Island Records] and their upcoming world tour–“Feel It All: The Club Experience”–due to kick off in London next week. Inspired by the wanton debauchery of their newfound home in downtown L.A, Germany’s favourite lost boys Bill & Tom are finally all grown up–as are their teenage cult following–but do they still feel like aliens?

If the latest visual offering for “Love Who Loves You Back” is anything to go by, they’re now 25-years-young, frequently dark corners in Berghain-esque nightclubs where the rules to which they could never succumb do not matter, in fact do not exist at all. As they encourage fans worldwide to revel in this delicious boundary-free sphere, will they finally plug the void which MySpace friends once used to fill?

KALTBLUT: How did you record the new album?

Bill: So Georg and Gustav were still living in our home town, they still live in Germany now. Me and Tom moved to L.A. so we weren’t working together all the time, but we got to meet in the studio together for band recordings and live recordings. They came to L.A. once in a while, other times we would go to meet them in Germany.
Tom: We’ve been in Germany too. We recorded in a lot of different studios. This record took us four years of work I think, and constantly being in the studio producing, song writing. So at the end of the day it was a collection of four years of song writing – we ended up recording in a lot of different places.

KALTBLUT: Four years is a really long time!

Bill: Yeah I know, but we were constantly working on it. We wrote a lot of songs. There were so many songs that didn’t end up on the record, and we’d rather put less songs on there so we could form the perfect album. We decided to put eleven tracks on in order to do that. We also wrote a lot of songs that we wrote for ourselves that we will save to offer to other artists as well. That’s something we wanted to do anyway, produce for other people too.

KALTBLUT: What kind of other artists are you thinking of?

Tom: Oh I don’t know, it’s like in general we enjoy good music, so at the end of the day I’m not thinking in any specific genre or anything like that. For me it’s like I can enjoy that it’s good production, no matter what type of music it is – I can enjoy a good pop song, a good rock song, I like every kind of music as long as it’s well made. I’m 100% open to new ideas.

KALTBLUT: It must be important to find a new direction after being together for so many years?

Bill: Oh yeah, definitely. Especially after the last album we needed a break and a change to get new inspiration because we didn’t know what we wanted to do music-wise. We’ve said it all, we’ve done it all, we were kind of like tired and didn’t know what to do. We didn’t just want to make another album that sounds the same. So we just thought we need to live our lives a little bit to get inspired.

KALTBLUT: Is that why you you decided to move over to L.A.?

Tom: Uh huh, yeah. At the time for me it was super hard to live here in Germany because of privacy reasons. We always had fans and people following us, we weren’t able to go out without having security. So each time we came off from a tour or wanted to get a break we were heavily guarded, it was like a prison. We couldn’t go out and get inspired! We really needed that change. We realised we have to have a life too. I guess when you’re young you don’t really realise. I remember we were coming home after three years of constant touring and I didn’t really know what to do because I had no life. When you’re constantly on the road you don’t realise it, but when you come home it hits you and then you can fall into a black hole. So the reason we went to L.A. was for personal reasons, and then we started to feel like we wanted to work on the record and take our time, be creative, not feel pressure from the label. We just wanted to write and work as producers.

KALTBLUT: Do you think that moving to L.A. and your experiences there shaped the new album?

Bill: For sure, we started a whole new life.
Tom: It totally worked out for us.
Bill: It was the best decision we could have made. I mean, we’re still psychos! But I think on a personal level, I don’t know what would have happened if we had stayed in Europe. It was one of the best decisions we ever made.

KALTBLUT: We were really surprised when we watched the video for “Love Who Loves You Back” – it almost feels like a typical Friday night out in Berlin! Were your new videos purposely intended to be provocative?

Bill: People asked us, because we released all three videos before the album came out and we got confronted with “Ah everything is so sexual!” and we didn’t even realise! Every time we make decisions it’s super spontaneous and out of pure instinct, so when we wrote those songs I already have a concept for the video in my mind. I always have a pretty keen idea of what I want to do and for “Love Who Loves You Back” I wanted to make that video for a long time, even when we were making the last album, but it just wasn’t the right director and it wasn’t the right song. I always had that idea, so when I wrote that song I just knew that the video was meant for that. The idea inspired by a movie called “Perfume” directed by Tom Tykwer. I wanted to take the idea into the video, but instead of perfume, we used music – because I feel that’s the message of the song. It’s like love has no gender or religion, no borders – and I just wanted to bring that across, also in a fun way. I feel like so many people are watching our videos so I wanted to do something like that.

