Johannes Stabel aka XTR Human stands for gothic electronic club force with danceability and HD club accessibility. His melding driving EBM and coldwave atmospheres are influenced by the pop hooks of Austrian New Wave legend Falco and have their roots in the South German Coldwave scene.

With Johannes, we started our conversation over a year ago during the lockdown. It got stuck many times like everything around and we picked it up every couple of months to each time dive into hours of the fascinating exchange. It took us three takes but we finally landed somewhere and it is my pleasure to publish fragments of this interesting conversation about growing as a person and an artist, new label and more.

The meaning of gold

Interview: Anna Zielinska

Editor: August Skipper

In 2012 you gave an interview in which you were talking about your latest release back then and you said that both the lyrical and emotional side of this record is coming from some very personal experiences. The music was more introspective back then, taking a view inside yourself and the intimate things you had been through. We don’t need to go back to this as it was said already, but it is interesting for me in the development of your music and lyrics. Nowadays you have shifted into a more global and political perspective, I wonder when this began? Where this is coming from? And how did this change in your creativity and production happen?

I think it's mostly related to my age, in 2012 I was in my mid-twenties and I think it’s common at that age that you spend more time trying to figure yourself out, finding out what fuels you and how you relate to your emotions. Over those 10 years, I have grown up a bit, hopefully. I managed to move my view more outside myself, to make it less egocentric. One important thing that helped me to make this shift was that I changed the language of my lyrics to German because speaking in your native tongue helps you to express yourself, of course.

I was always interested in what happens around me in a societal sense, but the biggest part of this shift came for me during Corona, there was an eruption on the musical and lyrical side. I wanted to make a change, wanted to have a say about the current situation. I'm not super political like Bob Dylan’s protest songs but I wanted to say something that is relevant, not only complaining about how I am personally suffering from this or that, it became boring to me. Artists like Joy Division are always suffering from something, this story has been told one thousand times and I don't want to do that again.

But your album G.O.L.D. released last year is political. It is social commentary.

Yes, somehow. I studied history and I'm very interested in politics and social problems. I was always very interested in how racism, sexism, and every form of hate and the exclusion of certain peoples start; how society works nowadays and what can we learn from history.

So you can say that with age, you realized you were a part of the bigger picture?

Yeah. I think this is one of the good side-effects of getting older, you are more aware of yourself and other people and how your behaviour affects them.

Which track of the ones that you recorded for G.O.L.D. do you feel is the most loaded with this kind of message?

I think it's the last one “Keine Heimat”, which means “No Homeland”, I have felt like this since I was 5 years old, this was the first time I moved from Bayern to Baden-Württemberg in South-West Germany and from then on we moved all the time. In my whole life, I must have moved 20-30 times. I never had this strong feeling like other people of the pride of being “from here” and is related to this or that. For me, it never made sense to think like that. If people around you are nice and you feel comfortable- that is your homeland, not this country, not this football club. I was always trying to be aware of this kind of thing, not to lose my mind in the crowd.

The way you lived and moved around makes you lose a sense of belonging, I can relate to that like many others who were moving a lot also. You can feel grounded in every place where you made something for yourself and made meaningful connections.

Yes, exactly. In my case I think it was also the age when you move to a new school and each time you are a part of a new peer group, you grow and then you go into the next education phase, you lose touch and you are no longer the part of ‘the gang’, you are always the new guy. But that was also a good thing, I spent more time with the outsiders and they had a much more interesting story.

In the nineties it was the boom of pop culture, it was all about being part of the majority, being part of global trends and not being edgy. Even the clothing was functioning like a uniform- skaters lowered pants, for example, you wore them and suddenly you became part of their gang. That was never my goal.

What was your inspiration for the album title and the aesthetic direction of the artwork?

I wanted to do something that was very simple and actually, it's kind of trashy and ridiculous because it's “G.O.L.D.” with full stops and they have no meaning, it was a joke, Nico, my graphic designer friend and I came up with, that everyone can think of what the letters stand for, anyone can take their own meaning from this. When I look at myself ten years ago- everything had to have such great meaning, friends and I could talk about concepts for hours, but in the end, it’s just what you make of it. It’s funny. It’s more like fake gold than real gold.

I like the idea that you can assign meaning to things. Gold is the ultimate money and status symbol, the symbol of ‘having’, of possession, I think it’s great that you played around with it this idea, to give people a push to add something on their own and to decide what gold means to them individually.

