Recently releasing mind.in.a.box’s fifth full length album, Revelations on Metropolis Records in the US, and starting their own brand new label Dreamweb Music in Europe, we take the seven deadly questions to the man who has entranced us for the past eight years, Stefan Poiss, the master behind the music and vocals of the Austrian electronic music band mind.in.a.box.
Envy – You have the ability to examine the past “Crossroads” of your life and see where they would have lead you, would you want to know?
Stefan Poiss : No. I like the way how it is going and I wouldn’t want to change something and I wouldn’t want to know how it could be. I think I’m a lucky guy to live in Vienna, one of the best cities in the world, with maybe the best water in the world that you can drink from the tap, only two minutes to the supermarket, the electricity is working, the internet is fast, our waste disposal has it’s own Facebook page, I have my own studio at home and can also work at Adam’s rehearsal space (Adam is my live guitar player). And with my motor scooter it’s fast to get everywhere. So it feels good like it is. Only too much dog mess on the sidewalks here.
Greed – Do you feel the ever evolving internet world and the hording of digital friends will leave individuals feeling “Lost Alone” in the end?
SP : Yes, maybe more than ever. It is something different to have a conversation on the internet than to talk in real life. We all have a body and we are built to use it. We can’t separate the brain, the mind from us. Our mind and the body is a whole and if you only use one part too long you will start to miss something in the world… and then you are starting to be lost alone.
The February/March 2012 issue is the twentieth issue of Auxiliary, a magazine dedicated to alternative fashion, music, and lifestyle. This issue features an interview and exclusive photoshoot with Emilie Autumn, an interview with mind.in.a.box, a designer spotlight on Blood Milk Jewels, a brick and mortar shop spotlight on Five and Diamond, and Kelly Eden as our PinUp. The issue also contains a fashion editorial of nightmares and fairytales, a mad hatter fashion editorial, a fashion editorial showcasing Bibian Blue’s new collection, a night inspired beauty editorial, and a deadly style article. It features photography by DerWei Chan, Jake Garn, Dana Brushette, Christina Brown, Sequoia Emmanuelle, Maria S. Varela, Jennifer Erickson, Gail Remy Kilker, and Saryn Christina, and fashion from Mother of London, Starkers Corsetry, Too Fast, Kreepsville666, Lip Service, S&G, Bubbles & Frown, Haphazard Clothing, Dystropolis, Folter Clothing, T.U.K. Shoes, FashionWhore Boutique, and mush much more.
At Auxiliary Magazine we are all very excited about the upcoming mind.in.a.box release, Revelations, released today in Europe and on January 24th in the US. Mind.in.a.box has a new record label and a new online webstore and available on it is this fantastic throw pillow. Avoid the boring, typical merch and opt for something more unique, a handmade pillow! How appropriate that this pillow is for their Dreamweb album. With this pillow you can now curl up and cuddle mind.in.a.box and your love of their music. Or on a bit more practical note, t-shirts, long desired by miab fans for years (when they played Kinetik Festival 2011 you could make a merch vendor very ornery very fast by asking if they had miab t-shirts) as well as their new album are available on their new webstore.
The mind.in.a.box pillow is available online for €22 at www.mindinabox.com.
It sounds promising that one of the largest industrial/EBM/electro/noise music festivals in North America (held in Montreal, Canada) will be happening again for a 5th year, most likely in May the weekend of Canada’s Victoria Day holiday. Enjoy some photos from this year’s event and keep hopeful and your ears open that 2012 will be a go.
Montreal QC, May 19th to 23rd - The North American festival not to miss. Auxiliary Magazine will be at Kinetik Festival again this year! Kinetik is a five-day music festival for electro, industrial, EBM, and noise. Performing this year… Front 242, VNV Nation, Front Line Assembly, Suicide Commando, Covenant, mind.in.a.box, Funker Vogt, God Module, Die Krupps, Aesthetic Perfection, iVardensphere, and more! We’ll have a vendor/promo table so stop by, say hello, pick up some gear, check out the magazine, and buy a print copy!
