Shake Appeal is a column that highlights new garage and garage-adjacent releases. This time, Evan Minsker talks to Klaus Johann Grobe, aka two Swiss dudes who just released a very good new LP on Trouble in Mind.
Last week, Klaus Johann Grobe—the duo of Sevi Landolt (organ/synth/vocals) and Daniel Bachmann (drums/vocals)—released their debut LP Im Sinne der Zeit, which follows a 2012 10" and a 2013 7". The LP was recorded over the span of eight days last summer at Dala Studios in Winterthur, Switzerland.
The duo sing exclusively in German, but despite the language barrier, their grooves are infectious and universal. It's an album that only loosely exists in the realm of "garage", perhaps more indebted to jazz-funk or soul records than to rock'n'roll. But it's well worth exploring, so I emailed them a few questions.
Pitchfork: What's going on with the album cover?
Sevi Landolt: I visited my girlfriend's parents on a weekend and we looked through their old photos. When we came to this series, which was shot at a company party in the early 80s, we just thought, "This has to be the cover, it's perfect!" That's pretty much how Grobe works in general. We never think too much; if it feels right, we do it.
Pitchfork: How did you guys get together?
SL: We’ve been making music together for several years in several different bands. Those included amateurish jazz-funk, electronic stuff, garage rock, surf…oh man. Dani then moved to Berlin for a couple of years and during summer 2011, right before he came back, I asked him if he would be up for a new project, just the two of us. Klaus Johann Grobe was planned as a short one-off thing. Pressing an EP, playing a couple of shows, sell the EPs and then move on to different new things.
We were both into trip hop in the late 90s. When we started to jam together at the time it probably sounded like Massive Attack without the vocals, but with Bo Hansson on keys instead or something. We were both heavy into Kare & the Cavemen aka Euroboys though. We even had an all Euroboys cover band [at one point].
Pitchfork: A lot of things that have been written about your music include references to krautrock and Brazilian groove stuff. Are those styles of music important to you guys?
SL: We’ve never been that much into krautrock to be honest. It’s superb when it works, but it has never been something we’ve been to enthusiastic about. Though we like stuff being stripped down, reduced to the important things, living of small details, being repetitive if something works. So those might be some parallels to krautrock, but we’ve probably been more influenced by a dozen of other things before it comes to krautrock.
We never really got the comparison to Brazilian music. When we recorded "Regen Raus" with those stupidly cheap timbales things, we came out of the recording room and David (the engineer) was smiling and said, "You guys sound like an all-white combo trying to sound exotic and Brazilian for the first time. I love it!". But yeah, I’m heavy into Brazilian music, South American music in general. Even if you listen to South American garage or psychedelic music you always find a certain warmth in their sound, harmonies and melodies.
Pitchfork: It's also a soulful record.
SL: We're soul fans, yes! I think Dani is more into 70s soul with a funky edge while I’m more of a sweet soul, group harmony man. We’re both into boogie as well! And disco.
Pitchfork: For listeners who don't understand the lyrics due to the language barrier, could you give a brief summary of some of the themes on the album?
SL: The usual stuff: love, personal struggles, society's stupidness, nonsense…but even in German the meanings aren’t that easy to understand I guess. It's not that important either. Someone described them as "dadaistic," which is probably right. We liked that.
Video for "Traumhaft" from their 2013 7"