And it works! You just added your own meaning. In the end, gold is just a nice colour, it goes great with black.

G.O.L.D. is the second release on Braid Records. How would you describe your cooperation with the label? How did you start working together with Clay, the owner? You seem like a good match.

It is the second release, but my first individual one. The first one was a very nice EBM album by Visitor, a band from Canada. I hope to meet those guys when Corona will allow me to do concerts again.

With Braid it was a coincidence how we met, from there we started working together and became friends. I released my previous album in May 2019 and I wanted to do a video shoot for it. I was looking for a video director in Berlin. A friend of mine sent me Clay’s pitch and recommended him to me. It resulted in a very nice video for “On a greater scale, “ a more indie, 80’s song. We had a good connection and he also did the cover artwork for my last album. There was already a creative collaboration then the pandemic came and my tour got cancelled last year, so I started to write new tracks and there was this constant back and forth between us. I was sending him music to hear his opinion about my experiments with the sound. I knew he had a lot of experience and knowledge about EBM, goth and electronic music but it wasn’t clear to me that he had a label back then. At one point he said that he would like to put me out as a second full-release on Braid Records. It was a good decision and I think his label fits perfectly with my new musical style.

Describe your new musical style, what was that change?

I honestly didn’t know what EBM was until last year, of course, I knew all the classic bands like Front 242, but I was more into Shoegaze, UK post-punk, 80’s stuff. I listen to Falco a lot. I wanted to go into more electronic music with electronic drums and German lyrics, mixed with my former approach to music. This is what came out, a 2021 interpretation of Falco’s new wave, accompanied by more dark-wave beats.

You started XTR Human as a band. What does it look like right now? Who are you working with? Or do you do the music mostly alone?

It's not completely true, I started the band alone as my own project, because before I had a post-punk band in Stuttgart and I was always the driving force behind it. We split when the university was over and everyone went in different directions.

After this, I told myself that I will start a new band, but this time I’ll be in charge of everything, because if someone has different plans, or just wants to go somewhere else- then the band will die. So this was the idea. I wrote six songs and then found some cool guys in Stuttgart. For years it was my goal to have this project as a band. This is partly because I really like to play with people, but also, I was very insecure and did not have enough self-esteem to say “I will do everything”. Maybe my skills weren’t there yet. I couldn't play the drums to a start so it was the right choice, but I wrote most of the songs myself. It was nice, you benefit a lot from playing with other people, and you learn, but in the end, I figured out that we spent a lot of time in the practice room, and I don’t want to go 3-4 times a week to the practice room drinking beer and having a good time. It’s fun but I wanted to spend my time being creative and making tracks. I think the best way to do that is to be at home, drink your coffee and work 8 hours and then you have a much higher output. Since I understood that, everything really improved. I did this album, another EP, and some remixes. This is so much fun for me, to be productive and to be in control of everything. If you do a shit track- then it’s on you. It’s much more direct. Finally, I think this is the way I should do music, to really feel the joy of it.

Are you considering having a band again or is a solo career what you really feel is for you?

I only look for a band for live shows, I really like to play with friends, but then we play my tracks and they play with me. I also like to make collaborations with other artists, but the advantage of this situation is that it's set for a limited time. You say: “let's do an EP with 4 tracks” and then you can arrange that and it rolls. One does the vocals and other synthesizers or drums, or the bassline. If you can agree on this and are sure of this, then I think it works very well. You don't need to practice with this person like in the band, and this is something different. I wouldn't do the band again. It is too time-consuming.

I think with your independence came confidence and also lots of artistic freedom, by the simple fact that you can do most of this stuff by yourself right now.

I watched an interview with Silent Servant and he said very well, that if you have a band and you need to manage all these different personalities- it's destabilizing. Most bands break up after a few years and all the stuff is gone. This is exactly my opinion. It's the best time when everything works, if you can do that and the band is successful for a longer time, then you need to be friends. It's very rare that this happens when a band exists for 10 years and onwards.

We are past the 2 years of the pandemic, multiple lockdowns, and the non-existence of live gigs. I want you to share with me your reflections on the music scene in these challenging times. How was it affected and how it possibly would change it for the better or worse? How did you use your time during this period?

