With "Flying To The Stars", the Berlin/Leipzig quintet Coogans Bluff has released a new studio album, which is retro in an excellent and unusual way, but does not swim on the current retro wave.
eclipsed: To fall right into the house with the door: Is the new album "Flying To The Stars" your best album so far? If so, why? If not, why not?
Willi Paschen: I think it's turned out all right. Whether it's the best now, I don't know exactly. I like the others too. The new album is more in the overall context. All band members were involved in writing the songs. This time we also took a different approach by writing almost all the songs in the studio. And not like the records before, when we first worked out the songs and then went into the studio to record the songs. This time we worked out the songs together. That's why it feels like an overall system to us, even if we still have individual songs.
eclipsed: You also have your own studio.
Paschen: Yes, my brother Charlie has a studio. That's why we could afford this approach. Which didn't take us that long. Altogether we spent about two weeks in the studio to record the basics, i.e. drums, guitar and a part of the brass. The singing and some traces of the organ we did afterwards. It happened relatively quickly after all. We didn't spend eternities in the studio. We told ourselves from the beginning that the album should be finished by then and then we started writing. We already had two or three ideas, but no finished songs. It's all practically local. It could have gone in the pants, but it actually worked well.
eclipsed: The songs don't sound at all like "just played without a hitch". Everything is well thought out and clearly defined. The album with only two or three ideas: Respect!
Paschen: Composed to the point, you could call it that. It is important to us that there is always a melody that gets stuck. We don't want to just go straight for it. We're not jamming endlessly in the studio. It doesn't have to be. We want to get the bow, and it should all be song service. The first song is relatively long, but still it has a guideline that leads from A to B. Sometimes you have a cool idea, then you play around, and when you listen to it afterwards, it's just some kind of droning and not so cool. We're always trying to focus on making it a song at the end. But we don't know where we'll end up in the end.
eclipsed: The first song has several beautiful melodies. In the last song you repeat the melody again. Is that some kind of frame for the album? Is this closing a circle?
Paschen: In the end, yes. The melody at the end is a bit different. It is not explicitly related to the first song. But one can see it in such a way that there comes another large, excessive part, a part carried by the brass melody.
eclipsed: It's like a big, concluding hymn that says to me, "Everything's fine."
Paschen: That's cool because we didn't write the songs in a way that we thought: "He's the first, he's the second, he's the last." But in the end the last song closed the parenthesis. The journey begins with the first song, and at the end there is a final point. Like the credits in a movie. The chapter is closed. The whole album follows the idea of a space journey.
eclipsed: The title "Flying To The Stars" also sounds a bit like Space Rock. But your music is not space rock like you know it from Hawkwind.
Paschen: I find the beginning quite spacy. That's the first thing we had. The moment when guitar and saxophone play the solo together, it sounds like a rocket launch. Then came the second part with the "Flying to the stars"-singing, where we had a bit of Yes in the back of our mind. It's not classic space rock, we were thinking more of the strange worlds on the Yes covers. So more this direction than Hawkwind with all the effects. We were thinking more of a travel story. It builds up, "flying to the stars", then floats away. We're not a band that's wobbling or bubbling. We rather want clarity, clear melodies and a structure that doesn't fall apart. A red thread.
eclipsed: It did not become a real concept album. But there is the subject of travelling somewhere or fleeing somewhere.
Paschen: The texts already revolve around space topics. So no monsters attacking us. "Hooray", for example, deals with the fact that when you fly near a black hole, time passes relatively more slowly there than at another point. There's a kink in time. We have packed this into three lines of text. The last song "No Need (To Hurry Up)" is about you being somewhere in space and having nothing more to do. You don't have to do anything anymore and you can give yourself up completely. That's already negative. The concept begins relatively enthusiastically. You want to go into space, you are looking for love and higher goals, and in the end it comes out that there is no such thing. The individual flying around is getting lonelier and lonelier. That's the bottom line.
eclipsed: The way you describe the ending, it sounds negative. But for me the last song sounds very positive. He sounds so sublime, forgiving. A positive conclusion.
Paschen: I guess you can see it differently from day to day. It's "relax, there's not much to get" or "crap, there's really nothing". You can see it positive or negative.
eclipsed: You mentioned before that it's the melodies that matter. Accordingly many really beautiful melodies can be found on the album. Sometimes they're small and rather hidden. Sometimes they are repeated over and over again. How do you come up with melodies like that?
Paschen: Maybe it can be compared to a boot camp. We sat together and found each other. We hung out day and night in the studio together. That sets ideas free, more than when you just meet in the rehearsal room on weekends and screw things on. We don't have anyone who writes the songs at home. Apparently, it works pretty well. We haven't tried it out in this form either. As I said, it could have gone wrong. The first song, "Flying To The Stars", went relatively fast. It was all there very quickly. Also the brass melody, very cool. Same with the last song. Actually, we wanted to sing a lot more. We had the idea to make it more hippie. Most of it came to us spontaneously and was suddenly there. The tune to "Hooray" was also fast there. But then it took longer to build a song around it. It all went pretty fast. We always need a deadline, too: Then and then it has to be done. Otherwise we'll think: "Oh, yeah, we could do something about that. Maybe change something here sometime." When we are clearly focused on a deadline, when it should be finished, then we can work best. There's got to be some pressure. There's a cool tune coming off.
eclipsed: Very nice. Pressure creates melodies. You produced the album yourself, your brother recorded and mixed the album. Does this have more advantages, or does it just make more work? Did you wish you had a producer?
