The following is in response to the number of queries on recent idms about
the new Kode 4 CD "Silicon Civilization" released this January on KK. This is
the promo sheet I wrote for the release to help clarify the drastic change in
direction that Peter has taken with Kode 4 since the death of Hans Schiller
last May. Peter and I wrote and produced the first two new 12" singles, Faust
and Dissolve (came out Aug/Sept), and then Peter went on to finish the album
with input from myself, Goa Gil and Gil's wife Ariane. Hans was more
interested in industrial than Peter, thus the directional change into a more
steady trance sound, especially when input from trance master Goa Gil is
considered. On the previous single, Vapourspace and Heavenly Music
Corporation provided remixes, making these releases worth getting also, since
most of these tracks do not appear on the LP.
Kode 4 Bio:
To many people for many years, Kode IV has been a band whose intense approach
to technologically based music has been challenging in all ways political,
social and motivational. Kode IV "don't always build their tunes on sampling,
but once they come up with a killer rhythm track, they play a sinister game
of cut and paste, borrowing from C&W records, obscure B-Movies, and altered
musical quotes from anything you may have heard in the past 30 years... a
rich soup of hard-core electronic noise that'll stimulate your engrams as
well as your feet." (Wired/93)
1995 brings us a whole new perspective: "Kode IV is hardly industrial these
days, although the strange and perhaps frightening element is still tangible,
but imagine it extremely potent, tribal, and viable." (American Music Press,
Dec/94) With the sad and untimely passing of co-founder and co-producer HANS
SCHILLER, German born San Francisco resident PETER ZIEGELMEIER found himself
as a solo artist, challenged by Hans' passing into redefining and
strengthening the overall Kode IV agenda, and to accept the influence and
collaboration of other musical proliferaters such as GOA GIL and ROBERT SHEA,
the latter an integral component of the redirection process through
co-writing and co-producing the first new Kode IV releases in 2 years, the
phenomenally received "Dissolve" and "Faust" singles (featuring remixes by
VAPOURSPACE and HEAVENLY MUSIC CORPORATION). With the new album, "Silicon
Civilisation", Peter has completed a collaborative but mostly solo effort
(with above-mentioned input from Goa Gil and Robert Shea), a full length
offering of powerful, intense, conceptual and provocative modern techno
trance, not lacking in otherworldly influences and spicy enhancements. Kode
IV's original interest in social studies continues in Peter's personal
output, with such sonic statements as "Myth", "Utopia", "Dissolve", "Near To
The Divine", "Change", "Ultimate Goal", "2 Seconds To Midnight", "Eternal
Reprise" and the title track "Silicon Civilisation", an epic epitaph to
humanity's conceitedness: "...there will be yet another kind of cultural
evolution, one which leaves humans out... I suppose this is yet another blow
to our vanity if finally we become superfluous to civilisation."
A new direction for a new era. The last 5 years of this millennium will be
intense, and Kode IV will supply the soundtrack, beginning with "Silicon
Civilisation."
"All roads find their end in knowledge." (Bhagavadgita)