Girls Under Glass

by Patricia Cram

If you were to have the barcode for any object tattooed on your skin, what would it be?

It would be 7-85668-10162-6 or 7-85668-10172-6. The object being our two releases out..and coming out on Van Richter Records "Nightmares" and Frozen"....as both records are classics and won't fade with time unfortunately like most tattoos do. It would be funny to go into a record shop and have the clerk scan it from my body. Do you think it would register on the store computer? Probably as a special order item (ha ha)

What would you most like to see in a museum?

That is a very general question. We appreciate the modern artists most such as Roger Brown, Clive Barker, Warhol. Mark Pauline(performance artist) I guess a Girls Under Glass multimedia exhibit would be most appreciated covering all our music of the past decade as well as our live video performances. Also a multimedia industrial exhibit from Europe..covering all our great german bands from the various subgenres of industrial...ie like TESTIFY representing the guitar driven side of the genre, SIELWOLF representing the noise and ambient side and THE FAIR SEX, PNE, DHI etc... representing the darkwave/electro/gothic side of the genre. So people who are true fans of industrial can appreciate more than a one dementional approach labeling of the genre by the media etc....

How would you describe the evolution of Girls Under Glass? At what point do you find yourselves now?

The band has stood the test of time...and thankful to Van Richter for briniging new tracks and fans to the light of day..as well as remastering classic and unreleased material. GUG has gone through a personnell evolution from our start in the 1980's to a core of three members since the 1990's of Axel, Hauke and Zaphor. Our music has been an expression of the evolution of our lives and experiences including anger, sadness, love and hate. Right now we find ourselves content and happy with our old school sound of a unique brand of industrial that has been described as anything from metal to gothic to electro to syth pop(thats to the Wolfsheim connection). You know we discovered them for our last label. We make music with intregrity and have not become a slave to the trends. That is why most all our records still sound fresh ...not dated. The "Nightmares" record out on Van Richter is a hybred record of the best tracks we have ever recorded including some classic tracks, new tracks, and unreleased tracks from prior records. The package is completely remasterd and takes the listener to the max of 75 minutes of music! The next release "Frozen" gives the fans a taste of six more tracks including the Madonna "Frozen" song, and also a track with WOLFSHEIM and a DAS ICH remix! So to answer your question musically we are at the top of our career at this time. Now we just need people to start appreciating what we do...by going out and supporting us in the shops by buying the records!

It has been said that musicians only write one song ~ that they spend their entire lives attempting to elucidate one vision. What would this song be for you? What symbols or recurring themes do you find in the content of your music?

I don't know if we subscribe to this theory. They also say your first record is always your best record because it took you a life time to write it. I believe this less than 50% of the time! I think we touched upon the themes of our songs in a previous question. It all depends what is going on in our lives at the time we make the record. For example when we recorded "Firewalker" we were in a very angry state of mind. That is why "Nightmares" is such a good reflection of our moods over time and the body of our work. You can chart our state of mind from year to year from listening to that record. You can read our complete lyrics at http://www.vanrichter.net/gug.html Allot of the cover songs we do...Gary Numan, Simple Mind, John Carpenter etc... are not only to pay respect to those artists but also to create a diversion for the listener. I might add that all our covers have a very unique GUG signature to them. We make them our own! Gary Numan liked our cover better than his original version of "Down in the Park".

If Girls Under Glass was a cult, what would your manifesto say?

A GUG cult...that sounds very interesting! A manifesto or a mission statement? Perhaps that we are the product of the machine age and of the alienation of 20th century technology. Gibson could express it better than we could ever do. The cult of GUG is represented in the body of our music and the messages we give the listener that for the most part being one of angst and rebellion for the status quo of society and expressing our dissatisfaction with the world. Unfortunately our message keeps falling on the deaf ears of a new apathic generation that only support a corporate culture. We will contine to keep the candle burning in the subculture though until someday people will understand us and understand what we are all about! Perhaps before the GUG cult fades to grey we will also write a more detailed manifesto on our website http://www.vanrichter.net Stay tuned!


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