For me, paradoxically, the best thing about lock-down was that I couldn't play the last tour, otherwise, everything would have gone on the same as before. I don't want to miss out on creative development. I definitely went in another direction and I am happy about that. Of course after months of being in the home studio, doing one track after another- as satisfying as it is- you want to go out and get feedback from a real crowd. All these online festivals were not a substitute for a real concert. The first real festival for me to play was in Leipzig last year and I was a bit scared, after almost two years, to finally perform with completely new tracks. So I was anxious.

How it was to stand in front of the public again? What was the energy? And how did it feel afterwards?
It wasn’t only that I had a break with concerts for a while but also that the formation on stage was different before I had a guitar and a whole band and this time the show was more focused on performance or entertainment, you know, me singing and jumping around and yes it was very great, partly because my friend Luca, from Die Selektion, found time to support me on keyboards and so I was not alone on the stage. This was, of course, a benefit. At the start I felt more confident but then it was like in every other concert before, you play the first song, then you know the music and this guides you through the whole concert. But what was different or remarkable compared to concerts before was that all the tracks I was performing were written in those locked twelve months before. To play them in front of a crowd that could actually dance was very cool! At this festival, they had fences which could control how many people were in the audience, so they could maintain social distance, but people danced and there was an interaction with the audience, which felt very good, and like after every performance, you feel addicted and suddenly you are looking forward to the next concert!

That said, I am careful with having crazy ideas for the near future. I hope it will be possible to play at bigger festivals but I was also glad to be able to play smaller concerts, with people sitting on chairs and wearing masks. It’s better than nothing.

Do you think that the scene will pursue this new intimate environment for experiencing music? When we see that there is so much out of our control, the so-called ‘rebirth of the scene’ started with the smaller events.

The big venues- the structures that existed so long with all the staff- seem to have broken a little bit up. Lots of these places went bankrupt. It all needs to get reconnected. I think now there is a chance for smaller venues and the new optimistic-minded promoters to stake their claim. There will always be people willing to invest in creativity and music and something new. There will always be something new. A lot of new things will come from this time with Corona. It is the caesura, the turning point. Like an earthquake, it has so many effects on different things- also on creative-minded people. I am optimistic about what kind of things we can see from this time.

I agree, I think some of them will be really amazing. I know about a couple of producers who paired up in the middle of it all out of boredom to work together in a studio, and some really good albums from other artists are going to see the daylight in upcoming months. Many artists dedicated this time to polishing their skills and developing new ones. What I was feeling at the end of the so-called period of “normality” is that we are overloaded with stuff. We had all the parties here in Berlin, we were just flowing from one party to another with no time to reflect on our experiences or even make our opinion, to decide if we like the sound we are hearing. There was too much going on. The focus was not on the music. I feel that people are starting to listen again and are more able to make their judgements about whether something is good or not, about the quality of production etc. They have more time to figure out what interests them.

It is more about music and less about entertainment.

What about feelings? My friend Wero put it in a very nice way recently when we were discussing our music tastes (industrial in this case), that it is not about what we like right now, but what we need, and we all need a musical hug. We should focus on other emotions that are evoked by music, not only the angst and insecurity that comes with industrial sounds. We are trying to find some soothing, this comes from melodies and harmony. I think creativity can shine when one is constructing melody and expressing melody and I really look forward to listening to all this stuff. Maybe I also need a musical hug! In this way, I have found myself listening to much more ambient music lately.

I'm listening to dance music now more than before and not so much to slow, sad things. As you said, we need a musical hug or some other form of hug that helps us to get through this darker time.

For me electronic dance music is something that drives you, I was more into shoegaze but I can't listen to it anymore, I find it too boring. It's not the right thing for me at the moment. I always like more, music with melodies, it doesn’t matter what kind of genre, if it’s too monotone it’s not for me, so even with for example techno music is more monotone compared to other music with a pop structure, but even then, you can put in very nice melodies.

Lots of good things happened meanwhile we were exchanging our thoughts- you played couple of gigs all around the world, released VERFALL EP on ORDEN this January and established your own music label WIE EIN GOTT.

WIE EIN GOTT is the result of my collaborative work and hosting many producers, artists and dark-minded individuals who can craft a body-jacking synthesis of gothic atmosphere and dance energy. The very first release [GOTT01] VA#01 that has its premiere today is filled with hand-selected EBM. Each of the nine tracks bring a different strength. It is gleaming celebration of our Humanity and—however brief—of shared Godhood found in the throbbing fires of the dance floor.