Your disease is my hope. Your death is my liberation.
A chat with Magda Vogel.
Completing the triangle of artists featured in Dee Dee's Picks latest release, Aboriginal Voices: The First Album, I got to catch up with Magda Vogel, the one-time featured lyricist and singer of Aboriginal Voices. She was the person responsible for narrating four songs of the record, describing her surroundings and current life situations, anonymised sentiments in the time of 1981, Zurich. Unlike Aboriginal Voices whose career only lasted less than a handful of years, this marks the first recording of Magda's for a career that spanned nearly until the remainder of the 20th century.
Interestingly enough, whether through enrolling to go to Opera conservatory, theater academy or joining the aforementioned duo's band; all share the common theme of rejecting Magda. Disbandment and left for creative differences and inadequacies. This rejection however only pushed her to strive her artistic endeavours whilst simultaneously reaching out to with the correct collaborators who enthused her vision, and thus led to nearly a decade of touring and releasing albums.
Magda is perhaps best known through her band UnknownmiX. Founded in 1983 with electronic musician Ernst Thoma and visual designer Hans-Rudolf Lutz, UnknownmiX toured Europe for 10 years as one of the 1st multimedia avant-garde rock bands. They created a new music style using electronics, voice, drum, rhythmic structures and room for improvisation. In 2017, whether being reissued by Lux Rec or appearing as a guest vocalist in the field of free improvisation on a record by Jack Pattern, UnknownmiX music has been an inspiration for many electronic musicians even today.
In addition to her work as a singer and musician, Magda is still active through teaching singing, gives workshops and directs the outlaw and Freilager choirs, as well as being an avid hiker.
In this chat titled "Your disease is my hope. Your death is my liberation", we talk about (amongst other things) anecdotes from her years with UnknownmiX, the fascination in repetition to reach out-of-the box thinking in songwriting and the genesis of Aboriginal Voices as well as the meaning behind the lyrical content on "The First Album".
Let’s have an overview on how you became who you are today.
My journey in my music career started in the seventies. Initially, I wanted to become an opera singer around the age of 23-24. “Unfortunately”, I was informed by the school I applied to that I was too old. Too late to engage in such a career path. So I opted for a freelance route where I would lend my voice to various projects, jamming with various acts of the Zurich scene at the time. In the beginning of the eighties, I eventually met Ernst Thoma who was already making music with Knut Remond under the name TV-Totem. We met at the art school F+F and he was already quite a prolific producer and visual artist. If you look in his discography, he’s accomplished more than a hundred of recordings. One day he took me to his studio where he showed me his synthesiser set up. I was so taken aback with this machinery, Serge modules being connected with cables. I was very impressed by the unlimited possibilities of sound design that you could accomplish with synthesisers. It was Zurich in the eighties, so all of this technology, at least on a domestic level, was very new. It suited me just fine in combination with a voice as the concept of music theory did not apply when we first started making recordings as it was all improvisation based. That’s why we called ourselves this way. UnkownmiX; because we were venturing into the unknown, incorporating elements of ourselves into each other, in addition to unpredictable concerts. Through improvisation, we tried to make them different everytime we performed. Hans-Rudolf Lutz eventually joined the lineup by suggesting to do visuals after seeing us perform.
In the beginning our concerts were pretty much full improvisation. Ernst had the basis of his synth patches but then I was singing freely over the sounds he would generate, and thus adapting to each other as the show went on. When we began the recordings, we would put emphasis on song structure, such as beginning, verse, chorus and outro. It was only towards the end of UnknownmiX that it became more pop oriented due to band lineup changes. Juliana Müller, who was an actual pop performer, enhanced the band into going in that direction. DominaDea the most conventional record I made, I think. After Hans-Rudolf Lutz had passed, however, I started to stop touring because we had a child and touring with a child is factually strenuous.
Today, I work under many different projects, I was revolving around being a music teacher for the elderly or leading choirs (now). I still do concerts nowadays but only for experimental music. I’m a member of a board of a music club for adults where we organise courses, jams and concerts.
With punk and new wave being leading, innovative genres in the 80s amongst other musical styles incorporating electronic sounds, what was your interest in opting for a more experimental route?
With Ernst, we wanted to make something different. Of course I could have gone a more punk route, but it did not interest me. Working with bands such as Aboriginal Voices was already quite new and original for me. So the term experimental here is a bit flawed, because my whole life I feel like I was experimenting.
Classical music, there are too many rules. Staying in key, following partitions, following the conductor, style… I found it all too restricting. That was the same with punk. It became mundane as quick as it came to popularity. Same structures, chord progression, lyrical content.. very strict and criteria based. Things like synthesisers were such a new discovery for me, to be able to create sounds that you hear in your head… or not! Sometimes it goes beyond and through the process of happy accidents, you can get unforeseen results. Ernst was a very inventive electronic musician, whether producing or even so creating his own equipment to break boundaries.. He never imitated traditional instruments, he always wanted to go further with sound design, so I obliged by melting my voice with these unlimited possibilities of sound.