Paschen: We went the other way. We used to have people who took us in. But we have gone in the direction that we have become more and more independent, so that we can take our things ourselves now. Other bands may have produced themselves in the beginning and then take on a producer. But we are so well-rehearsed now, and my brother knows in which direction it is going. It's working out all right. He's got most of the work. If we were to find someone who fits us perfectly or with whom we understand each other very well and are on the same wavelength, then we would also let him produce us. So far, however, this has not happened and we are doing quite well with the fact that we do it ourselves. We are also effective with it. Sure, it's exhausting to decide things, too. Sometimes a producer who says "No, that's bullshit" would be good. We better do this." But we're doing just as well. We don't tear each other apart. How the ideas should sound is relatively clear. There won't be a big fight. We're relatively level. We discuss a few things, but we also have a quick decision-making process.
eclipsed: With your album "Poncho Express" from 2012 you have made a new start according to your own statement. How is that to be understood?
Paschen: At that time Clemens [note: Marasus, bassist of Coogans Bluff] started singing. Before that, Thilo sang. We broke up on a friendly note. The interests were no longer the same. So Clemens switched to singing. When you change singers as a band, it's always a bit complicated. More difficult than replacing the guitar or bass, for example. The band sounds completely different because of a new singer. At that time the brass players were added as well. This had given us a different musical direction without us wanting to. It turned out that way. We just looked at what came out of it. And then the direction came out as we captured it on the new album. Before it was rock music with vocals and not quite this psychedelic, experimental variant. Whereby it's also not quite so true, because on our first record "CB Funk" there are already quite long songs on it. That was more like the psychedelic stoner corner. That was a little harder. That is no longer the case.
eclipsed: How did you come up with the idea of integrating a saxophone and a trombone? A saxophone is still common in rock music, but a trombone?
Paschen: We've only recently sat together and determined Trombone with bands that you find cool or with which brass players play a major role? You can't think of that many. Saxophone clear, trumpet too. But trombone?
eclipsed: I can't think of any on the spur of the moment.
Paschen: Neither do I. At most as part of a large horn section. I'd have to check old Chicago records to see if they had a trombone with them. But that a trombone plays a solo is now unknown to me. Back then, at Thilo's time, we had a song that sounded like the Rolling Stones, and we thought we'd have brass players in there. I still knew Stefan [note: Meinking, trombone] and Max [note: Thum, saxophone] from the student job I had done and simply asked them if they would like to record trombone and saxophone. The two belong together inseparably, they are well-rehearsed. That's how it started
eclipsed: The two blowers take up a lot of space with you. Does this make you feel restricted in your creative freedom as a guitarist? Do you have less room to unfold?
Paschen: No, not really. On record it's something else than live. Live I have enough space "to settle down". But with us the song is in the foreground. If we have that, then we ask ourselves whether a guitar solo is more suitable or a saxophone solo. On the new record I already play the fewest guitar solos. On "Flying To The Stars" I only have one guitar tone to play. But playing only one note can be much cooler than playing many notes that are meaningless in the end. I don't feel constricted right now. I don't submit a petition and say, "More rights for guitarists."
eclipsed: Not only on the new album, but also earlier a lot of humor sounds through. Also the artwork of the new album shows funny-naive space pictures. How important is this self-irony and this wink?
Paschen: Music in itself is important, and we take our music seriously, but you shouldn't be too dogged by all that stuff. We can laugh ourselves to death about many things, and then you shouldn't take the whole thing so seriously and put a mushroom cloud on the cover and take it too seriously. There's more to the new artwork than that. In front of it is the little monkey that is shot into space, and when you open the CD or the Gatefold LP, you find all the animals that were shot into space. We have nine animals, the spiders, the monkey, a turtle. Next to it you will find the text of what happened to the respective animal. For example, the dog Laika. Many don't know that Laika died five hours after the start from overheating and a heart attack. There you will find information about when they flew into space, how old they got, what they died of. It's a different kind of narrative level, which isn't quite as funny. At first glance it seems relatively funny. But if you then look into the plate, you can see what a mess was made of the animals. Many monkeys shot into space have also died. You can read about it. On the one hand it's humorous, on the other hand it's not that funny. A second level, then. Sarah, who does our covers, had this idea. There shouldn't be any information about us as a band, but about the space experiments back then.
eclipsed: You're often referred to as "retro." Does it make you feel good?
Paschen: It's a broad term. Adele's kind of retro. Almost everything's kind of retro right now. That's why I can live with myself. There's hardly any real news. Even a new Prodigy album is already retro.
eclipsed: What if someone says you sound like the bands of the early seventies?
Paschen: I prefer that to someone saying we sound like Nickelback or something. It's okay. It's okay. We can handle that. We also play old stuff somehow and are into old production techniques. We're trying not to sound overproduced, and we're not looking for new-fangled standards. So we are already orienting ourselves on the old records. But it is also important to us not to sound like a one-to-one copy, like many Black Sabbath epigones, for example. They make you think, "Oh, that's cool, sounds like Black Sabbath." It sounds just like Black Sabbath. The singing sounds just like Ozzy. I hope we don't sound like anybody's copy. That would be too retro for me.
eclipsed: But with a trombone in such a prominent role you hardly run the risk of sounding like someone else ...
Paschen: Maybe Colosseum? I'd have to investigate that again. Open the Internet and search for trombone solo.
*** Interview: Bernd Sievers
