Artist: Peter Candy of Koxbox

[Penzoline]

Artist: Peter Candy of Koxbox
Date: 2011-04-03
By: GagaISM

I'm really stoked to present you with this first and only online interview with Peter Candy from Koxbox. Peter is a super nice guy and was more than willing to sit down and have a chat about his time with Koxbox. This is the result of an hour long interview I conducted with him just before his new project, the “SILO” collective's first party. I would also like to thank Bjørn Jacobsen of Cujorius One for proposing this interview.

Hey Peter thank you for doing this interview with me. Let's start at the beginning of the Koxbox timeline. When and how did you first get started with electronic music?

It all started when I first heard Kraftwerk back in 1978. Frank and me both played in a rock band and got interested in this new sound. We started out doing a series of parties we called ”Amnesia”. We held them in a place called Delta Bio located on a street called Læderstrædet in Copenhagen. The first party was in 1988. We had a bunch of foreign DJ's playing that night. It was a great deal of work. We had to rid the cinema of seats. But it turned out to be a big success. So we did another two after that. The music at those parties was primarily EBM like Front 242 and Nitzer Ebb. We really liked Front 242 and sold their T shirts here in Denmark.

You formed Koxbox after shortly that. How did you meet up with Ian Ion and get to work in his studio?

We didn't really know anything about making electronic music at that time. But we really wanted to make a record. We somehow got the opportunity to work with Ian Ion from The Overlords in his studio on Vesterbrogade 52. So we started out buying a lot of instruments for some money we had saved up at the time. This was around 1989. We also did some shows for a local radio station where we played a lot of this new Techno music.

I made a compilation record called Cyberworld in 1992. It was basically a showcase of what was going on in Denmark around that time. We released it both on CD and Vinyl. I went to create to labels: Hard records which was EBM and Outloud for techno. We released the first Koxbox 12” (Acid vol. 3 & Birdy) on Outloud. Carsten, owner a local danish electronic music shop called Loud, had an assistant by the name of Ole who told me that Sven Väth was playing out track on the radio in Germany. He had placed it as number three or something like that. So I thought the obvious thing to do would be to get in contact with this guy. I called up Harthouse which was the label Sven was working for at that time. I barely got myself introduced before we were working on our first album. We traveled to Frankfurt a month after the phone call to sign the contracts. Harthouse was at that time distributed by Warner brothers which meant worldwide distribution. That did a lot to get out name out.

A lot of people consider Koxbox one of the main pioneers of Goa and Psychedelic Trance. How did you end up with that sound?

I don't really know how to explain this(...). But we had heard some stuff at that time. We only spent 20 days in the studio on Forever After. But Ian did have a lot to do with creating our sound, despite the short studio time. He had already worked on our 12” before that. He was an amazingly skilled producer and engineer. But we never thought of our music as “Goa Trance”. To us “Goa” was just a name of a city in India.

What kind of parties did you play after the release of Forever After and what was the scene like back then?

It was mostly trance parties. There was around the mid 90'es a fairly big and established scene here in Copenhagen. We also had a lot of luck to get gigs out of town. The first international concert was in Switzerland. We played Roskilde Roskilde around 1995. The white tent was totally packed. It was a huge experience to play there. An amazing rush.

We went to the USA in 1996 to play at Burning Man. We where supposed to play at Peer 66 in San Francisco before that. It was a party arranged by the guy from Kode IV. But he apparently didn't have the permission to host a party there like he claimed to. So he was arrested by the police before we even had the chance to play. So packed our stuff and we went down to Nevada to perform at Burning Man. The festival was already pretty big at the time and some crazy stuff happened there. A guy drove over a tent with his car and killed someone. There was a war going on between the regular music fans and the electronic part of the festival. Some of the people from the regular scene hired a plane, filled it with shit, flew over our part of the festival and dumped it. A nice way to tell us our music was “shit” (laughs). We did a live recording of that show but Blue Room ended up shelving it. They had too many records coming out at the time and had to slow down. So we only made 20 test-pressings. I had two, but recently sold one of my copies to a Japanese guy for 500 euro. I won't part with the last one (smiles). I have considered releasing it officially though and spoke to the guy who used to run Blue Room. But nothing is certain right now. I might wait for a while and see what happens.