Speaking of music theory. Although you gave that part up to pursue experimentation, breaking rules of classical music, why did you go to conservatory in the 90s to study music theory?
It was to make a full circle and fill in my knowledge gaps. In hindsight, it’s fine to break rules, but I got inquisitive in learning the ways of why and how I was breaking them. Perhaps there were unsought areas for me to delve into by understanding what I was doing all those years. It’s also to “perfect my technique” as an artist and fulfil my initial desire of wanting to become an opera singer. It allowed me to go deeper in music. On a side note, I feel that if I lived in the United States back in the day, it would have been more permissible and encouraged to be in your early twenties to find a program, a course that promoted and encouraged this kind of experimental music. In Switzerland, it felt like it had to be either way, restricted by traditional guidelines and restrictions very European focused. For me, the musical spectrum enlarged profusely when I started to study musical theory, despite having an experimental and improvisational background.
How did the need for visual expression come to? Is it to support the music or the music to support the visuals?
Lutz came to Ernst and I in the early days of UnknownmiX suggesting his set of visuals as a way to visually narrate our performance. As our popularity grew, so did our professionalism. This was side by side with technology getting better, as did the quality of our instruments, visuals and all together the quality of gigs. It all fits together. So essentially, it was the music first, always. The audio visual experience came later. But towards the end it was kind of both, as the visuals were linked with the music, whether it being synced to the rhythm or the lyrical content appearing on screen.
How did you afford all of this equipment actually?
Well in the beginning, Ernst built his own equipment and it gradually grew. We once got funding from Pro Helvetia but really It was mainly for touring and was used for that. We got the Zurich Cultural prize one year, 36’000 CHF, but we all reinvested it in the band. We always did everything ourselves, our own funding by working secondary jobs, whether instructing graphic design, music or construction work. At the end of UX, we had around 16 projectors a handful of analog and digital synths and a little tour bus. It’s all we needed. These may appear like big numbers but really, the big majority of the time we were breaking even.
I read that prior to wanting an opera singer, you wanted to become an actress. Additionally, since being an educator has been a very big part of your life, I was wondering if there was a correlation. My question being: when you perform on stage, how much of a role do you take as an actress on one side; to pretend and express your inner self through a character, and as an educator; trying to break popular musical perceptions and connotations.
Well that’s the thing. I wanted to become an actress but even with that, my application was rejected because they said I was too stubborn and restricted in my head. As an actor, you need to be able to be flexible in order to fill roles and reach expectations from the director. As you know, I wanted to break free from guidelines.
Your observation of Ernst and I having a director/actor relationship is accurate. In the sense that he instructed me with an idea (the music) and then I performed by interpreting his idea and making it my own. Like in a movie when a director conducts a scene, he also expects the actor to make the role their own interpretation. The best movie is never only the director you know, it's the actor who also makes an input. There was no hierarchy however, we were all equal when voicing our opinions and ideas.
I’d like to add however that although we were all equal, I took the role of the leader of the band, in the sense that I was doing all the bookings, PR, and talking to record labels. In the eighties it was very demanding because you did not have the internet. Everything was done by phone, fax or mail. To find gigs, especially abroad, was very risky because you could never be quite sure what venue or who you were dealing with, such as equipment, accessibility, legitimacy and location. It’s unbelievably more convenient to go on tour now with things like GPS, instead of stressing out with out of date maps and roads.
Your question is interesting because when I perform, I have kind of a didactic interest to communicate and present something new to the audience in front of me. Even if they did not like the music, the intent was to inspire and show something different. That’s where inspiration comes for most people, whether it is subconscious or not. Stimulation is important.
When it comes to performance, it really comes down to being to different sides of the same coin. It is still me performing on stage, but I channel my most inner energy through my lyrics. My lyrics become a part of me and vice versa. Of course It’s easier to communicate this in more intimate concerts because when you are performing in front of thousands of people, they don’t know me on a personal level. So this intimacy dissolves and only one side of a coin is shown. But then again, when the audience does not know you on this level, there is no preconception of who you are, so you are able to really let out and express yourself the way you want to.
At our peak, UnknownmiX really became a famous multimedia show, where you became “disconnected” from the crowd because I would be performing in front of thousands of people. There I could really let go, do what I want on stage and act out the music as opposed to just performing it.