KALTBLUT: So you guys are going on tour?

Bill: We have until the 5th and then we go to London. We are really excited, it’s going to be a great show. It’s a little nerve wracking because when you’ve worked on something for so long, you just want it to sound as good as it can be. Plus we’re a nervous band! We get like super nervous before each show, even after years!
Tom: Yeah I think it’s getting worse!
Bill: I don’t think we’re ever going to lose that. I think that’s maybe part of it, but especially if you have a new album and everything, you’re super nervous.
Tom: I wish it would be a little less.
Bill: Yeah but I’m good at working under pressure, most of the time I’m better.

KALTBLUT: So we mentioned on our Twitter page that we would interview you guys, and have some questions from your fans!
Question #1 from Sandrine Tan: Which language is the most beautiful for you guys?

Tokio Hotel: Italian!
Bill: I love Italian people, I think they’re all beautiful inside and outside. They’re so pretty! It’s a super nice country, I love the whole culture, I love the food, the architecture. The language especially!

Question #2 from Devyn: What music are you listening to lately?

Bill: Right now I love the song by Lenny called “Because I Love You”. It’s a cool song.
Tom: There’s another great song called “Shadow of the Sun” by Taped Rai. Like somebody will come across a cool song and then everybody goes and buys it!
Bill: We have to admit that we don’t really listen to that much music when we are so into our own stuff. When you are making music the whole time, like right now we are running a set or two sets every day which means we play almost 42 songs. By the end of a session like that you are so tired of listening to music because you are concentrating on your own for so long. I also think the new Ellie Goulding song is very good.

Question #3 from Elizabeth Joseph: How long did Georg and Gustav know each other before meeting the twins?

Georg: It was not too long, it was like a year or something. We just clicked.
Tom: And it clicked especially when they saw us together in the club, like they wanted to join our band so bad! [Laughs]

Question #4 from Whitney: Which of your new songs are you most excited to perform live?

Bill: I think now that we are into rehearsals, the opening of the show is going to be great. I don’t want to give away which song that is! [Laughs] I really think “Stormy Weather” will be great live.
Gustav: I think “Masquerade” will be really good to play live.
Bill: “The Heart Get No Sleep” is going to be cool too.

Question #5 from @TokioHotelFans: What can the fans expect from the new live show and tour?

Bill: Now that we are in the process we are excited to finally share the record with people. It’s like performing it in front of people, you can see them and see how much they enjoy it.
Tom: They can expect a lot! We tried to fit a great production into small venues and we are going to bring a lot of new stuff to the tour. It’s going to be a really special show. We wanted to create something that’s not been done before.
Bill: So we tried a lot of things, we tried using a lot of different instruments that we are not used to playing; keys and piano. There is so much programming and processing and new technique that goes into the show that we have never done before. I don’t think anyone has done before! We have great lighting and video production, just a completely new concept that we’re really excited to share with our fans.
Tom: It’s a real project, it’s a project for us as well you know. Especially putting the music together and transporting that onto stage and using the different sounds in a fresh way. There are a lot of technical aspects in there and we have to rely on it as well, so we will have to see how it goes!

Question #6 from Shabnam Zareen: I am an ‘Alien’ from Bangladesh, would you ever come to my country?

Tom: I want to go there for sure!
Bill: I would love to! This year we are going to travel the whole world, we want to play everywhere so maybe we will go to Bangladesh!

original article

(24.02.2015)

GET YOUR’S HERE

original article



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(22.01.2015)

EXCLUSIVE:
Tokio Hotel Returns with Kings of Suburbia and a New World Tour

Band Members: Bill Kaulitz (Lead Vocalist), Tom Kaulitz (Guitarist), Gustav Schäfer (Drummer) and Georg Listing (Bassist)

Following their recent show at The Viper Room in LA, we had the rare opportunity to sit down with German pop rockers Tokio Hotel, whose fan base, the Aliens, are known for being extremely dedicated. The band just released their first record in five years, Kings of Suburbia, which took them in a different direction with a new sound and a set of electronic, dance-oriented songs. They are gearing up for their new world tour “Feel It All: The Club Experience” in March 2015. Be sure to track Tokio Hotel on Bandsintown so you’re the first to know when tickets go on sale near you.

