40 years of “Mont Klamott”: Silly keyboarder Richie Barton reveals the sound secrets of the classic album! | free press

2023-05-05 01:59:00

It’s still one of the most important German pop albums to this day: with their first “real” record, the Berlin band Silly reinvented GDR rock from scratch – as a cool wave bridge to the 80s.

rock history.

Very few albums were made in the GDR that, apart from nostalgic transfiguration or earlier zeitgeist weight, can claim a place in the annals of German pop history as a whole. However, those of the band Silly are all part of it, which is why there has been a lot of talk, discussion and writing about works like “Februar” (1989), “Bataillon d’Amour” (1986) or “Love Waltz” (1985) since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Especially since the Berlin band around the singer Tamara Danz, who died in 1996 (today considered the “only real rock star of the East”), did not join the “Ostrock” wave after the reunification and instead released a brilliant late work with “Alles Rot” in 2010, which with Anna Loos on the microphone transformed the Silly class into the new millennium and rightly received platinum.

However, the focus was mostly on the texts by Tamara Danz and Werner Karma, because they translated everyday sensitivities in the GDR as well as the peculiarities of East German interpersonal relationships with all the political background noise into poetry that was as rough as it was sensual. However, the immense musical weight of the band is overlooked, which goes far beyond the obvious class craftsmanship of the super musicians involved. One album occupies a special position because it not only ended 70s rock for the GDR, but with its compositions and sounds from today’s point of view also represents an essential hinge work for the then burgeoning Wave: “Mont Klamott”.

40 years ago, in May 1983, the record appeared out of nowhere: Shortly before that, the band had produced harmless, well-behaved funk pop rock as “Family Silly”, which always had one foot a little too deep in the Eastern hits. “Mont Klamott”, on the other hand, was also beyond the lyrics an incomprehensible emotional force, poured into completely unusual art songs from new synthesizer sounds, the masterful use of which was not known even from most Western productions at the time. Silly joined the league of the few greats who boldly and skilfully reforged the tried-and-tested rock-pop building blocks of the 70s for the sound of the coming decade. In short: “Mont Klamott” is a game changer, especially with its compositions, which was miles ahead of most bands.

It was above all the keyboarder Richie Barton who turned songs like “Die wilde Mathilde”, “Unterm Asphalt”, “Abendstunden” or “Mont Klamott” into classics. What he got out of the sound machines available at the time bordered on witchcraft for the vast majority of listeners at the time. In the new episode of the podcast “Etwas Kultur muss sein”, the musician now reveals in detail which tricks he had to work with back then to get the album done: Essentially, he only had a rather unusual and now almost forgotten synthesizer at his disposal, namely a Teisco SX-400.

Much of the legendary computer coolness of “Mont Klamott”, which made the disc such a sound sensation 40 years ago, he had to imitate by hand – even if the Saxon producer Helmar Federowski already had an Eventide harmonizer in the Amiga studio decreed. How it all happened back then and what Barton is still laughing about today? Hear for yourself!

The podcast In the new episode of the podcast, Richie Barton explains with many anecdotes and sound examples how songs and sounds were conjured up for “Mont Klamott”! You can find it on all podcast platforms or directly HERE.