Click on the picture to listen to and/ or buy Chris' new album

“If I wanted to be a big star I would maybe bleach my hair blond or shave it and wear sunglasses, make totally different music and start selling my face. So yeah, good question, why make an album . . . But honestly. .  Why even make a single?”

Chatting to Skrufff this week to promote his new instrumental electronic album Electric Horizon (http://bit.ly/IB7e4i (click to listen/ buy on I tunes), German producer Kris Menace admits he’s less than enthusiastic about the technological advances restructuring and/ or ravaging traditional music business models.

“We’re living in an era where people are used to downloading music for free; in a time when music has lost all its value through technology and innovation and where anybody can produce a track in a few hours . . . Nowadays, there are programs and tools that make it easier for the normal consumer whereas in the past you needed a huge studio: nowadays you need just a laptop and some cracked software,” he points out.

“And nowadays people are overdosed by blogs, Youtube, Soundcloud, Facebook, Twitter and hobby DJs . . . it’s all about clicks, charts, promotion . . . and that’s very wrong,” he complains.

“It’s not about content and music anymore, it’s about hype, glimmer, glitter lifestyle. The concept and idea of the ‘artist’ has been lost, and the level of people’s open-mindedness is also totally fucked up too.”

“People are used to getting music everywhere for free,” he repeats, “so I really can’t give you a simple answer to why I still make albums. And you’re right, the dance scene always was about singles anyway and good albums have become ever rarer. Maybe because labels can’t effort to release albums anymore, and if they do try, they don’t manage to recoup (cover) their costs.

“So why am I doing a record like Electric Horizon, an instrumental album, in times when people even put a @krismenace in their twitter messages with a link to an illegal download link?’ “I just wanted to do it,” he explains. “On my own terms, my way.”

Though a cursory glance through his Discogs page  includes numerous high profile crossover club hits he’s currently operating solo, adopting a DIY approach for virtually all his activities.

“An album like Electric Horizon is so special that no commercial label would have spent a penny on it,” he continues, “And an independent label wouldn’t have had the money to release it the way I wanted.

“To me such things as artwork, the look of the actual CD itself and the music have a high value in themselves and it would break my heart to see my music being released by a 3rd party label without putting the effort into it, I personally think it deserves.”

“I will definitely lose money on it for sure, and it’s clear that an album like Electric Horizon is not about making profit, as it’s too special.

I do believe in something and I do believe in my music and I do believe in the moment where I created it. I might be stupid, but who the fuck cares anyway?”

That he does care- passionately- is immediately apparent, however, as he continues to outline his music making philosophy.

“An album nowadays is rare and a thought through concept as well,” he muses.

“Most people release and release and release one single after the other, but where is the value in that? I thought to go another road and to release an album to create something special, something outstanding.

Of course you need to promote an album with singles and music videos to make it at least a little different all the other millions of tracks being released commercially or independently or even given away for free. I’m very happy with the positive feedback I’ve received so far but I also know that I will never recoup what I invested. It’s a very sad development in the music business but I’m proud that, in such hard times, I’ve been able to release what I like.”

Skrufff (Jonty Skrufff): I know you make tracks usually in a day and have hundreds: how did you decide which ones went on the album; what criteria did you us to select them?

Kris Menace: “I always wanted to create a kind of Space Odyssey album, I love the cosmic energy from 70s psychedelic music but I also like techno, house, melodies, nu-disco and disco. A few years ago I started making more experimental music, which I never released and the idea for Electric Horizon came from that period.

The tracks were created in between others I was working on for another vocal album I’m releasing soon. I was just recording what I liked without any thought of releasing them- the idea for that came when I was in hospital and was listening to all the work I’ve done in the past year. I really felt the songs and thought that this could make a great instrumental album. So Electric Horizon really means a lot to me as it reflects a very hard time of my life and as it really comes deep from my heart.

Skrufff: How good a judge are you on when your tracks are special, or not so special?

Kris Menace: “I have no idea. I just do what I like without thinking too much of what is hype, cool, special or not. Every track I create is something special to me and I mostly try to make something different from what I’ve done before.

If it’s a team-up with Spooky or if it’s a techno-ish track like Steamroller, I always try to go one step further for myself and to develop what I’m doing. I’m fighting myself alone out there without a crew behind me, without a management and even without a booker at the moment.

