ok then, the story starts on a birthdayparty (as it always does), with the idea to compose some lyrics/poetry of stephen. i think it was in february 2001, and a month later or so, it starts in ingmar`s livingroom as a trio, then a quartett.
after a few month of terrorising the complete house, we decided to expanse to a quintett (not really), and changed the location instead of being nailed on the cross.
so we´ve started jamming and composing songs in our new rehearsal room since october 2001 and soon thereafter regina improved our sound by becoming our second vocalist.
the only thing left we needed, was a drummer with some experience and a brave heart to play our kind of material. (did you ever play reggae without drums?) it took several months until we found thomas in april 2002 in a pub. his alter ego is a black metal guitarist but he also plays the drums.
hmm, sounds like we play western and country
. ;-) so we completed our first regular lineup.
as we were confrontated with ingmar´s plan to leave goettingen for his love to hamburg, we hurried up to record our material in september 2002. it was a really good experience for all of us to record and produce the cd completely on our own. in this moment we declared the band as a project because we wanted to work together with ingmar in future.
during our recording session the usa started aggression against iraq and the people in washington were alienated by a serial killer. these events brought up the idea for a thematic album. it´s about the sniper
, a man who has been trained to kill and sent to war, but hasn´t been untrained for the time after war. we began to work out a critical statement to war and killing, filled up with cynical strokes on media and society.
while we were working on our new songs stephen told us about his return to ireland in springtime 2003. again we suffered a penalty in time and with a lot of energy we finished our songs ready for recording. and we did it. we included ingmar on the keys again, who took a short holiday in goettingen and introduced andre on backing vocals, who was involved the first time in our sound.
after the leaving of stephen we integrated andre as a second guitarist. first of all we practised a selection of songs from our past two albums, trying to form a setlist for live perfomance. it didn´t took long to our first gig. we played in the haus der kulturen
in goettingen at august the 22nd. it seems to be the last gig in this lineup because regina finished her studies and left the town a few weeks later. since then we had been looking for a new vocalist.
until november 2003 we spent our time to train our skills. olaf improved his saxophon ability for use in the band and we experimented with new sounds and styles. then susann, a young vocalist, found us and completed the new lineup.
her singing as well as her lyrics influenced the ideas and formed a new kind of sound in the history of the DEM.
left to right: thomas - aki - susann - olaf - andre :: summer/autumn 2003
photographed by aki with a timer
our companion band in the rehearsal room jack is back
offered us to be their support band for a few gigs in goettingen and we agreed. we overworked three old songs and with six new ones we formed a new setlist. together with jack is back
we rocked the cafe kreuzberg
at may the 29. and the noergelbuff
at june the 9. in 2004.
After the gigs we worked on three new songs and added them to our setlist. So we´ve got twelve songs ready for recording. In difference to our last two recording sessions we had now enough time to prepare the recording, so some of us could go in holidays in summer.
We were able to expand and practise the songs in autumn without pressure of time. As a new feature we decided to record our songs in single takes for each instrument, not like before the complete rhythm section together at once. As well we learned to use digital recording hardware instead of analog devices. (which isn´t easy as you might think. crappy software...)
In February ´05 we started with a five-day-weekend and tested our recording skills on four songs. Surprisingly we succeeded "The Voice", "Dark Clouds", "Ordinary Love Song" and "The Red In The Snow" in a quite good quality, what has motivated us to continue the recordings on several additional weekends in spring. Still recording...
...finished recording. We have tons of tracks and takes and it seems to take quite a long time for editing, mixing and mastering. The first results are very promising. now we´re going to look into the details.
meanwhile there happened some changes in our lineup:
susann finished school and left göttingen for further education.
sylvia replaced her very soon as our new vocalist and joined our band.
regrettably, olaf (one of our former members) decided to leave the band as well.