SA: Hi guys, let’s present your team to SuccoAcido readers.

K: Hallo SuccoAcido readers! This is Keplar from Passau, Germany.
Keplar is a fiveheaded team of longyear friends, whose mayor interest has always been music.
With this uniting love for good sounds it’s been a logical step to start a label.
So done in March 2002.
The fabulous five:
Harry Lüftl: He already had a little "label" in the mid-nineties when selling darkwave tapes to Japan. Breathing deep into Buddism, he puts his creative input in releasing records.
He volunteered to deal with the finance office. But his favorite thing to do is searching for new acts for Keplar.
Send him a demo and he will like it — criticism is something he does not know …
One word: qualitylabel
Andreas Kurz: one half of _Radio Magenta. He’s punk in many ways and loves noise. He’s always looking for a more properate way to destroy music, so it can become art and beauty.
As he is studying arts in Linz, he’s something like our Keplar - corespondent for Austria, also designing covers. One word: concept.
Basti Sentef: another half of _Radio Magenta.
Keplar’s electronical slackhead, originally sampling since 1998.
On almost every Keplar release you can hear a tune that was recorded at his "zimmer".
When you contact Keplar, he will be the one answering you in 95% of all cases.
Checking most of the international distributioners - he now starts his own distribution "true call".
Matthias Neuefeind: one mastermind of Fonoda. He’s the webmaster of www.keplar.de
Producing tons of guitardrones as musician and selfportraits as photographer he flees depression. Studying print/media in Munich he’s in weekly contact with our German distribution Hausmusik and of course takes care about the printing of Keplar releases.
Florian Doelzer: second mastermind of Fonoda. He deals with the label’s legal affairs and the booking of the Keplar acts.
As he is known for his very intense listening to all the sounds Keplar produces, his opinion about arrangements and mixing is worth something.
There is nearly no chance to meet him without smoking a cigarette, but we will quit someday — he knows…
He is willing to start his own booking agency "(hope)" in the end of 2004.

SA: Which is the Keplar philosophy?

K: Wow, that’s a heavy one …
A very good friend of us defined Keplar - when writing about us for a german music magazine — as "a virtual home in the hearts of all the like-minded".
This sentence is an interesting attempt to define what might be called our philosophy:
We release records, we want to reach people, we want to give our listeners a place to return to, a place of hope, maybe …
It’s an interesting thing to have a label. We have contact with people all over the world — and in their music or work with it, we always find the same reasons for making music or working with it: an anonymous urbanity to live in, an inner strife and confusion to cope with.
These reasons connect.
Keplar is one part of this connection, it is a part of the mosaic.
We hope that’s philosophical enough …

SA: Could you give us your personal opinions (something like a series of brief comments) about the all releases of your catalogue?

K: Keplar 101 (December 2000) - Recorded in winter 2000, this split 7" still represents the feeling of these times: a search for warmth and an undefined goal — expressed by lo-fi electronica monotony and postrock tunes.
We didn’t quite know what we did, but it worked (in a retrospective)
Definitely Keplar’s ground zero — with this single we found our German distributioners Hausmusik and A-Musik.
Not available in Italy. To order directly from us.
Keplar 002 _Radio Magenta — Tracks for Alan Smithee (February 2002)
This release was experimental in many ways.
First of all of course for Basti and Andi, as they tried to translate their (at that time roughly formed) vision of pop and electronical sounds into music for the first time.
Secondly for Keplar as a label it was essential, as we learned that we were right when we suggested, that we knew you’re out there. (that phrase was written on the cover)
Keplar 003 Tigrics — Compact disco (June 2002)
With this record we opened another chapter of Keplar, as we decided to release an artist who was not a member of Keplar. So we signed somebody for the first time.
We still can’t quite belive that we were the first to realize the amazing talent of Robi (Tigrics).
For us, "Compact disco" is an immense statement about urban live, being lost in it and the beauty within. Mixed with the joy and funkyness that only pop music can transport .
Keplar 004 Fonoda - Blinker : Farben (November 2002)
Fonoda is the guitar project of Matthias and Florian.
Some said it would be suicidal to release a pure guitar album after getting known as an electronic label. Well, it wasn’t. We never defined Keplar as an electronic label and this record fitted perfectly into the keplar cataloge, as it transported the feeling known from the other releases to another slowmotional, floating and epic level, only using analog instruments.
Our bestseller so far — thanks to you guys in Italy! Drone on!
Keplar 005 Mui — st. (March 2003)
See question no.7
Keplar 006 Mikrofisch - Gleichstrom/Wechselstrom (May 2003)
This one definitely feels different from the other releases. This album is cute, the production bases on a four tracker and is lo-fi as it can be and sometimes there are funny vocals.
We felt like doing it, when we did it. Maybe we wouldn’t do it again today. Not for financial reasons (it was successful), but it lost a little of its charme in time, while all the other releases sound as well as they did on the first day (often even better).
Maybe we’re a little too honest here … check it for yourself — buy the cd. ;)
Keplar 007 _Radio Magenta - "I am sorry, I am" and some other heartteaching stories by _Radio Magenta (August 2003)
The second album on Keplar. Basti and Andi found something like a universal formula for their definition of electronic indie rock and produced an album containing 12 hits.
We adore this one.
Actually, the three other Keplar guys think so.
Basti and Andi headed on to new abstract ways to produce soundscapes, leaving behind structures. So they built a new project: Washer, zimmer.
Unfortunately, "I am sorry, I am …" has not reached Italy yet.
Keplar 008 Pantasz - Str. d. par. komm. (November 2003)
No joke, we decide this record to be a classic a few years from now.
We know this album since may 2003 and with every time we listen to it, it becomes better.
Fabian from Berlin, on a journey through his everyday live, written down in tunes,
which are played by guitars or produced by CPUs.
Hearing his voice, we still shiver …Visions of joy, loss and murder
The darkest Keplar release so far but also the most danceable.
Keplar 009 - A tribute to Smog (December 2003)
Thinking of Keplar 101, we often got a little sentimental. So we decided to do another split 7" as a kind of a Christmas present for ourselves and from us to everyone, who likes and respects Bill Callahan as much as we do.
We splited this record with another German label.
On the Keplar side, _Radio Magenta do their version of "Ex-con" from the "Red apple falls" album. They had this track in their live set for a long time, and many people asked, where they could buy it — well, now they can.

