From completely opposite cultural backgrounds, one is the son of a rich German industrial man and the other of a craftsman, Hans and André meet early in highschool. Their mutual love for Bowie and Kenneth Anger pushes them to flunk school and smoke in their tiny school movie room. There they dream of an ideal future, made of space travels and industrial music. Feeling the pressure from this private institution, they eventually decide to go to Berlin and see what taste has decadence there. They meet Marianne Katza, an eccentric woman who tells them to come to an artist squat in Mitte district. As Warhol’s Factory, the place is an indistincte magma of ideas, musics and drugs. Here, as André begins to fiddle with a korg ms20 synth (he never told where he found the money to afford it) and dreams of exquisites performances, in another room, Hans tries to write his wildest nightmares to exorcise them. Marianne decides to introduce the future band to one of her lovers: Marc Berron, a young arrogant and rich kid blessed with a perfect ear. He helps them to slow down their drugs issues and take a new direction: to play a cold and personal music in pop format but with a feeling of urgency which characterized young Berliners. So he kidnaps them in his own studio for several weeks to experiment, give feelings and eventually find Violence Conjugale’s ultimate sound.
Listen and order here.