Nihil Baxter Interview (Wednesday, 15 October 2008)
Nihil Baxter recently took the time to do an e-mail interview for the Crasier Frane show. Check it out.
First off, can you explain your name? Is it something to do with a German TV character?
Jawohl!, Nihil Baxter is the villian in a german movie by musican/comedian Helge Schneider.
When did you guys get started? You put your demotape out this year, but when did you start practicing and playing shows?
We started practicing in june 2007. Our first show was maybe a couple of weeks later. You can watch the video on our myspace-site.
In February 2008 we recorded our demotape.
Do you find it hard to write songs? There's 18 tracks on your demotape and I don't think any of them are over a minute long. Plus they're all played brutally fast. It seems like you've crammed hundreds of ideas into 12 minutes.
Writing songs is easy. In one practice-session we write at least one song, sometimes more.
We want to keep the songs short because we love short songs, right on the point, no frills.
Were you all in a lot of different bands before you got started with Nihil Baxter or was this your first?
Jo, our singer is a virgin on the bandwaggon. Arno, our drummer played in a german-punk band called "Gut & Billig" which means good and cheap, but the name was exactly the opposite of how they sounded like. Friu played guitar in a even more ridiculous grunge band called "Pathetic" and that's exactly what they sounded like. Markus on bass is also singing in mathcore band "Chainway", the only band in our family tree that doesn't suck.
I was reading some of your lyrics. In Punk Is Dead you talk about a TV station. Can you tell us about that?
Jawohl! It's a former independent german-shit-music-station, now part of MTV-shit-music-station. Don't know if they send any music videos these days, there are always stupid shows and permanent commercial shit when we zap on it accidently (really!).
Do you really feel like punk is dead?
In fact it's more like a verbal sledgehammer, to punch all of these I-bought-a-fancy-punks-not-
I don't see any tour dates scheduled on your myspace. Are you going through a quiet patch or are they just not up on your myspace right now?
Our drummer is living like 300 km away and is also working as a tour-manager, so he doesn't have that much time at the moment.
Have you ever toured anywhere really interesting in the past? Do you have any plans to tour interesting places in the future?
Hmm, there is no "past" in our band "history". We've played 15 shows so far, some were good, some sucked. We plan to release a 7' on Spastic Fantastic Records next spring or summer and also a small tour with The Omnipresent Disease.
Are there any new releases planned for Nihil Baxter?
Jawohl!, we're constantly working on new songs and of course the 7" mentioned above.
It seems like DIY is a huge part of your ethic. You put your entire demotape up for free in your myspace blog, the demotape only costs €3 to buy online. I guess you must not make much money out of Nihil Baxter. Do any of you have any interesting jobs to bring in the cash?
Would you say fare-well to well-fare?
Are there any bands you guys would like to recommend? Or even websites/labels/anything you guys think people should check out?
Of course, all the shit on Spastic Fantastic Records, Civil Victim, Lights Out!, Lipkick, Regicide. You also should check out Gay.Edge.Liberation, it's a friends project against homophobia in hardcore.
Any words of advice, or inspiration, to end with?
Don't take any advices from Krauts.
Thanks a lot to Nihil Baxter for the interview. Awesome stuff. Listen to one of their tracks plus a bunch of other amazing German bands in this episode of the show.
original interview on: http://crasierfrane.blogspot.com/2008/10/nihil-baxter-interview.html