The Band Introduces Itself

Text written by André C. Kalipke

Text translated by Sean Lang

We are "Modern Age" - a pure synth band.

Our music covers a spectrum between synthpop, industrial and EBM.

The band was formed in 1992 in Berlin by Sean Lang (lead vocal, lyrics), Roy Goldschmitz (composing, synthesizer, lyrics, background vocal), and André C. Kalipke (composing, synthesizer, keyboard, sampler, background vocal (, lyrics)).

All songs were produced by André C. Kalipke.

More of our songs and song versions will be released in the near future - other tracks from 1992 as well as new ones. And even if all the titles up to now date from 1992, they remain relevant and could have been created today in terms of content and style. The songs' production year of 1992 should therefore simply be taken as a fact and not as a sign of them being "not up to date".

All our songs are downloadable.

Modern Age (still alive) are :

Sean Lang (lead vocal, lyrics) and André C. Kalipke (composing, synthesizers, keyboards, sampler, background vocal (, lyrics)).

Features of Modern Age music :

Emotional focus :

Sadness, dejection, frustration, resignation, fear and despair.

Musical focus :

Influence of the emotional focal points both in the music (itself) and in the texts (socially critical).

In addition : bass lines, rhythm

Why exactly these emotional focal points ?

Because that's the way we feel them. There are many reasons to crack under the circumstances in which we live : in particular the stupidity of mankind with all its numerous negative facets : egoism, inhumanity, injustice, superficiality, ignorance, selfishness, materialism, greed, envy, thirst for recognition, exploitation and oppression of people, exploitation and damage to our planet, etc. And because stupidity prevails, none of this will change in our lifetime...

The reason for the (late) publication :

As our songs will soon be celebrating their 30th anniversary and above all through the gentle persuasion of my best friend to share our songs with a larger audience, I finally decided to take that step and release our music. And even if the songs have been around for "a few years", they are nevertheless current, as "substantial" music has no "expiry date".

Band history :

At the end of 1991 I got to know Roy. It quickly became clear that we got along well, had similar tastes in music and also shared similar world views, but also a deep sorrow.

But in order to start a band, we were still missing a singer, who we found in Sean (originally from Canada) at the beginning of 1992. We quickly began to record our first songs while composing new songs.

Unfortunately, the circumstances under which we had to cut the vocals were "catastrophic". In the absence of professional equipment (such as headphones or a multi-track recorder, etc.), "polished" recordings of the vocals were hardly possible. Everything was recorded in one take (basic tape deck), with Sean singing along to the music that came out of the home stereo system. The sound quality left much to be desired due to the lack of better recording technology.

For this reason, the vocal and recording quality of all of our currently released songs are of "demo quality" at best. Thus we ask those interested in listening to the music for a bit of "understanding", as in the end it is about the music and its content and statements.

Despite no change in these unfavourable circumstances - due to financial considerations - we managed to record 11.5 songs ("Sequel To Death" remaining unfinished) by autumn 1992. Then our collaboration with Roy ended when he left the band for personal reasons (of a family nature).

Sean and I subsequently tried for some time to achieve better one-take results with the songs written up to that time, but the aforementioned recording technology with all its drawbacks was (until today) not to change.

The original idea of MA was actually that we would perform our songs as a purely "live" synth band, without any kind of playback - partial or complete (e.g. supported by a tape machine), just completely "live". Percussively larger playing surfaces etc. were also taken into consideration as part of the set. In addition to song composing and band meetings, we needed to find more musicians to perform our songs, as the live implementation of all the tracks of a song would hardly have been feasible with only four hands. In the end we didn't find any suitable musicians and so it remained a "vision".

Recently Sean and I discussed the possibility of "perfecting" the vocal recordings for our songs, since the appropriate equipment is now available - equipment we could only dream of in 1992. But since my psychological state has become more and more destabilized in the last ten years, this project is already associated with almost insurmountable hurdles for me. Still, it is my wish to transform these 30-year young "demo" recordings into "full-quality" studio recordings one day, as I am still behind our compositions and they probably wouldn't sound all that different if I wrote them today.

This text and the author comments of all our songs were translated by Sean Lang.

Thank you very much, Sean.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

More of my compositions you can find on my solo page :

https://soundvortex.newgrounds.com/audio