I have a few more small questions for you: Do you have any pets? Are you a coffee or tea fan? What’s your favourite kind of food? And out of cultural curiosity – what do you do in Leipzig when you’re hanging wit yer mates (as they call them in Australia)? Any preferred venues or activities?
Well I do actually have a pet. I have a little cat, called Rudi. He was already there, in the house, when I moved into my flat and after a while he started coming around quite regularly. Now he is around all the time and we became quite good mates!
I do enjoy the occasional coffee just as the occasional tea but I wouldn’t consider myself as a tea / coffee drinker. So no real feelings on that one. Same with food, well not really the same, but I eat pretty much everything. I’m a bad cook though, which I find really annoying. I’d really like to cook nice food and stuff but it doesn’t really go much further than pasta with me. I will do a course though at some point.
Leipzig is amazing. A really pretty city. I live, just as the rest of DIN Martin, in the west of Leipzig, which back in the days used be full of industry, factories…the builders and their families basically. After the wall broke down all the industry started to disappear leaving the empty factories and houses which were empty for a long time. In the last, say 5 years, they started doing up the houses which attracted people. Amongst young families and students, lots of artists came, some better than others, but the whole vibe changed. Many of these factories were being converted into galleries, venues, pubs, studios and so on. We’ve got our studio in one of them, too. It’s a really cosmic place, creative and alternative which I really feel comfortable with.
For a while now really we haven’t been really going out. This album and tour and everything around it, took up quite a lot of space and energy in everyone’s life. We usually just go and hang out in our favorite pub called “Noch Besser Leben” which means “Even better living”. (there is also a pub called “Besser Leben” which means “Better Living” which opened before the Noch Besser Leben, obviously 🙂 ). It’s a great place, we know many of the bar staff who are all characters, and you can still smoke there and sometimes you find yourself sitting there till six in the morning. It’s lovely.
We are really pleased with the video too. That was pretty exciting. I seriously couldn’t sleep for two weeks before we shot it. We had to plan everything so well, as we were in Leipzig and they in Bristol and communication was a bit tricky. But yeah, they were really on it. It premiered on national German tv by the way. That was pretty cool, and good for Richard, the guy who shot it, too. Good reference.
As is often the case with these interactions in installments (because, you know, there have been so many) the conversation doesn’t really ‘end’, but the feature has to. I think this is a great place to publicly congratulate Ole, Carsten and the Martins on their work so far. At this point, I’d also like to ask this Martin if there’s anything I’ve missed asking him about and that he’d like to share.
I think I mentioned it a little before but again thanks for doing this. Even though we are only emailing each other this feels like a really natural and personal conversation. A thousand times better than many interviews I did before. It has been really interesting and I’m surprised how much I was able to open although we haven’t even met! So well done you! 😉
If you want to give DIN Martin a listen, this is the place to visit for a physical copy of their record, or you could go here or here for immediate gratification (aka downloads). I think you should buy their music, or at least send them a message on facebook or twitter or wherever telling them you dig them. They’re the nicest people and would only be too happy to hear your praise. Danke for your time and effort and luffly company, DIN Martin!
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