Mind.in.a.box is the musical colaboration between Stefan Poiss and Markus Hadwiger. Often described as technopop, mind.in.a.box emerged in 2004 with a highly impressive debut album, Lost Alone. The name being a metaphor for everything that prevents our minds from truly being free, mind.in.a.box then released two more albums that weaved a narrative building on that metaphor. Their hard to categorize style of electronic music garnered the respect of fans and critics alike. In 2010, mind.in.a.box is in full force, after years of being a studio-only project, they are performing live and have a brand new album, R.E.T.R.O., with the goal of re-inventing the past for an advanced future.
Your new album R.E.T.R.O. is out now, musically, how is it different and yet similar from previous albums?
Stefan Poiss : There is quite a difference between R.E.T.R.O. and our previous albums. Whereas our other albums focus on emotions and are connected in the background by a continuing storyline, our latest album is most of all a homage to the good old days of the Commodore 64 and the early days of home computer and video games. We tried to bring back the emotions, we personally connect with those times, using our music. So I think the feeling of the album is quite different from the other ones, but I hope people will still be able to recognize a lot of our sound in it. Also, the Commodore 64 produced very particular sounds and melodies, and I was hoping to capture that as much as possible on R.E.T.R.O. So the album is a tribute to those times and a homage to some of the incredibly great composers on the C64.
Markus Hadwiger : We were thinking about something like this for a very long time, and Stefan started to work on new interpretations of some of our favorite C64 songs. We liked the mood and feeling of nostalgia this created a lot, so at some point we also started to do completely new material like “8 Bits” and “I Love 64”. It was a nice break from our other work, and an awful lot of fun.
R.E.T.R.O. doesn’t fit into the storyline that was established with the previous albums, was there any hesitation in labeling the album as mind.in.a.box rather than a separate side project?
MH : Yes, we were thinking about that for a long time, and the initial plan was to release the album as a separate project. But in the end we decided to release it as mind.in.a.box, and our label also liked the idea a lot. Fortunately, it seems as if almost everyone who already liked mind.in.a.box also really likes R.E.T.R.O., which makes us very happy.
On March 30th Metropolis Records releases four digital singles; Combichrist’s Scared, Mind.In.A.Box’s 8 Bits, System Syn’s Here’s To You, and Mesh’s How Long. There will be a physical release of the Combichrist single on May 11th, but I am unsure on any of the others.
Combichrist’s Scarred is their third single of their highly successful album Today We Are All Demons, featuring five remixes, the original, and an extra song “Parental Content”. I did enjoy the “Pull Out Kings Remix”, but overall I felt that the remixes were somewhat unimpressive. The new track “Parental Content” starts off kicking like a good old techno track, with some random samples, and it keeps going that way. Not your typical Combichrist song, but hey it’s a single and there should be something different on it.
Mind.In.A.Box’s 8-Bits comes off their R.E.T.R.O. album and features three remixes of “8-Bits” and the new track “Last Ninja 2”, which fills the gap of the two tracks on the album, “The Last Ninja III” and “The Last Ninja”. All four tracks are great and the club mix is essentially the track on the album just extended, which as a DJ I felt the album version was too short.
System Syn’s Here’s To You is a single off their forthcoming album Strangers. This seven track single is packed with greatness, you get “Here’s To You” and three remixes of it, a Imperative Reaction remix of “The Inconvenient”, a track called “Lead” and a cover of REM’s “Losing My Religion”. The single is a strong track with catchy lyrics and just screams play me. This wetted my appetite for the full LP.
Mesh’s How Long, is the second single from their album A Perfect Solution. This features a club mix for the dance floor, a radio cut for the people suffering with ADD, and an extended version for those with OCD. In addition to this there is an alternate version of “Hold and Restrain” and a new track, “Save Everyone”.
