'I remember John Peel futilely calling us at Zossener Straße'

Before Liaisons Dangereuses, Beate Bartel played in Mania D with Karin Luner, Eva Gößling, Gudrun Gut and Bettina Köster. After Luner and Gößling left for America the remaining members formed Malaria! Bartel and Gut talked to Robert Defcon about the early days of Mania D:

Beate Bartel: There is nothing more difficult than controlling a Korg MS20 and a sequencer in a live situation, because the tempi constantly drift apart. So to play a live set, you have to find a setup that works. We had the idea of using 4-track tapes with the most important tracks of our songs on them. I could then start them any time I wanted—basically, it was the analogue precursor of Ableton.

Gudrun Gut: I had drawings of all the patches and controller positions for the MS20, but it still sounds different every time. That’s why most bands went with full playback, because it just wasn’t reproducible. But Beate went onstage and did live mixing. In that, she was far ahead of her time.

Full article by Robert Defcon at Electronic Beats is here. More articles by Defcon at Berlin Experiment.

Malaria! being impossibly cool here.

Pictured: Bartel in 1979.