Dessau have been around for a long time. I first heard them in about 1988 Or l989, when they had several releases on the now-defunct Nashville indie Carlyle Records. These records were intense collisions of electronic sequences, punchy rhythms, and aggro (but distinctly non-metallic) guitar riffs, positively among the leaders in the "electro-industrial-rock'' arena back then. After quite a few dormant years, Dessau, fronted by John Elliott, has reformed with several new releases on Fifth Column and Mausoleum Records. He's been ably assisted on these recent releases by the Die Warzau guys. The influence shows, but Dessau still manage to sound as great as ever. We spoke to John on 12/12/ 95 about the past, present, and future of Dessau.

G-Todd Zachritz J-John Elliott

G-DESCRIBE THE HISTORY OF DESSAU, CHIEF INFLUENCES, ETC.

J-I grew up in Indiana, went to Cumberland College in Williamsburg, Kentucky. I majored in music, didn't like that, it was real straight arrow stuff so I moved to Colorado for a few years. In 1980 I had a chance to move to Nashville, Tennessee to get into punk rock bands down there so I did that and after about a year of being in these Sex Pistoley kinda bands, I had a chance to move to Chicago and I got into a band up there called Stations. Steve Albini was the bass player & I was the drummer. So this is pre-Big Black. This is when he was a freshman at Northwestern University and just a geek from Missoula, Montana. We did a record with a guy named Martin Hannett, who produced Joy Division and early New Order stuff. We did that and about the same time he was kinda having some heroin problems, so that record never came out. (Editors note: It has been brought to my attention that Albini was not a part of Stations at this time, as he only had a small part in a very early incarnation of the group before parting ways. The bass player for the Hannett sessions was Frank Brodlo. Thanks to Ms. George Black and George Stowell for the clarification). So I had a chance to come back down to Nashville. This was about 83-84 so I kinda played drums in some bands but figured out I wanted to do synthesizers and more of an industrial thing. Back in 84-85 I just formed a band of my own called Dessau. It was a city in East Germany where I knew nobody would know the name or how to pronounce it. It was just so obscure that I felt like it was right for what I was doing. Then, out of the blue, in about '86 I got a call from Martin Hannett again, just cuz I had kept in touch & he wanted to come to Nashville to vacation and stuff so he came over and he produced our first record--a limited edition EP sort of thing..a 12" we did with him called "Red Languages ". It did pretty good for what it was--we only pressed 500 so it was a very limited edition. I don't even have any of it. I'd love to find it.

G-WAS IT PRETTY SIMILAR TO WHAT YOU WERE DOING LATER ON?

J-Yeah, it was similar. It was more of maybe a Killing Joke/ Joy Division kind of thing. Maybe less synthesizers but definitely pretty rockin' stuff. We did that and when I lived in Chicago in the early 80s, I had known Al Jourgensen even before Ministry & stuff. So I'd always kept in contact with him so I had sent him some demos & he said he'd like to do a remix of this song we had called ''Unshakeable". At the same time, I was kind of talking to this label called Carlyle, and they said, "Well, man, if you can do a remix with Al Jourgensen, we'd be into funding that & signing you". So that was our first introduction with Carlyle & that got me to work with Al and Paul so we did that. We put out the ''Mad Hog" EP which has "Unshakeable" and than at the same time, we were getting ready to work on this "Exercise In Tension" album and we had played a gig in Chicago & we were staying at Al's house & we were doing this throwaway song at the end--this "Isolation" song which I never really intended to really record. But Al said, ''Man, we gotta record that one, that's gonna be a big hit," so we recorded that with him so that was our 2nd thing we'd done with him & we had great success.

G-THAT GOT ON MTV & ALL.

J-Yeah. That did real well. We were real pleased with that, and A1 always said that was one of his best productions. He was always real proud of that one. That caught us up to 89. Then in the summer of 90, Paul Barker came down for a month without Al to produce the 2nd Dessau CD & that's about the time when Carlyle was running out of money and ended up folding so that never came out. We had to kinda play dead there for a couple years or so. So that caught us back up to 93 & then we started to write again & get a focus because we found out that a lot of people still were playing ''Isolation". A lot of bigger cities, in the clubs, they were still playing "Isolation" & people still knew the band so it wasn't like we were REO Speedwagon trying to make a comeback. People felt like we were still kinda current & we had worked with the Ministry guys, so we started working on demos at the Warzone(Die Warzau's studio in Chicago)--the Die Warzau guys & Jared (Hendrickson, of Chemlab and Fifth Colvmn Records) heard that and immediately wanted to just put out the demos & I said, "well, no, we need to go back in and sweeten these up a little bit with mixing and overdubs." So that's what came out as the "Details Sketchy'' CD on Fifth Column. Then, out of the blue I got a call from Mausoleum Records through BMG and they're gonna put out my back catalogue plus some of the Paul Barker songs that were never released. So all of a sudden, after playing dead for a few years, I get 2 releases in a couple months. And we got to do the Pigface tour so all of a sudden we're kinda visible again, and I tell you what, Todd, there's a lot of people out there like yourself, that had all the early stuff & were really into it, then again there's kids up front that have no idea or even what the name of the band is. And they're digging us too.

