‘Disquo’ / ‘Robota’

The first time I interviewed Andrez Bergen 10 years ago in Melbourne, Australia, I made the mistake of being serious—and asked him why he made music.

“To pass time,” he quipped. “It’s amazing how quickly time flies when you’re stuck in an airless studio, with absolutely no food in your stomach, no friends, and no life.”

A decade on, Bergen has relocated to Tokyo, Japan (he moved there in 2001), but his penchant for jocular behavior remains the same, even if he can be deadly earnest himself when it comes to interviewing other people—since he also works as a journalist.

Bergen makes intelligent electronic music, from dance floor tech-house numbers, to dubstep, freestyle experimental, and hip-hop, and (at last count) 21 different aliases, including Little Nobody, Funk Gadget, Schlock Tactile, Slam-Dunk Ninja and DJ Fodder. The famous sense of humor is also obviously apparently in these names.

But now Bergen has got all seemingly sentimental and released an EP, ‘Disquo’, under his own name, through the wonderful Hypnotic Room [l] label. It came out on the man’s birthday (December 14), and the promotional notes refer to it channeling his childhood.

But look deeper, and you’ll find the mirth behind the fuss—the promo material refers to “A childhood bombarded by disco… [hitched] to Status Quo… [filtered] into darker ‘70s stuff by Black Sabbath, and the cut-up mentality of Cabaret Voltaire.”

Bergen laughs down the line from Tokyo when I mention this.
“Ahhh, that’s the hype machine in overdrive, though it does have a certain amount of truth to it,” he says.

“I spent the 1970s growing up in a semi-nomadic household in which my parents wore flares and tie-dyed clothes and coerced us kids to do the same; they were constantly having parties where the grown-ups guzzled cocktails, flirted, played inane jokes on us, and listened to everything from lounge jazz to especially disco—Donna Summer and Gloria Gaynor.”
Hence the ‘Dis’ part of the name of the new EP’s title.

“Meanwhile,” Bergen adds, “My older brother shaped up as a bit of a headbanger, listening to Status Quo and Deep Purple.” Which accounts for the ‘Quo’.
But there’s a lot more.
“I came out of that rat-trap of influences, mixing and matching those influences with a early love from Blondie, filtered that into ska and post-punk, then discovered EBM stuff by Nitzer Ebb, Front 242 and Frontline Assembly—and ran head first into retro ‘70s music my parents had missed, namely real industrial stuff by Cabaret Voltaire and Throbbing Gristle. That was the early ‘90s, and it’s been a downward slide from there, taking in elements of drum & bass by Ed Rush, Optical and Dillinja, Ninja Tune offerings by Hexstatic and Kid Koala, wonky techno by Tobias Schmidt, Subhead and Dave Tarrida, others like Basic Channel, Luke Vibert, Cassetteboy and Si Begg, Pharma stuff by the Oral brothers [Jammin’ Unit and Khan] and Profan releases by the Brothers Voigt [Reinhard and Wolfgand]. There’s been the obvious influence of Detroit, especially UR, Jeff Mills and Robert Hood, plus mid ‘90s Relief Records and Farris Wheel goodies coming out of Chicago. And then there’s been Melbourne and Tokyo throughout.”

He pauses for thought here. “All of these things have had some impact, obviously, on my poor brain, and if you ram them all together you may come up with some notion of what to expect from this release. Or maybe not. Probably I’m making too much out of it all. Maybe it’s deceptively simple—like the third track, ‘Merian Cooper’? That’s just my homage to the director of the 1933 version of King Kong. Easy.”

Like his flippancy, some other things haven’t changed in a decade, like Bergen’s love for things robotic. It’s not just the name of his recent Little Nobody single (‘Robota’), or the fact that he shanghaied Japanese producer Toshiyuki Yasuda (aka Robo*Brazileira) into that arrangement, to do robot-style vocals—and has since gotten Steve Stoll, DJ Warp and Jammin’ Unit to do remixes.

10 years ago we ended up chatting about the iconic Japanese mecha anime series, Gundam, and this time Bergen—who’s the Tokyo Correspondent for major American publications, Anime Insider and Geek Monthly – is outlining the glorious designs in Gundam’s natural successor, the Production I.G animated mecha series, Reideen.

He admits that the robot fixation in fact started a long, long time ago.
“I grew up on two of Robert Kinoshita’s classic designs—the robot from Lost in Space, and Robbie the Robot in Forbidden Planet and Columbo—and the Cybermen from Doctor Who. Of course I was crazy about C-3PO and R2-D2 in the first Star Wars movie, the robots in Silent Running, and the HAL 9000 computer. The first toy I bought myself, with birthday money from my nan, was a wind-up Japanese tin toy robot, when I was five. I still have that baby. I’ve pulled it apart several times since I was a kid, dismembered it more often that that, reconstructed it badly, it was my dog’s favorite plaything, and it’s generally rusted up—but it still works.”

The robot recollections do induce a serious moment, however, when reality bit even in what seems to have been an otherwise idyllic childhood ion Australia.
“I remember this TV commercial, when I was really young—this was in the days before they put small-text disclaimers in ads—where this plastic robot smashed through a brick wall,” Bergen reflects.

“My brother and I demanded that our poor parents get it, so we could try smashing the walls of our house—preferably during at one of those darned disco parties. It dashed our hopes, of course. There wasn’t any wall-smashing at all. I think that was the first time I realized that advertising takes the piss.”

© 2008 Terry Rance @ Zebra DMC