We are also offering 5 lucky Tokio Hotel fans a chance to win an exclusive signed Polaroid from the band! To enter, simply send a tweet to @Bandsintown & @decodeltd with the hashtag #THxBIT. We’ll randomly select 5 winners and alert them on Twitter next week!

It’s been five years since you’ve put out an album. What are your thoughts on the new ways artists have to promote themselves, as well as all the new streaming services?

Bill: I feel like it’s good and bad. It’s good that you have your own kind of media so you can put out whatever you want and communicate with your fans directly without having someone come in between. You can actually communicate with your fan base and you can clean up shit that has been said about you, which is great. On the other hand, it’s sad a lot of big magazines don’t exist anymore, or they don’t have the money to do great photo productions anymore. Also CDs, downloads, streaming, I hate it. We do it because you have to do it but I hate that stuff. For me, it’s best to buy a CD. We released a vinyl from our record. We had a cassette as well. We like all of those formats and we put so much thought and work into our videos and artwork but people don’t even see it anymore. That’s the bad part about it. I can live with social media, but we should stop the illegal downloads and go back to CDs. That would be my perfect world.

How would you describe your relationship with your fans and how you see that changing now that your sound has changed and you’re moving to a more electronic music audience?

Bill: Some people grew with us. They’re our age because we were super young when we started. They now have a different taste in music, they see things differently just like we do. We have a strong fan base so it’s like going on an adventure with us. Our fans are very, very supportive – we have the best fans ever! They are very intense. We gained some new fans as well – a lot more guys. Back in the day it was always girls and now we see on YouTube that we have 50% guys watching our videos!
Tom: Now that we are a little older and a little uglier, guys are more open to our music.
Bill: Which is great! We don’t have a target audience or someone we go after. Whoever enjoys [our] music and the stuff we do, it’s like, “Welcome to our shows!” We then grow our fan base a little bit.

What do you think about older fans commenting, upset about the changing sound?

Bill: I expected it, there are people that like to complain about anything. Even if we had created the same album we did a couple of years ago, we would’ve heard, “Oh my God, they didn’t change at all! The same old shit, they didn’t put any work into it.” We don’t care about that, we never really did. With Kings of Suburbia, we wanted to make an album that we enjoy; that reflects our tastes and the music we want to make. For us, it’s all about being authentic. If you go straight to what you’ve done for so many years and just keep doing that, that’s not authentic. We’re all people, we change and life is changing us and we get inspired by different things. I can’t stick to the same sound with every album. We want to keep it fresh and do what we enjoy.

What music and artists inspire you, particularly in the creation of this album? Is there anyone you would like to collaborate with?

Tom: There are plenty of people I would love to collaborate with but it’s hard to say who inspired us for this record because we were producing it over four years. I’m really into Chet Faker right now and then there are our childhood heroes Aerosmith and Depeche Mode. It’s so different, we don’t have one genre that we love. As artists and musicians, we are more into great productions and good songs, no matter the artist. Daft Punk would be great to collaborate with, that would be amazing.

Kings of Suburbia marks the first time you produced an album yourself; was it refreshing having all that control?

Tom: It was refreshing, and really intense, and a lot of work. Totally a new experience. That’s why it took us such a long time, because we made everything on our own; like writing the songs, producing, playing, everything.
Bill: It’s the best thing we could have done. I’m super happy with it – to have that freedom, and to not have to rely on a good producer and someone you might not even want to work with. We collaborated with a couple of songwriters and producers on this album but in general we just made so much on our own. Especially in vocal production.
Tom: It started out of a frustration, because initially we met up with people and started to work on stuff but it didn’t feel right and it was not music we wanted to do. Then we decided, “Let’s build a home studio!” where we started from the very beginning. “Stormy Weather” was one of the first songs that we came up with and it was the guide for the whole record. Because of our frustration, it turned out to be amazing.

