Feeling a bit nostalgic and thought I should write something about each track on the album Testosterone.

Nothing to say was the first track I wrote with Erik. We had just met and was trying to figure out what kind of music we should do together. We both liked electroclash and figured we should write a pop song with some edge and attitude.

We started by programming a baseline and some drums in Reason. In fact a lot of our early songs are programmed solely in Reason. It's only the vocals that are done in Cubase. The music came along very easy and it only took a couple of hours to write and programme. But when it came to the lyrics we got stuck and had no idea in what direction we wanted to go.

I had this idea that we should stay away from love themes. Probably thought it was easy to get into cliches, and wanted to do something different. I remember that we took a break from the studio and went for pizza. While eating we came up with the idea of trying to write lyrics about something that annoyed and angered us (wixh has become a formula for Batch ID). We pitched a lot of different ideas before we started to talk about stuff that currently was on TV.

We both despised reality television and docusoaps where young people got famous for being drunk and doing stupid stuff. We both seemed to have a particular disgust for the show The Simple life with Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie. Rich girls that seemed to get famous for being obnoxious and stupid and really detached from everyday life. Girls with absolutely nothing to say. With that topic in mind it was very easy to come up with the lyrics and I think we recorded the vocals the very same day.

We had absolutely no clues about production when we started the band. We only used EQ on the master and on the vocals. The other sounds is mostly raw from the synths in Reason. We had some rudimentary knowledge about reverb and delays, but other then that, it is not many effects in the production.

So we kind of picked sounds that we thought fit in different places in the soundscape. That is why the sound of the songs sometimes are a bit flat and lacks a bit in punch and depth. But considering the lack of knowledge I am surprised that the songs sounds as good as they do. It could have been much worse.
Johan

This started as a joke on a train. We were on our way back home after a gig with a small but very loving audience in Berlin. We had fallen in love with the city and the loving people that greeted us there. We were also a bit frustrated that we didn't speak the language. Especially since we had shared stage with the band Oberer Totpunkt, wich we were told had some really interesting lyrics that we  just couldnt understand since they were sung in german.

On the train we started to do a word game where we started by saying; Was ist das? - and then we answered with any german worlds that popped up in our heads. Very silly, but also very funny when you are über tired and in a good mood.

Once we got back to our studio we were a bit lost to what our next step should be. Before our gig in Berlin we had released the EP Tanz Anarchie, and were really trying to be more EBM, but also a bit less serious then we had been on the album Testosterone. But we didn't know where to go from there and we weren't sure at all about our musical direction.

We had this idea of using less programming and incorporate real instruments instead of using only the computer. So we started to play a beat from an old drum-machine, a Yamaha MR10. We recorded a few bars and made a loop of the rythm in Cubase. Then we added a simple baseline witch we recorded live with a Yamaha DX7 and processed that in the same manner as the drums.

Then we started to add a bunch of noises and rythms using anything we could find on the premises. We made a snare by hitting a aluminum tray, we made maracas out of a jar filled with rice and we made alot of noises on a big, blue steel barrel. We also recorded some noises by tweaking our Korg MS-10.

We even used a toy in form of an alien mask wich had a microphone that made a couple of alien sound effects. We used that on the voice to get it a bit distorted in the break.

The song sounded very old school, very analogue and minimal. We loved it but was it Batch ID? What was it? Was ist das?

The lyrics kind of wrote them self from that point and we had found a new way to create and record songs. Today we often combine programming with some instruments or sounds recorded live.

Listen to Was ist das? at our SoundCloud page.

That's an ironic title for a first song. Nothing to say was what I and Erik came up with when we wrote our very first song together back in 2006.

We where very inspired by electro clash and wanted to write synthpop inspired by the 80's, with attitude from EBM and other heavy dance music.

I came up with the base-line and we molded the song around it. The music came very easy and we had the foundations for the song before lunch that day (we started early).

But we still had no idea for lyrics. I just knew that I did'nt want to write songs about love and boy-meets-girl. There are allready to many love songs, and others does them better then us. We tried to come up with ideas while eating pizza. Finally we came up with the idea to write about stuff that bothered or annoyed us (wich is still how we come up with ideas for lyrics).

First thing that pops up in both our heads is Paris Hilton. We were both really sickned by all those tv-shows with blond girls acting stupid and superficial. We thought that they had absolutely nothing to say and we had our first idea for lyrics.

All sounds and programming was done in Propellerheads  Reason wich I just had started to use. We mixed the music as good as we could within the program. None of us had been doing production before and we did'nt even grasp the concept of EQ. We just picked some good sounds and tried to get the levels right.

Then we saved the music as a file and imported it to Cubase where we recorded the vocals. A couple of takes later and we were ready with our very first song that same afternoon.

Alot has happened since that day and alot has changed about how we record and produce our music. But a few things remain; we still program ideas in Reason and we still don't write love songs.

Listen to the song at Soundcloud