Kinderzimmer Productions
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Kinderzimmer Productions is a German hip hop band from Ulm (in the jargon of the band "U-Stadt"), a town not normally known for hip hop. They consist of Quasi Modo (Sascha Klammt as DJ) and Textor (Henrik von Holtum as MC). They released their first album in 1994. Their name is both a tribute to early hip hop group Boogie Down Productions and a reference to the child's play room (German Kinderzimmer) in the parental house of Henrik von Holtum, in which the first two albums were recorded.
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[edit] History
Textor's mother, Lena Möllerström, was in the mid-to-late 1960s a celebrated Swedish jazz singer, while his father, Günther von Holtum, was a classically trained drummer, so music was a constant element of daily life in the von Holtum household, leading to a jazz influence which can be heard in many Kinderzimmer Productions tracks. One day a good friend brought with him a cassette from a GI (Ulm was an American garrison town). According to the official biography:
In comically wild lettering - Switcheroony guards the tape like his own child even today - the name DJ Mike La Rock was written above a drawing of a microphone. The tape turned out to contain a type of music which none of the three had heard before and which left them all with mouths agape and faces twisted in surprise - rap!
The band's self-titled debut album had to be withdrawn from the market fairly soon after its release. The song "Back" contained an undeclared sample from the Stranglers' recording "Golden Brown". The Stranglers had already agreed to the sample being used, but their record company invoked its exclusive rights to it regardless, and the original album can no longer be distributed. It was re-released in 1998 under the name Die Erste, with the undeclared sample in "Back" replaced by a distinctively off-key piano melody played by Textor.
After the first album was withdrawn, Kinderzimmer Productions proceeded more cautiously with the second. In the track "Intro" a sample of Kate Bush is declared with the words "At this point there was a sample of Kate Bush". The album itself contains many jazzy samples strongly evocative of the 1930s to '60s.
The band still regularly plays concerts in the Ulm area, and the latest album showcases a clear development in their style.
[edit] Style
Kinderzimmer Productions is distinguished by a highly individual style. More than with most German-language hip hop, the tracks are shaped by a dynamic combination of samples (often jazzy or funky, frequently quoting well-known hip hop classics), which creates a constant change of mood. Textor's sing-speak is marked by high speed, complicated sentence constructions and the occasional use of foreign words and technical terms, which can sometimes make his message seem self-confident and obscure, although the content is of secondary importance to the sophisticated wordplay. In "Back" Textor sings Wie ich schon sagte, ich schreib meine Zeilen mal widerlich schnell, mal fettig und langsam, mal sinnvoll, mal sinnlos ("Like I said, sometimes I write my lines obscenely fast, sometimes slow and flabby, sometimes meaningful, sometimes meaningless"). This mixture of sampling and sing-speak can be psychedelic in effect.
As a special feature on their homepage, users can make their own hip hop tape with words spoken by Textor.
[edit] Discography
- Asphalt (2007)
- Irgendjemand muss doch (2005)
- Ich bin, du nicht sicher (2004)
- Wir sind da wo oben ist (2002)
- Die hohe Kunst der tiefen Schläge (1999)
- Die Erste (1998)
- Im Auftrag ewiger Jugend und Glückseligkeit (1996)
- Kinderzimmer Productions (1994)