You worked at a local record store in Copenhagen called Candy Records back in those days. What kind of shop was that?

Candy Records was started by a guy named Jan in 1987. I worked there for 7 years. That was where I met Bjørn Jacobsen (Cujorius One, Tenka etc.). He came into the shop and had a big ”Koxbox” logo drawn on his school bag. So we started talking. We sold all kinds of music there. Both new stuff and second hand.

Koxbox created one track (Midnight Till The End ) and used two more for Refn's 1996 cult film Pusher. How did you get involved with that project?

There used to be a place in Copenhagen called “Alexandra” where “IN” is located today. It was a really great concert hall. They hosted a bunch of Techno parties in late 1995. I was there, when a guy suddenly came up to me, with a flyer saying that I was invited to a film shooting and that Koxbox was supposed to play in it. It was really strange because nobody had asked us. The producer behind the film, Henrik Danstrup, has today fled Denmark. He was a real hustler. He was the one setting it up. We are actually in the last scene of the film though it's very hard to see us. It was filmed in a place located beneath Lange Bro in Copenhagen.

Did you already know Raja Ram from TIP at that point?

We met Raja Ram for the first time in 1995. We managed to get Fuel On out on TIP before we signed to Blue Room. They begged us to sign with them for a whole year before we finally did it and made Dragon Tales. We had three labels interested in us at that point. Dragonfly, TIP and Blue Room. But Dragonfly almost didn't want to pay anything. So Blue Room ended up offering us the best contract.

What did you do in the time between Forever After and Dragon Tales?

We played a lot of gigs between Forever After and Dragon Tales. Both in Europe but also two times in Japan. We played a party located at the Fuji volcano. It was absolutely crazy. I almost felt that all my ambitions got fulfilled at that moment. I remember standing there having the feeling that it wouldn't get any bigger than that. The party was located two hours from central Tokyo and we had 700 people attending.

We also played a huge gig in Holland. Someone from England had booked us for the party. It was held in a couple of huge sports facilities located next to Ajax stadium. There was three huge halls. The one we played in had room for 3000 people and it was packed. But there was an even bigger hall with room for 6000 people. They played Gabba there. People went completely crazy. I had never seen anything like it. It was pretty fantastic.

What was the creation of Dragon Tales like?

Creating Dragon Tales was a pain in the ass. It took us a lot of time and we had a bunch of arguments about couple of things. It took two or three months to finish it and it ended up costing us 200.000 danish crowns (about 38.2080 usd.). It was a difficult birth. But the equipment we used was state of the art at that time. Ian's studio was like a machine park. So we spent a lot of time on the production.

Blue Room made a music video for your [Life Is....] single. There used to be a very short clip of it on Blue Room's homepage. What happened to that video?

I have the master of the video on beta max. So I'm the one sitting on it. But I plan to get it copied and uploaded at some point. It was made by an Englishman who was very skilled at working with computer graphics. So Blue Room gave him some money to work on it. I remember him talking about a computer with 700 megabit ram coming out. So that should give you an idea of the technology available at the time. The video was part of the contract we made with Blue Room. It was also shown on MTV about 2 or 3 times.

What happened after the release of Dragon Tales?

Dragon Tales came out around the time when trance was peaking. There was trance music everywhere and a lot of it was pretty bad. We played a couple of times after the album got released. The last party I played at was at the Naboon festival in Portugal. I decided to leave the band after that. We actually agreed to stop Koxbox. But I think Ian and Frank got offers to play after that and thought they could do without me. It's not that we had that many artistic differences. We slowly drifted away from each other and ended up fighting over some money. I still talk to Ian every now and then. Me and Frank are not friends anymore.

Have you been working on any music after you left Koxbox?

No I actually haven't. We made a CD featuring all of us playing at the party tonight. We are currently working on a small label to release new music. We probably won't get it and up and running before after the summer. I have been working under the name Trope together with Troels. But we are now working on something else.

Do you still listen to Trance music today?

I primarily listen to Techno today. Trance i sort of a closed chapter for me.

This is it Peter. Thanks a lot for the interview. I'm sure my fellow trancers at Psynews.org will enjoy it. Good luck with the party tonight!

I can tell you that Peter's love for classic, heavy hitting EBM shined through in his set that night. Look out for upcoming SILO collective events at www.silocollective.dk.