From Left to Right
Frank Bagnoud, Drums // Magda Vogel, Vocals // Hans-Rudolf Lutz, Visual Design //Juliana Müller, Keyboards
One thing I noticed is that whether lyrically or musically speaking There's themes relating to jungle, Africa, animals, and even the sounds may remind some of little elephants screaming. There was an interview with this DJ/producer called Delroy Edwards, where he compared some genres of dance music as the core of human music and relating it to African tribal rhythms. I was wondering if his statement relates to how you create. Do you have a fascination with Africa, or whether you would compose with a preconceived theme in mind?
On a musical level , Ernst was always a very rhythmic based person. So he just, he just started with these basics, and then we developed it together, but we never had any existing music style in mind. The concept of storytelling and narrating in an authentic way the lyrics are immensely important for my artistic impression. When listening to the basis of Ernst tracks that he would pitch to me, I tried to imagine in a naive fashion what could fit to the sound to this rhythm and how I interpreted his music when listening to it. And of course, when I heard this African-esque beat, that was my first idea. Or when we created Bush Chicken, what I heard was a kind of a fictional animal and since Africa was such a foreign continent to me, I imagined it coming from a place like this. Or, Uanda Street, I thought of a road where life is so completely different from what I know from here. So I just try to perceive something alien in something else. You find a story in the sounds. The story telling aspect is crucial for me. The way I write lyrics is very elaborated and takes me a long time to write them down on paper, carefully selecting which words are best and such.
With your music being describe by some as proto techno, an EP called “Loops” and the heavy usage of samplers and reel to reel machine to meet your experimental artistic needs, what's your fascination with repetition?
I think the idea of loops also goes in hand with the idea that by repeating is that's how you perfect your craft. When you hear the same eight bars repeating over and over, it makes me thrive as a creative person in longing for diversification. When you repeat a loop over and over again, I think that you start hearing things that aren't necessarily there and it's good to repeat things constantly like a drone. You know, at one point you start hearing things and you're not sure if it's because of the frequencies you are imaging in the sound or if it's just your brain generating new ideas to break out of this idea of repetition. I used to hike in the Himalayas and we would sing with the locals the same verses from their own folk songs. You sing the same verses for hours and hours and it becomes very calming, soothing and even therapeutic. You restrict your material to what you see around you and through this, generate new ideas. To get to a high place of existence. To dare to delve into the unknown.
I know this was 42 years ago but do you remember how you and Aboriginal Voices came to?
I think we met at a party. Their studio was right around the corner of mine. They had already worked together as a couple. One day, they invited me to sing and over a few weeks we wrote and recorded these four songs. Then they kicked me out after a few weeks because I was very unreliable. I didn't quit them. I felt this was fair enough though because I behaved like a diva which at this point I obviously was not. I would come drunk and late to rehearsals and was a bit of a difficult person at the time. But I do not feel any animosity towards them in any way whatsoever. For myself, this behaviour changed drastically later on in UnknownmiX because we were very strict about drug and alcohol consumption before rehearsals and gigs.
Funny enough, I remember more about the songs in question than our time spent together.
‘Voices In The Memory’ is about science fiction. when people are manipulated in a fictive world, whether it is being negatively influenced by advertisements, governments, closed ones, people of authority…. You find a way in your inner self to escape and mask those negative energies
‘Your Desease Is My Hope’. As a child, I had a very rebellious personality. It may have something to do with the fact that I have five brothers and a very strict conventional mother. So my need for expression to be heard probably came from being somewhat shadowed and alone in my own family. My mother would always push me to adapt and to conform to normality and societal expectations. Basically to not be different. She passed away when I was around fifteen. At the time, I was not grieving for my loss at all. Because she had somehow oppressed me. The fact that she had gone made me free. Since then, I only do what I want. Her disease was my hope. Her death was my liberation. It sounds a bit rude, sorry, but that’s how it was. I was confronted with death very early in my life, so the idea of dying does not frighten me too much. I wish everybody to die peacefully with no regret. To die at your best, not at your worst. So to speak.
‘Los Pajaros’. The birds. This song idea came from when you are lying at the beach, under the trees and your dreams go away. And at that moment you would like to be something else or somebody else than who you are. I speak several languages and really like the idea of having the ability to express myself in various ways and to communicate with other people. It’s a creative choice, the desire to sing in various languages. It introduces another perception and meaning to the lyrical content. That, and I like to experiment with the idea that tonally speaking, singing in different languages can have quite an impact on the sound direction and shape of a song. It paints it with a different character.
‘The Biggest Fight’ is very dark sounding and nihilistic in nature when it comes to the lyrical content. It had a big part to do with the current socio economic situation in Zurich at the time. whether it's the Zuri Brannt, Youth revolts for the lack of cultural funding, crime.. It was a nightmare especially that at the time I was living in an apartment that was directly above many of these riots. Police brutality, explosions and fires. Additionally, the addicts in that Platsz park really became a centre for criminal activity and abuse.
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