On your “TOKIO HOTEL TV” episode, you mentioned the album was ready to come out last year, but then you started writing again. Is the album that’s out now from the first or second batch, or a combination?

Bill: It’s a combination; a lot of songs weren’t on the record a year ago when we wanted to put it out. Like “Love Who Loves You Back” and “Run Run Run” – we didn’t have these songs in the beginning. We were in the studio and amazing things were happening. I was like, “We need more time because the material we are making right now is so good we can’t miss out on it.” Really it’s a best out of four years of writing and making music.

Your upcoming tour is called “The Club Experience.” Does this mean you’ll be playing smaller venues? Do you prefer smaller spaces to the big arena shows?

Bill: Not necessarily, I love to play in front of a lot of people. I like big stages. We wanted to change it up, and since the album is so electronic, we want to turn a live club into a night club; between 1,000 -2,000 people [size venues]. Its going to be small; like a night where you go and party rather than a normal concert. We thought it would be cool to have smaller venues; our fans requested that a lot. They want to see us and meet us, so the whole concept is a little different. And then we hit the arenas by the end of the year.

How did you manage to assemble such a great team behind you – with representation from De-Code LTD, distribution from Universal, publicity and marketing from 42 West and Total Assault, etc..? What advice can you share on how to choose the right partners to manage a musician’s career?

Bill: Interscope was involved with our last album but we didn’t like their work so we got out of the contract for this album. Sometimes you work with big people and big companies and that’s not always the right choice. We now work with William Morris Agency for live booking, they’re great. It always depends; it’s about the vision and the vision you have as a band and that’s how we pick our people. We never had a classic management, we always had people on our payroll just to keep everything going but the decisions we always make ourselves. Basically everything that happens is on our table.
Tom: We cleaned it up a bit too. For this record, we had the video directors, to the people making the clothing and taking pictures for the album, and the artwork… everything is pretty much with the label in the U.S.; friends and people we’ve known for a long time, and that love the band, are passionate about it and understand the project.
Bill: I hate to deal with any egos. We just wanted to work with people that are excited about the band and have the same vision. In Europe, we are still with Universal Music. It really depends on how you get along and if it works out. It’s not always the biggest company that works best, for sure.

You already put out three music videos for the new album. How much input did you have in those concepts?

Bill: A lot! We made “Run Run Run” with one of our close friends, John Lucah Fellini. For that song it was perfect because he’s very good at capturing intimate situations and very pure stuff; it was such a passion project for both of us. We worked with Chris Morris for “Girl Got A Gun” – we wanted to do something different and funky, which led to the idea of including transgenders. With “Love Who Loves You Back”, I wanted to film a massive orgy, but then I told the guy no, I want to be INVOLVED in the orgy – not just singing in the background! He said, “I didn’t know you would do that… great let’s do it.”

What’s a typical gig day like for you?

Tom: Now that we’re going on tour it’s going to be: get up sometime in the afternoon, soundcheck, and after that we meet the fans. Next city we get up, soundcheck, meet the fans, play; maybe some table tennis in between. Pretty much every day, exactly the same.
Bill: It’s exhausting though. People don’t know how exhausting a tour is. We are just trying to stay healthy, so no one gets sick cause it’s such a long time. You always sleep on a bus, you never have a real room or a nice shower.
Tom: You don’t have a lot of daylight.

Are there any cities you look forward to playing in, or do they all kind of seem the same?

Tom: It’s more about the venue. In Paris we have a great venue so I’m looking forward to Paris.
Bill: This tour we are playing in really special venues. Like in Hamburg, a beautiful church. We either have outstanding cool locations or legendary clubs. It’s going to be interesting, I think they’re all going to have very shitty backstage rooms.

Are there any phone apps you can’t live without?

Bill: Instagram, InstaSize, Uber, WhatsApp
Tom: I’m really old school. I’m not using anything.
Bill: He doesn’t even have an Instagram! He only takes his phone to text or make a call.
Tom: I have a news app I’m always looking into.

original article

(08.01.2015)

I caught up with the guys in Tokio Hotel to discuss what they’ll be doing in 2015:
Where they’ll be headed on tour, if Bill’s dog Pumba has a girlfriend,
and what’s next from “Kings of Suburbia”?

Dallas Interviews