This sheep wasn’t lost in Vienna. He just wanted to do his own thing.

Bucking the Viennese downbeat trend, Bass Maestro, Stereotyp went all out and created the defining album (especially for us bass-heads!), My Sound (2002). True enough, his sound is now back with a vengeance from his latest outing, Gangster, featuring Warrior Queen. “Yeah. It is definitely back to the roots. My last album, Keeping Me, was just a twirl into soul and songs even though with Coppadonna for I’ll do dirt. So I did it and I wanted to do it. But from now on, it’s for me to go back to roots you know that’s where I started out. Not taking into account how many shelves there were for it to sell or how much people to like. The heads’ who like it, give me the stability to do what I love.”

“This is the next level. It’s also lot of 140 bpm, so you can play it with the Dubstep shit!”

His unusual sound has made him part of the legendary alumni of DUBCLUB in Vienna. “DUBCLUB encouraged me to do what I do. Because it was the first club that played out of hand music, stuff you can’t hear anywhere else.”

“The sound system is one of the best, I feel, in Europe. The whole stage was built out of concrete. The bassbins were screwed into the foundation. It felt like wind when the bass was out. For me it was like one of the true underground scenes.”

Also known as Stefan Moerth, the lucky basturd had the absolute pleasure on working with talented artistes of today, from Hubert Tubbs (Tower of Power), Coppadonna of Wu-Tang Clan and of course Warrior Queen as he tells us humbly.

“There’s a bunch of people I wanted to work with. And I always had the pleasure and luck to be able to work with them. With Warrior Queen, it is just the way she flows…the way she does her thing. It’s the next level and not normal dancehall anymore. She just combines the R&B feel with hot ass dancehall vibes and gets the singing in it, gets like this off key thing in it. I just love the way she does it, how she does it. And I love her stage appearance. She comes out on stage and she stands there like she’s the hottest shit in the world and people believe it. Because it is that Caribbean vibe. It don’t matter what you like it its how you feel. Warrior just pulls that off.”

“She does that top model shit! I have a lot of love for her. She’s a very kind and gentle person. You might not think it with the things she says and how she says it (referring to Bedroom Bully). She’s one of the sweetest people.”

“We did the track in an overseas way. I sent over the rhythm track and she recorded it at Box studios. Lyrics was sent back. So that’s how we did it.”

Citing his influences, the Return of the Jedi and Empire strikes back (bless you Lucas!) did not come as a surprise if you’ve seen an amusing sneak preview of Gangster on youtube. You could see smartypants C3PO and R2D2 adjacent to his work area. “It was a big influence in my childhood in terms of space opening my mind. I went to the premiere and I saw the cardboard cut-out. I took them and I had to put them in the studio. They’re always there. Maybe it inspired me.”

And an eye-opener his is sound still is. Living up to his rock solid reputation of dishing out heavy bass, his side projects, Siqnature and TRITONE did not fail to get his fanbase an earwax hard-on. “Tri tone is like a soul project that has wonky beats like Diila-ish. SIQnature is just completely ludicrous and balls out. Most of the tunes were done when were drunk, wrecked and whatever! We didn’t even think it was gonna do anything. It started out like we do this tunes and put it on Myspace and all of the sudden we get all this reaction out of it.”

Excitedly, he shares with us that the Siqnature tunes will come out under Combat Recordings, managed by our fellow Singaporean souljah, Stormfield.

“The other side project is AL HACA. The last album I produced got a huge reaction in Tokyo. It was exclusively released there and got a lot of love so were like..YES!!”

As he recalls cheerily, “We were bowing to everybody and if you bow to somebody, you bow to yourself.”

Stereotyp is very fond of Asia and his recent gig @ Worldwidefestival Singapore was well-received. And Exitmusik was treated to an afternoon of big phat bass delights.

“I love the whole Asian vibe, sounds very stereotypical but that is how it was. I love the way you guys in Asia carry yourself here.We played in Japan, Kaiko Beats revolutions festival. There were 3000 people and there was no security. People there don’t want to get embarrassed themselves for being stupid. You can’t find that back home. In Europe, people just get stupid.”

Amused by our next enquiry, he recollects how his nickname, Vienna’s prodigy problem child, came about. “I never did what was expected of me. I never fitted into the typical downbeat scene Viennese scene.”

“I actually don’t play much in Vienna cos’ they seem to be in a different timezone. I play more in NY, London and Asia. Tokyo, especially, loves that shit. They are on the next level.

That’s why they call me the problem child. I didn’t want to jump on the downbeat bandwagon. I have nuff’ respect for Kruder & Dorfmeister they were like pioneers for that so I didn’t want to jump on their bandwagon out of respect. Some people just thought differently and thought it was out of disrespect that I did something totally different. It’s like, “How could he, coming from Vienna” like out of disrespect.”

“I never wanted to jump into the typical downbeat bandwagon so maybe that’s why.”

For your listening pleasure,

http://www.myspace.com/stereotyp1

http://www.myspace.com/siqnature

http://www.myspace.com/tritoneproject

http://www.myspace.com/dubclubvienna

Credits:

By Ryal_Twigs

Much love to Kinemat for making this happen.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008 at 12:53 pm and is filed under Interviews, Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.