How stupid do you need to be to release an album investing a lot of money and not to even to have a booker when the only way you can expect to recoup any money is through gigs? Well anyway, I mostly feel instinctively when a track has something magical about it and I hope people feel the same. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t.

Skrufff: I read a review of Electric Horizon on TheArtsdesk which went into great detail about ‘trance’ (http://www.theartsdesk.com/new-music/cd-kris-menace-electric-horizon. : how do you feel about the word ‘trance’ being used to describe it? How do you feel about the word in general?

Kris Menace: “Just because a song is melodic doesn’t mean it’s automatically trance and trance has anyway become a very bad word for the normal consumer. How stupid and limited can somebody be to automatically put something in genres? Of course someone might feel a record or not, but don’t tell somebody else bad things about it. If you don’t like it, well, just shut the fuck up and don’t destroy what it means for somebody else.”

“I would personally never go so far to say that there is anything bad out there. Everything done is made because somebody somehow believed in it. Of course there are overtly commercial tracks but I’m not talking about those or the major label driven industry. But again for them, they want to make money since to them it’s a ‘business’, one in which people have to make a living and shareholders expect some reward for their investment.  So there is nothing wrong or uncool, whatever, in how they operate. If there is a market and people are happy then what is wrong with that?”

“I’m so fed up of this hype thinking bullshit limitation shit and ‘this is cool, that’s uncool’ fuck ups. What is that all about? I just do what I like and I personally don’t have a problem. If somebody calls my music trance, trance is and was everywhere and I’m a sucker for melodies. Whether that’s so called “cool” things like Lindstrom’s ‘I Feel Space’ to certain Daft Punk tracks, trance elements are everywhere. It’s time that people wake up, open their minds and start thinking for themselves again. For me, my album of course has trance elements like most of my tracks do. But that’s mainly because I love melodies and sometimes I need a pad or a string to make the melodies sound the way I feel and want then to sound.

Skrufff: How would you describe your music?

Kris Menace: “I couldn’t say what genre it is, for Electric Horizon I decided to used the term ‘cosmic disco’ when by distributor didn’t know how to release it. And its quite interesting that most of the reviewers also don’t even know what they are reviewing but they still feel what I wanted to express. I’m very happy about that, because this shows me that I have created something new and therefore something special, and that’s all I can wish for.”

Skrufff: How much affinity- if any- do you feel with the likes of Paul Van Dyk and Tiesto?

Kris Menace: “I don’t know them personally and never saw them DJing, so I can’t say anything about them. I know they fly around the world for a lot of money and I’m sure they have and had a lot of work getting where they are… and this is something that I do respect that a lot.”

Kris standing in the shower . . . .

Skrufff: How much of a temptation is it to dilute your music so you can target Vegas/ US style pop-dance success?

Kris Menace: “I don’t give a shit (don’t care at all) about all that glammed up dance scene nor the European hype that’s following it either. If I wanted to target Vegas and/ or America I would make totally different music and would sell myself a bit differently too.

I never appear in my videos, I do promo pictures without properly showing my face and only concentrate on spreading my music, without having any ulterior motives in my mind about achieving crossover success or putting my profile in the spotlight.

“If I wanted to be a ‘big’ producer I would start by producing more commercial music but I don’t feel to do that right now. I’ve been offered many opportunities to become a producer for pop artists in the past but if you follow that road you work completely differently and I love to create my music the way i like it.

“I wouldn’t have a problem to go more commercial in the future, if I would feel it! But when I listen to most of the stuff out there at the moment I just have to say, that I don’t think there is a soul in this kind of music anymore. It’s rare that I feel love or soul in any kind of major released music and even in electronic music nowadays.

And also if you go on such a road, it involves allowing a lot of people to talk about your work who have the power to force you to change things if they say so. If I ever do that, I might really just do it for the money, at the moment I can’t see it happening but you never know.

But I do totally understand the people who do that. They work hard and they had a dream or whatever and they went there and they are there because of a reason. I hate that mentality thing where everybody envies somebody else’s success. If you don’t like what someone does creatively, just shut the fuck up: and always think twice before you post shit (abuse) on the artist’s Youtube channel. He or she might read it and you hurt their soul with a throw-away malicious comment. Amen!”

http://bit.ly/Jnbtzm  (Kris Menace- LIVE with Hexstatic / Electric Horizon Album Release)

Jonty Skrufff: http://listn.to/JontySkrufff

Click here for more about Londoner Emma West. . . .

A pretty good song and great video (apart from the Botox lips……)