SABOTAGE Q.C.Q.C.?

VICTOR MEJIA: How did Sabotage Q.C.Q.C.? first get started?
SABOTAGE: Sabotage Q.C.Q.C.? originally started 1993 as a performance band, with dance, pyrotechnics and video. Music was just one part of it. After a while, especially after we went on tour with Pankow, the music became a more important part and now we start again to integrate the performances we developed before and now into our live shows.

VM: What does the “Q.C.Q.C.?” stand for? What does it mean?
S: We thought that there is surely already someone out there with the name Sabotage, therefore we added Q.C.Q.C.?, which means Qu’est-ce que c’est? or in English: “What is this?” It also has something to do with our philosophy to question everything -- even ourselves.

VM: Your name is French, yet you are a German band. Why that choice?
S: Sabotage is a word that is used the same way in many countries ...we were just searching for something powerful, but not necessarily negative. We think that Sabotage is the right choice for this aim.

VM: If you had to classify your music, what would you call it?
S: We are not so keen on classifying our own music, it should be the job of the journalists. And everybody calls it differently anyway. I mean, how would you classify new bands like Daft Punk or the Chemical Brothers? To us, it is the REAL crossover because we all mix different styles from everywhere. To us, it is a kind of post-modern collage, you sample everything and put it together in a new context. Maybe our music has a special Sabotage-style, so it is not easy to categorize...

VM: How does a Sabotage Q.C.Q.C.? song take form?
S: It is very different. Each song has its own history/development. Also, sometimes, the drums come first, sometimes the sequencer, sometimes the lyrics. We develop it without any plan. It comes out naturally. Music is Chaos.

VM: The list of bands that the band has had contact with is tremendous. Which bands have members of Sabotage worked with and in what context?
S: The list is long, yes, so just a few ones now... We started working with Paulo Favati from the Italian Pankow in 1993. He produced our debut Tumulte and the Maxi CD Annorlunda as well as our second album, Les Enfants Sauvages. For the CDs, we collaborated with bands like KMFDM, A Split Second, Rodney Orpheus of Cassandra Complex and people of the American band Die Warzau.

But, we also mix for other people. We just made a special mix of an Oomph! song that will be released through Dynamica.

VM: The production of Sexploitation Cinema is very clean. How did you get Daniel B. and Patrick Codenys to produce it? S: First of all, we think the production is very good, but not clean. There is a lot of noise and special sampling techniques that we used that made the sound very noisy... Many things were actually filtered from the so-called “white noise” that contains every sound. Daniel + Patrick sort of “organized” that white noise very well, so it has also transparency...

We got in touch by sending our last CD and asking for a mix of just one song. They did Goddess, our last single, and we worked together so well, that they decided to produce a whole album with us and also took over the management of the band.

VM: Besides Sexploitation Cinema, what other releases does the band have out there that people could look for?
S: Album: Tumulte (label Danse Macabre), album: Les Enfants Sauvages (label Strange Ways), singles Goddess and Schlager (label EMI/Spin Rec.)...but there are also very special things that people can order through our mail-order: Sabotage-mailorder, P.O.B. 401371, D-63278, Dreiech, GERMANY.

VM: How did the deal come about with a major label (EMI Electrola)?
S: Same as with Daniel + Patrick... we sent a tape (one year ago) and they liked it!

VM: What is a Sabotage Q.C.Q.C.? live performance like?
S: Well, it is terrific, of course, ha ha. What a question to answer for the band itself... It is different night. Sometimes more focused on the music, sometimes more focused on the performance part. We just made a special performance for the launch of the new fragrance Hugo For Woman where we had 10 models drumming with us on special barrels with trigger microphones and stuff. The song we performed was the new single Schlager. We also have acoustic drums and percussion and we don’t work with a DAT, we do a live mix every night with special technical equipment (VS-880 Harddisk Recorder combined with MC-303 and JP-8000 keyboard).

VM: You seem to be into fetishes...possibly SM or bondage and domination...is this a part of the band’s make-up? Is this part the margins of human sexuality?
S: We don’t think you can perform or deal with S/M or fetishism correctly or convincingly if you just use it as a make-up for a band. That’s cheap and people can sort of “smell” that it’s not true. It is part of our own characters and we play with it rather subtly, by using images in our video performances and with the clothes the singer wears. But it is not a main part of the show or anything like this. It is also a rather private sexual thing. It is not the margins of sexuality, there are no limits as long as partners agree both to whatever they do. It is just a more extreme way to express sexuality. But fetishism can be everything. You can develop fetishism for shoes, for feet, for chocolate!!

VM: Is there anything in the works to possibly get your music distributed in the US?
S: We have appeared on a compilation of 21st Circuitry with a remake of "Sex Dwarf" and with a song that is not yet chosen on a compilation of Culture Shock, but we are currently working on a deal in the States, too. This all takes time, though. Germany and Europe is the main markets our label was working on for the moment.

VM: Would you like to tour in the US?
S: What a question... of course, but it’s no use if we don’t have distribution, etc.

VM: What is the political commitment behind Sabotage Q.C.Q.C.?
S: Sabotage Q.C.Q.C.? stands for powerful expression, fruitful chaos, dadaism and political anarchism.

VM: How many different languages are your songs in? Why so many?
S: Why not? We are a band from Europe, so we are surrounded by many different cultures and languages in our life every day. We don’t see ourselves as Germans anyway, rather cosmopolitan, so we use everything that comes into our mouth. Why do German bands sing in English?