G-WELL, YEAH, IT'S BEEN FIVE YEARS SINCE THE LAST THING. LOADS OF KIDS HAVE JUMPED ON THROUGH NINE INCH NAILS SO IT'S LIKE A NEW THING TO THEM, EVEN THOUGH YOU WERE DOING IT LONG BEFORE TRENT EVEN...

J-Trent wanted to get on Carlyle because he saw that we had worked with Al Jourgensen. He had sent demotapes to Carlyle with his band called Crown of Thorns. I remember Carlyle giving me a tape of this & I said, "Man, it's like bad Depeche Mode. This shit sucks'". Y'know, they gave me the tape and said, "We're thinking of signing this guy--he lives in Cleveland & he's a little synthesizer guy", and the stuff was real Depeche Modey & I've never been a huge Depeche Mode fan--I think they got better as they went along--but this stuff was real cute, poppy stuff and I said, "Man, I think this stuff is pretty lame''. So I guess they changed the name to Nine Inch Nails & right after that they got signed to TVT. (DISCUSSION TURNS TO TVT AND THE LACK OF PROMOTION OFFERED DIE WARZAU'S ''ENGINE'' ALBUM, WHICH JOHN AND I AGREE WAS AN EXCELLENT ALBUM.) So that kinda caught us up with what we were doing up to that point. The Mausoleum thing's happening. I guess that thing's selling really well, because it's everywhere, it's in Wal-Marts and K-Marts. The Fifth Column stuff is still in more specialty kinda stores & that's just because of (Mausoleum's) BMG distribution. Starting in January we're going to start recording on the new record. Hopefully it'll should go through the top. As they say, we're due. We need to have a record that can really do well without being a Sister Machine Gun and having a real pop record because I heard their record is a little more commercial but I don't think it's doing super well. I'm not sure. We did the Pigface tour and we had to kinda miss a date there (in St. Louis) because we had a couple guys that decided to LEAVE THE BAND and that was kinda cool and actually in hindsight, that was the best thing that could ever happen cuz those guys were lame anyway. I'm not going to work with those kinda guys anyway that do that, so we ended up picking up one of the guitar players from Acumen.

G-GOOD BAND.

J-Yeah. They're cool. They do some different stuff. After getting one of those guys to continue on the road with us, we ended up doing great. So we had some really good gigs after Chicago--the Metro--that went really well. Then we played Cleveland, Philly, New York, and it went really well. We were real pleased with the turn of events.

G-I ASSUME YOUR FUTURE WORK WILL BE THRU FIFTH COLUMN?

Yeah, we're going to do the Fifth Column thing & they've been real supportive of us & I know they've been working press on us. Jared's an old friend. I've known him for about 10 years and he's a good friend of Paul Barker's, so I know him a couple of different ways. He was always a big fan of our stuff, too, so he knew all about "Unshakeable" and "Isolation", even way before Chemlab he had all our stuff. He was always into getting us someday so it came around to where we're on Fifth Column and I know they run a lot of ads for us.

G-I GUESS WITH THIS EP, "DETAILS SKETCHY", YOU SORT OF HAVE TO INSERT THAT IT INCLUDES (THE PARTICIPATION OF) RICH PATRICK, JIM MARCUS, VAN CHRISTIE, PAUL BARKER, ETC. AS A SELLING POINT, BUT THE EP AS A WHOLE SEEMS MORE LIKE DIE WARZAU REMIXES OF DESSAU.

J-Well, there 's definitely an influence there. We're working at the Warzone and working with those guys. Obviously the synthesizers are kinda more happening. I've always been into synthesizers. It's not as hard and I don't know if I was intentionally making a record that wasn't as hard. I think the next one can still be hard and still be synthesizers too.

G-THE EP WAS SORT OF DEMOS, RIGHT?

J-Well, it was demos that we had done and then we went back in and remixed and stuff. So no, they're not demos-they were versions that Jared heard and liked and basically we got a budget to go back in and tweak them up a little bit. I hate to say the word demo cuz I think any time I go in the studio, I'm making a record, not demos.

G-SO YOU'RE WORKING ON A NEW LP NOW?

J-We're gonna start recording in January. I'm still kinda writing it and finetuning it, maybe lining up some people to play on it. But maybe this time there won't be ANY guest stars on it, cuz I'm seeing how some people say, "well, it's all those people & it's not really Dessau" or this or that, so maybe there won't be ANYBODY on it. Then the kids can say, "I thought those people were gonna be on the records all the time". You can't please 'em all but y'know, I don't want those kind of people to overshadow my record, and I definitely don't want to be a Pigface kind of project, where it's always going to be this, that, and the other, cuz I felt like we had done pretty good without a bunch of those people even though Paul and Al had produced our other stuff.

Dessau discography: Red Languages l2"(1985) Happy Mood EP (1987) Mad Hog 12"EP(1988) Exercise in Tension CD(1989) Isolation 12(1989) Beijing 12" (1989) Details Sketchy CD EP(1995) Dessau(compilation) CD(1995)