SA:Which is your idea of pop-music?

K: This simple question has been for generations the reason for hours of discussion …
Pop is popular music. It is music that is made for an audience.
There is a fight between entertainment and art. The question is whether art can be supposed to be made for an audience.
Our answer is: of course it can.
We think that pop music can be art and art can also be pop music.
Like any other artist a pop musician puts parts of his personality into his work.
And sometimes there is art that reaches a big audience without being supposed to.
All music is pop in a certain way.

SA: A question for Andreas and Basti: you also play in _Radio Magenta band… where are you finding the best satisfactions, in your band or in the label management?

K: Making music and doing label work are two completely different things so it’s hard to tell. Both things are good processes to do and they balance very well. Label work is a good way to recover from the sometimes exhausting creative output that making music can be.

SA: In Italy there’s now a great attention for indie German music : bands, electronic projects, labels…. How can you explain us the incredible fertility of German musical scene, electronic in particular?

K: We actually have never thought about it. But when we see it from an kind of outside view, it is really an interesting question.
We have no idea.
Maybe we can try it with a little bit of German history:
In the 1950s and 60s music was a part of the "American way of life" and therefore a statement of the freedom of speech and thoughts. (it obvious was a looong time ago …)
As American and British beat and pop music was imported heavily at these times to seperate West Germany from the social regime of GDR, there very soon was a big infrastructure to promote and release music.
In the 1970s after the more or less successful student revolution those major labels were stigmatized as part of the establishment.
So the first indie labels were founded to release a kind of music that was not financial supported by the majors, because of its political content or its mass incompatibility.
Well, this tradition hasn’t changed very much till today.
Of course the mainstream tries to scout the next hype again and again, but we resist…
About the eletronical aspect of your question: thanks to artists like Asmus Tietchens, Kraftwerk or the NDW movement electronical music has always been a natural part of the German musical scene.

SA: How did your relationship with the Italian Mui band start? In my opinion the Mui cd sounds different from the rest of your productions...

K: It started when Harry found an mp3 by a project called ‘Delta’ at the City Slang mp3-club. Delta is the solo-project of Stefano D’Incecco, one half of Mui. When Harry asked him for a Delta demo he sent us the mui album which they had completed a few months before. We got it — we made it.
For us this record doesn’t feel too different from the other releases.
Many labels try to find a certain kind of music to represent. We always felt that -in time - this might become boring - for us as well as for the listener.
There is one point, where all the Keplar releases are connected with each other: it is the feeling they transport.
Every release for itself is a great piece of music, but it is also a part of an whole picture.
With every part of this big puzzle the final result (whatever this might be …) becomes clearer to us and maybe to the listener.
Mui is a vital part of this picture: their album might be more objective and maybe relaxed, but the main aspects we found when were listening to it were similar to the other releases in our catalogue.

SA: Do you know (and do you like) other Italian bands or musicians?

K: Giardini di Miro, Mou Lips, Populous, Concerto are acts we know and like very much.
We also happened to know that there is a very vital and big emo core scene in Italy - oops, somebody has not done his homework …

SA: Which are your plans for the future?

K: Touring Italy — of course...
If there are any Italian promoters who read this — feel free to contact us.
In spring 2004 we will release a further record of Tigrics. It will be titled "Neverbeener" and for about a year we really thought that this album might never be. Definitely a big one.
Andi and Basti invited Matze and Florian from Fonoda to do some of their guitar licks on their ambient noise tracks — the result of this cooperation will be on the debut of "Washer, zimmer & the guitar people", which we will also released in spring 2004.
After the summer break, the second album release of Fonoda will be a date to mark in your calendar. We actually have no date fixed up to now …