On his new solo album, Dance Hall Putsch, En Esch continues to create hard, highly danceable electronic music that incorporates a variety of different styles. The album includes many collaborations, with the opening track, “Get Lost”, featuring Vas Kallas of Hanzel und Gretyl.
En Esch first gained recognition as a member of KMFDM from 1985 to 1999. He’s been active with many projects over the years, such as Pigface, Slick Idiot (with fellow ex-KMFDM member Günter Schulz), Pig and collaborations with Mona Mur and FM Einheit. Currently, he is on the road as part of the Pig live band.
In an email interview, En Esch discussed his new album.
Does Dance Hall Putsch represent work spanning the years between solo albums, or was it created within a more recent timeframe?
En Esch: Some of it comes from the creative periods between my recent Solo Albums. It also includes a few older ideas, some of which are 20 years in the making.
Did you have a strong idea of what you were aiming for musically and conceptually from the start, or did it evolve in any particular ways during the creation of the album?
En Esch: Certain tracks are written with a specific musical concept in mind and others are the result of improvisation and coincidence. My first priority is always hard grooves and danceable, intelligent electronic music.
Could you discuss the various collaborators on the album? Were there any musicians you hadn’t worked with previously? To what extent did the collaborations shape the final music differently than if they hadn’t been part of it?
En Esch: The only new collaborator is Gabriel Lennox from Glasgow. We met on a PIG tour of the UK when we played with his band Seraph Sin. All the other collaborators are old musical comrades. I incorporate the contributions of others to add to and refresh my own musical perspective and ego, so to speak. The beauty is that I take the result of the collaboration, edit it, produce and finalize and make it into my own vision.
We have my KMFDM brother Raymond Watts. I have him sing in German on the track “Wumms” which was cool.
We have a performance by Vas Kallas, my dear friend and colleague from the band Hanzel und Gretyl on the track “Get Lost”. We go way back to my time in NYC and I’m glad to have her on this album now.
We have, also from NYC, Slick Idiot’s drummer and producer, friend Michael Carrasquillo on the track “If You Don’t Know Me, I Cannot Judge Me” and “Yum Yum Beauty And The Nasty Thief”. We have Mea Fisher aka DJ Mea who I met while touring with Lords Of Acid a few years back. She’s on the tracks “I’m So Sick” and the Faith No More cover “Epic”.
We have the singer and writer of bands like “Fetching Bones” and “Sugarsmack” that I worked with earlier in Pigface, Hope Nicholls, and interestingly, over 20 years ago, I sent her a track and sent me back her vocals recorded on a cassette. I changed the music entirely but used a lot of her original vocals from this cassette.
We have Slick Idiot singer who is also a longtime collaborator on my solo work, Erica Dilanjian from Nashville, TN. And of course we have Guenter Schulz, the genius and iconic guitar player from the golden days of KMFDM featured on “Yum Yum Beauty & The Nasty Thief” and a steel guitar played by Mark Durante, also known from KMFDM.
As you’ve been involved with electronic music for a long time, are there any particular ways the evolution of technology has impacted your creative process and workflow?
En Esch: It’s definitely the introduction of the audio sampler that impressed and influenced me the most and continues to do so. I’m a classically trained drummer and so I have that drumming background, but to hear the groove of a drum machine is amazing – it’s so accurate and driven that I was always blown away by it. It’s what made me like electronic dance floor music.
I was surprised by the cover of “Epic.” What inspired you to do that? Was creating your own take on the song a challenge?
En Esch: I heard the song the first time when KMFDM played an open air festival in Chicago and Faith No More was the headliner and they sound-checked their song “Epic” just when we pulled up in our tour bus. This song, since then, got stuck in my head. This is a track you can’t make better, just different. So you change the style and approach of the music, and that’s what I did.
You’re embarking on a tour with Pig. Will any of the Dance Hall Putsch material featuring Raymond be performed?
En Esch: There’s so much PIG music to play that there’s no chance to play any of my solo work on this tour, even the songs Raymond performs on. But I’m looking forward to hopefully getting out there myself next year.
Is there anything you’d like to add? Have you been involved with any other projects recently that you’d like to mention?
En Esch: I’m already working on new material for my next solo album. It will be coming out next year. I won’t let my followers wait so long anymore for new En Esch material.
Dance Hall Putsch can be purchased at https://enesch-official.bandcamp.com/.
